A Barrel Full

The Gulf of Mexico is considered a mature area when it comes to oil production. It has been in decline, and was almost being written off. Pemex, Mexico’s State owned oil company, has long relied on a massive but shrivelling property, Cantarell Oil Field. Yet in the space of a few weeks, we have seen […]

My last post was on the potential of Venezuela’s heavy oil reserves. As if by magic, almost immediately we have news of a major new development. ENI and PDVSA are to form a Joint Venture to exploit a major heavy oil field.
Under the terms of the agreement, which will be finalized in the next 60 […]

Patterson-UTI Energy is an oil and gas services company, operating in North America. Each month they release the number of oil rigs they have in operation. For December, the number was up.
For the month of December 2009, the Company had an average of 118 drilling rigs operating, including 108 rigs in the United States and […]

Heritage Oil has announced that it is to sell all of its Ugandan assets to ENI.
Heritage Oil Plc , an independent upstream exploration and production company, announces that a wholly owned subsidiary has entered into a binding letter of intent , with Eni S.p.A  for the sale of its entire interests in Blocks 1 and […]

Italian oil giant ENI has signed a new deal to increase its activities in Kazakstan.
Under the agreement, Eni and KazMunayGas will jointly study the Isatay and Shagala exploration areas located in the Caspian Sea. 
Other reports are talking of $50 billion investments. Whether or not that happens, there is no doubt it is a big deal for […]

The ability to act quickly can be the core competency of many small companies in a world of slow moving giants. DNO is a small Norwegian upstream company that was investing in Northern Iraq whilst the big companies procrastinated. It has done well for itself in the process, but such a strategy is not without […]

This news from Rosneft caught my eye.
An official ceremony took place on August 21 to mark the beginning of commercial production of crude oil at the Vankor field in Krasnoyarsk Territory. 
So what, you might say, these things happen everyday. For once, though this really is a different story.
Together with 14 adjacent sub-soil blocks, licences to […]

The biggest opportunity to get your hands on prime crude assets since the 1970s nationalisations. Nobody could afford not to take part. The Iraqi government couldn’t lose. Well perhaps not.
Iraq’s effort to woo foreign energy companies to help resurrect its ailing oil fields fell flat Tuesday, as most companies balked at the financial terms offered […]

I had an interesting conversation with a hedge fund trader last week on the price of oil. He had been shorting it, as he thought that the fundamentals didn’t support the price, which was the result of speculation. Currently he is well out of the money.
At least one of the great and good however agree […]

Our least favourite cartel met in Vienna today, to discuss oil production & prices. As expected, they made no change to their quotas.
The Conference decided to maintain current production levels unchanged for the time being. In taking this decision, Member Countries reiterated their firm commitment to the individually agreed production allocations.
Although prices have been trending […]