company:bp plc

Amid an Export Boom, the U.S. Is Still Importing #Natural_Gas - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-27/amid-an-export-boom-the-u-s-is-still-importing-natural-gas

The U.S. may be exporting natural gas at a record clip, but that hasn’t stopped it from accepting new imports. A tanker with fuel from Nigeria has berthed at the Cove Point import terminal in Maryland, while a second ship with Russian gas is idling outside Boston Harbor.

Pipeline constraints, depleted stockpiles and a 98-year-old law barring foreign ships from moving goods between U.S. ports is opening the way for liquefied natural gas to be shipped from overseas with prices expected to spike as the East Coast winter sets in.

The two tankers are carrying about 6 billion cubic feet of #LNG, enough to power 150,000 homes for a year. At one point Thursday, the ship carrying Nigerian fuel to Cove Point passed another tanker in the Chesapeake Bay filled with U.S. gas that was headed abroad.

“It is ironic,’” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC in New York. But the “super cheap gas” produced in the nation’s shale fields “is trapped down west of the Mississippi unable to serve its own market,” he said by phone. “The gas is where the people aren’t.”

bout the money. The companies shipping the gas into Maryland — BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc — will likely have it stored until freezing East Coast temperatures push prices higher as local suppliers struggle to meet demand, according to Trevor Sikorski, head of natural gas, coal and carbon with the London-based industry consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. in a note to clients on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the gas being exported out will likely fetch higher prices right now in Europe and Asia. Dominion Energy Inc., which owns the Cove Point terminal, didn’t respond to emailed and telephone requests seeking comment.

Other factors are at play as well. For instance, American providers can’t just ship LNG from shale fields in the south because the giant ships that transport the super-chilled fuel sail under foreign flags. Under the 1920 #Jones_Act, that means none can legally transport LNG to the Northeast from existing export terminals in Louisiana and Texas.

At the same time, even the vast pipeline network feeding the region can quickly develop bottlenecks at a time when stockpiles are sitting at their lowest levels for this time of year since 2002. While production is soaring, strong demand from more and more U.S. power plants using the fuel, along with new export terminals, soaks up much of that new supply.

“There’s still some logistics and pipelines that need to be built to match out to where the demand is,” Kilduff said.

#GNL

U.S. Interior Dept. relaxes rules on offshore oil, gas production | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters
▻https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL2N1WD1ZH

The Trump administration on Thursday eased safety rules on offshore oil and gas production put in place after the deadly 2010 BP Plc #Deepwater_Horizon disaster, as part of its effort to slash regulations and boost the energy industry.

The Interior Department revised the 2016 oil and gas production safety systems rule, part of a series of regulations the Obama administration enacted on offshore drilling and production after the drilling well disaster that killed 11 oil rig workers, led to the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history and cost BP about $65 billion.

The final rule will appear in the federal register as soon as Friday, according to a document seen by Reuters.

It eliminates or changes some safety standards for when a well is producing oil or gas, such as requiring that independent third parties certify devices. Other changes involve when operators have to notify the government about beginning oil and gas production and what they have to report about equipment failures.

Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions [since 1988], study says
►https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp

The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change, according to the report.

[...] A fifth of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions are backed by public investment, according to the report. “That puts a significant responsibility on those investors to engage with carbon majors and urge them to disclose climate risk,” says Faria.

#climat #carbone

Top 100 producers and their cumulative 1988-2015 greenhouse gas emissions:
1. China (Coal) 14.3%
2. Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) 4.5%
3. Gazprom OAO 3.9%
4. National Iranian Oil Co 2.3%
5. ExxonMobil Corp 2.0%
6. Coal India 1.9%
7. Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) 1.9%
8. Russia (Coal) 1.9%
9. Royal Dutch Shell PLC 1.7%
10. China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) 1.6%
11. BP PLC 1.5%
12. Chevron Corp 1.3%

voir aussi ►https://seenthis.net/messages/198774

Canada Rules Out Arctic Oil Drilling Extensions for Exxon and BP - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-06/canada-rules-out-arctic-oil-drilling-extensions-for-exxon-and-bp

The Canadian government says it won’t grant extensions to exploration licenses for Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc and other oil firms as it prepares for consultations over the impact of an Arctic drilling moratorium.

The companies hold leases that expire over the next six years, totaling C$1.9 billion ($1.4 billion) in bids. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama announced new restrictions on Arctic oil development on Dec. 20, with Canada saying existing leases wouldn’t be affected without industry input on a path forward.

In an online background document, however, Trudeau’s government specifically ruled out lease extensions sought by industry before the new restrictions were put in place. Companies had expected that to be a central part of talks.

BP Raises Deepwater Horizon Spill Liability by $5.2 Billion - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-14/bp-sees-2-5-billion-charge-in-second-quarter-from-macondo-spill

BP Plc has raised the total liability from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which triggered the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, by $5.2 billion to $61.6 billion before tax.
[…}
“Over the past few months we’ve made significant progress resolving outstanding Deepwater Horizon claims,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary said in the statement. “Importantly, we have a clear plan for managing these costs and it provides our investors with certainty going forward.”

Plus de $60 Mds de provisions…

Virginia, Ground Zero in Drilling Debate, to Learn Its Fate Soon - Bloomberg Politics
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-14/virginia-ground-zero-in-drilling-debate-to-learn-its-fate-soon

http://assets.bwbx.io/images/iQ0gHKp3D1bQ/v2/-1x-1.jpg

From the shores of Savannah, Georgia, to the Beaufort, North Carolina beachfront, coastal communities in conservative southern states have locked arms in opposition to oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic waters lapping their shores.

