Posts Tagged ‘Uncategorized’

Caltex Australia shows its feminine side

By Christine Forster | October 12, 2012 09:38 AM Comments (1)

In what is traditionally a male-dominated industry, one of Australia’s oil refiners is showing its feminine side, recently unveiling what is believed to be the nation’s most generous workplace support package for new parents.

Caltex Australia, which is chaired by a woman, says the move is “ground-breaking” because it goes beyond corporate Australia’s traditional focus on giving employees paid leave just before and after the birth of a baby, to focus on providing cash for parents to make their own childcare choices after they are back at work. Read the rest of this entry »

Platts Futures & Derivatives Review for December 20

By Beth Evans | December 17, 2010 06:01 PM Comments (0)

Platts Futures & Derivatives Review is available for viewing at http://bit.ly/eT00DY.

Excuse me, Congressman… that thing out there… it’s an oil well

By John Kingston | September 17, 2010 01:43 PM Comments (0)

You may have heard that North Dakota is producing a lot more oil. Yeah, they’ve got a real boom up there.

Earl Pomeroy is the at-large member of the House of Representatives from North Dakota. Somebody in Washington told me once that we had to get him on Platts Energy Week, because he’s in this odd position of being a Democrat from a state that is suddenly very much a member of the oil patch, and also is quite colorful. He never has appeared as a guest, but maybe in the future.

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OPEC volumes fall in April as bad weather hits Iraqi supply

By Linda Rafield | May 12, 2010 09:58 AM Comments (0)

Platts’ latest estimates of OPEC production show that the oil producer club pumped an average 29.21 million b/d in April. That’s 90,000 b/d lower than estimated March output of 29.3 million b/d

Excluding Iraq, the so-called OPEC-11 — the 11 members bound by production quotas — increased output by 40,000 b/d to 26.89 million b/d.

Iraqi supply, estimated at 2.32 million b/d, was down by 130,000 b/d because of bad weather.

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In the Caucasus, politics and conflict push energy to the side

By Tim Worledge | April 12, 2010 04:36 PM Comments (0)

If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one present, does it fall without a sound? If there’s a conference on a region that just happens to be a crucial energy corridor, will anybody actually focus on energy…unprompted?

The area in question is the South Caucasus, through which passes a key section of what the European Union dubs its Southern Energy Corridor connecting Caspian producers with global markets in Europe, the Mediterranean and the whole wide world beyond.

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Smacked by climate change, should women sue Big Oil?

By Dan Goldstein | March 10, 2010 07:15 AM Comments (0)

Can the poor village woman in a remote part of India who has to walk longer distances to get her daily load of firewood for cooking blame ExxonMobil or Chevron or Shell for her hard life?

Yes she can. going by the class action suit filed by Hurricane Katrina victims against big oil companies, blaming them for global warming and ultimately the storm that killed so many and left many more destitute and homeless.

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The parallel worlds of OPEC quotas and actual production

By Linda Rafield | November 11, 2009 11:04 AM Comments (0)

In the world of OPEC, the word production can mean different things. There is official production, whereby OPEC sets quotas for individual members under an overall volume, and there is actual production, which can bear little resemblance to official levels.

And there is a further complication. OPEC, although it has given out the overall target number for the current output agreement, has not published the individual quotas under that target. Which means that people like my colleagues and myself have had to work out those quotas by ourselves, sometimes with a bit of help from delegates or ministers who may confirm figures or indicate that our calculations are close to the mark.

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High well outputs yield bumper gas crop, but reviews are mixed

By Starr Spencer | October 23, 2009 11:37 AM Comments (2)

US natural gas shale plays continue on a streak of impressive production bulkups, although their copious well outputs, which in a more robust economy would inspire rave reviews, have raised eyebrows in some corners of Wall Street given a currently oversupplied market. 

One recent example of just how jaw-dropping the US shale gas story has become came from big independent Newfield Exploration. Houston-based Newfield said in a conference call this week that its production from Oklahoma’s Woodford Shale today is 308,000 Mcfe/d, versus about 240,000 Mcfe/d at June 30 — up nearly 30% in less than four months. Moreover, the company has an inventory of 28 drilled but uncompleted Woodford wells waiting to be put online by early 2010, signalling the potential to boost production still higher.

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The end of the petrodollar is nigh — not so fast

By Bob DiNardo | October 7, 2009 02:00 AM Comments (0)

The demise of the petrodollar is back on the agenda. By 2018, oil producers in the Persian (or Arab, if you prefer) Gulf will no longer be selling their primary cash earner in US dollars, but against a basket of currencies. So says Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent with the UK’s Independent newspaper, citing Middle East and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong.

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Psst … wanna rent a rig, free? Hope for a busy USG storm season

By Starr Spencer | June 25, 2009 12:30 PM Comments (0)

Calling all oil companies! Wanna be able to rent a drilling rig for free?

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