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PetroChina Co posts record profit but fails to meet forecasts
Xinhua
PetroChina Co reported Monday that earnings increased by a lower-than-expected 6.6 percent last year as a result of falling oil prices, higher production costs and a windfall tax on revenue in the second half. ..
Operating expenses jumped 56 percent to 201.5 billion yuan, PetroChina said. The per-barrel oil production cost in 2006 was up 27.7 percent to 6.74 U.S. dollars, despite a 5.2 percent increase in oil and gas output and a 23.6 percent rise in the average selling price of oil.
The cost rose because PetroChina “sped up the utilization of reserves that were difficult to explore and undertook more risky operations,” Chairman Chen Geng said in a statement. In addition, increases in the prices of raw materials, electricity and employee salaries led to a rise in operating, maintenance and staff costs. ..
(20 Mar 2007)
Some media are claiming Major oil reserves discovered at Bohai Bay, but the president of PetroChina Jiang Jiemin ‘did not elaborate’ on what total reserves might be, or if they exceed previous discoveries.-LJ
BP says oil and gas recovery crucial
Melissa Hancock, Arabian Business
Maximising recovery from existing oil and gas fields will be crucial to meeting the world’s growing energy needs as the number of undiscovered fields diminishes and the cost of new exploration increases, according to a BP representative speaking at the 15th Middle East Oil and Gas Show held in Bahrain from March 11-14.
“Demand for energy is expected to increase 50% to 60% by 2030, much of it from newly emerging markets,” explained Peter Roberts, Subsurface Manager, BP Abu Dhabi. “At BP, we believe the industry needs to look to increasing recovery from existing fields to meet this rising demand.”
Roberts explained how up to 50% of BP’s reserves growth since 2002 has come through the application of good reservoir management techniques which help to extend the productive field life.
“Technology and reservoir management has been essential to the progress of BP over the past five years, enabling us to add around 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent to our resource base through exploration, an additional 8 billion barrels from appraisal and revisions and to shift some 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent from non-proved to proved reserves,” illustrated Roberts. ..
(14 Mar 2007)
Safety chief ‘terrified’ by culture at BP plant
Miachael Harrison, The Independant
American regulators were “terrified” by the unsafe culture at BP’s Texas City refinery, where a fire and explosion two years ago killed 15 workers and injured a further 170, a top official said yesterday.
Carolyn Merritt, chairman of the US government’s Chemical Safety Board, made the comment before the organisation’s final report into the disaster, to be published today.
The report will severely criticise BP’s board and executive management for failing to respond to safety audits and risk information. It will also say that BP focused on accidents to personnel as a measure of its safety performance rather than on process safety. A similar criticism was made by an independent panel of investigators chaired by the former US Secretary of State James Baker. ..
(20 Mar 2007)
Gulf governments plan oil pipelines
James Calderwood, Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Gulf governments are planning oil pipelines that would bypass the world’s most vulnerable energy choke point, the Strait of Hormuz, aiming to avoid possible Iranian threats to global oil shipments.
If built, two pipelines could ferry as much as 6.5 million barrels of oil a day around the strait, an amount equal to nearly 40 percent of the daily exports currently shipped through the narrow channel at the entrance of the Gulf. ..
Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Co. is planning to build the line, which would carry 1.5 million barrels per day of crude oil, about 55 percent of the Emirates’ production. A third of the crude would be used for a refinery planned in Fujairah.
The second line, dubbed the Trans-Gulf Strategic Pipeline, would bring as much as 5 million barrels a day from various Persian Gulf terminals to a newly built export terminal outside the straits, perhaps in Oman.
A forthcoming Gulf Research Center study suggests six possible routes for the trans-Gulf pipeline, which could bring oil from as far north as Iraq, passing through Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to the Omani capital of Muscat on the Arabian Sea, Alani said. Other possible routes could see the pipeline terminating in Yemen or Fujairah. ..
(20 Mar 2007)
Houston’s role in energy may not end — just evolve
Brett Clanton, Houston Chronicle
Halliburton’s plan to move its top office to Dubai has touched a nerve in Houston.
True, just one chief executive is leaving the oil-field services firm’s hometown. But it raises an unsettling question: Can Houston remain a global energy hub if much of the industry’s growth is taking place on the other side of the world?
Economists, industry analysts and academic experts said yes. But the city’s role in the international energy landscape may well evolve into something different in coming years.
Where once Houston was a capital for oil exploration and production, it could become more of a brain center for an industry that is pushing out of declining areas such as North America and eyeing the oil-rich Middle East, Asia and Africa to feed the world’s growing energy demands.
…Bill Gilmer, senior economist and vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said Houston’s best draw will continue to be its huge concentration of industry know-how.
He compares it to the financial services industry in New York City or the technology sector in San Jose, Calif.
Even as those businesses become more global, the cities have continued to be vital parts of the link. The same has always been true of Houston, Gilmer said.
“I think because we’ve always been a declining oil region, we’ve always been at the forefront. We’ve always had the perfect laboratory to be constantly working on that next frontier.”
Houston’s economy is exploding partly because of innovations in deep-water drilling equipment, tools that unlock resources from unconventional rock formations and in alternative energy.
Interest in those areas and in exploration in the Western Hemisphere will continue to benefit the Houston region, said Robert H. Lane, a petroleum engineering professor at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi.
Still, the growth in coming years is likely to be stronger in the Middle and Far East, he said.
Put another way, Lane said, “I believe Houston will maintain its status as a major world energy hub — it will just have more company.”
(17 March 2007)
That’s a puzzling quote from banker Gilmour, that “we [in Houston have] always been a declining oil region”. -BA
Angola, one of the poorest places on Earth, is an oil industry darling
Jad Mouawad, International Herald Tribune
VIENNA: Angola, which shared the limelight with world’s most powerful oil players at its first OPEC meeting Thursday, is an unlikely candidate for a darling role in the global oil industry.
A corrupt, underdeveloped and war- scarred country, Angola, a West African country, is one of the poorest places on earth. But ask any energy executive and another picture emerges: a place of immense riches, solicitous of foreign investors, and among the fastest growing oil exporters in the world.
Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and others have poured billions into Angola in the past decade to unlock petroleum resources in the country’s deep waters, and the payoff has finally arrived.
In recent years, Angola has become the fastest growing source of oil supplies to the United States. By 2010, West African producers will account for one of every three new barrels pumped around the world. By 2015, the United States will import a quarter of its oil from Africa, up from 15 percent today. ..
The country suffered through a devastating civil war for 27 years, and became a symbol of the Cold War proxy battles opposing Western and Soviet camps in Africa. When it ended in 2002, Africa’s longest-lasting civil war had killed an estimated 500,000 people and left the country in ruins. ..
(19 Mar 2007)