A different story is playing out in Virginia, where Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe and both Democratic U.S. senators support nearby drilling which they say could deliver jobs, new business, and money to the state.

“Virginia is the battleground state,” said Athan Manuel, director of the lands protection program at the Sierra Club.

The Obama administration opened the door to a new generation of offshore drilling along the East Coast in 2015, when it released a draft plan for selling oil and gas leases in 104 million acres of the mid- and south-Atlantic. Now, as the administration prepares to release the next version of its 2017-2022 leasing proposal, the penultimate step before finalizing it later this year, a big question is whether Virginia’s coastline will remain up for grabs.

The answer could come as soon as this week.

The stakes are huge for Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and other companies whose U.S. offshore activity is largely confined to the Gulf of Mexico. The Interior Department has estimated that 3.3 billion barrels of oil and 31.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be recovered from the Atlantic outer continental shelf, based on data from the 1970s and 1980s, when energy companies drilled 51 wells off the U.S. East Coast.
[…]
For Obama, the issue is tied to his environmental legacy, following a historic climate accord struck in Paris in December, a rule slashing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, and a halt in leasing coal on public land. “There is no way that opening these areas is going to be seen as anything other than a contradiction” of the president’s climate goals, said Franz Matzner, a senior adviser with the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund.

“If you open these offshore areas up for oil drilling, it’s telegraphing that you really don’t believe in our ability to achieve our climate goals,” Matzner said in an interview. “You’re saying in 20 or 30 years we will still be so stuck on fossil fuels that we can’t afford to take this oil off the table. If we can’t say no here, then we are in deep trouble.”

Iran May Boost Gas Exports to Europe Through Greece Facilities - Bloomberg Business
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/greece-seeks-role-as-gateway-for-iran-s-energy-exports-to-europe

Greece is in preliminary talks with Iran to secure natural gas for local needs and provide a gateway for the Persian Gulf nation to supply fuel to other parts of Europe, Greek Energy Minister Panos Skourletis said.
Greece produces little oil and almost no gas, while Iran is a member of OPEC and holds gas reserves that BP Plc ranks as the world’s largest. The countries agreed in January for Iran to supply crude to Hellenic Petroleum SA and buy oil products from the refiner. That deal, possibly Iran’s first such agreement with a European company since the lifting of sanctions, opens the road to cooperation in the gas market too, Skourletis said in an interview in Athens. 
“What’s sure is that Iran wants to start selling its natural gas in liquefied form using ships and is interested in Greece,” he said. The Revythousa re-gasification terminal near Athens is one potential entry point for Iranian gas, and a planned facility at Alexandroupolis in the north of the country is another. Iran is interested in both sites “for exporting to Europe,” Skourletis said.

Oil Traders Looking Again Towards Floating Storage - gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/oil-traders-looking-again-towards-floating-storage

Hep, les gens, c’est le moment de remplir vos piscines ! … de pétrole ;-)

http://i1.wp.com/gcaptain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/shutterstock_313054091.jpg

The world is so awash with crude, the boss of BP Plc said people will be filling their “swimming pools” with it by the end of the year.

While the company’s Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley bemoaned this bearish outlook for oil, traders were eyeing a potentially profitable opportunity: turning supertankers into temporary floating storage facilities.

Trading houses including Vitol Group, Koch Supply & Trading LP and Glencore Plc, plus the in-house trading arms of BP and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, collectively made billions of dollars from 2008 to 2009 stockpiling crude at sea. At the peak of the floating storage spree, sheltered anchorages in the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Singapore Strait and off South Africa each hosted dozens of supertankers.

Chris Bake, a senior executive at Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil trader, gave the clearest indication yet this week that traders are considering the same strategy again.

“Primary and secondary storage is pretty much full,” Bake said in London Wednesday. “It’s probably a good time to be a vessel owner.”

#Super-Contango

Floating storage is profitable when the market reaches a condition traders call a “super-contango.” In a contango market, prices of oil for delivery today are lower than those in future months. Buyers with access to storage can fill up their tanks with cheap crude and sell higher-priced futures contracts to lock in a profit.

This has been happening throughout the oil slump using onshore tanks, which are now starting to fill up. Oil stocks at Cushing, the Oklahoma town that calls itself the “pipeline crossroads of the world” and serves as the delivery point of the West Texas Intermediate futures contract, have surged to a record of 64.7 million barrels, or more than 88 percent of working capacity, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“In the second half, every tank and swimming pool in the world is going to fill,” BP’s Dudley said Wednesday at International Petroleum Week in London, which every year brings together hundreds of people from the oil industry, from producers and refiners to traders and bankers.

Britain Confronts Gas Mother Lode With Fracking by Lord Browne - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-02/britain-confronts-gas-mother-lode-with-fracking-by-lord-browne.html

the man the protesters call “the fracking czar” is seated in a solarium-like conference room overlooking the rooftops of Mayfair in central London. John Browne, a former chief executive officer of oil giant BP Plc, is clad in a crisp, white dress shirt, enameled cuff links, a royal-blue necktie and dark trousers.

Browne, an independent member of the House of Lords and a nonexecutive director in the U.K. government’s Cabinet Office, is lamenting how the protests may slow his efforts to bring America’s shale boom to Britain.

http://www.bloomberg.com/image/iPvatG3z5iIE.jpg

#gaz_de_schiste #fracking #cartographie