The 14 nation OPEC began its first round of oil supply cuts in December, as oil supplies plunged by 751,000 barrels per day to nearly 31.6 million bpd. In early December OPEC members signed an agreement with Russia and nine other nations to keep 1.2 million barrels per day off the market starting in January.On the other hand, Iraq, OPEC's second largest producer, witnessed the biggest jump in production in the final month of the year as its output rose 88,000 bpd to just over 4.7 million bpd. At the current level, Baghdad would need to cut about 200,000 bpd in January to meet its quota under the supply cut agreement.  

America’s journey to preeminence in the global oil trade is about to hit another milestone. Propelled by the shale-oil boom, the U.S. is already producing more crude than either Russia or Saudi Arabia, who until recently vied for the top spot.Read More...

Chevron, the U.S-based energy company, has temporarily halted the third liquefaction train at its Gorgon LNG plant on Barrow Island in Western Australia, apparently due to some mechanical issue.In fact, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, the past ten days have shown a record temperature in Australia. Reuters also believes that this temporary shutdown will benefit Asian LNG prices that have been experiencing the lowest phase in the past two years due to mild winter in East Asia. Currently, Gorgon is one of the world’s largest natural gas projects, with a capacity to produce 15.6 million metric tons/year of LNG from its three trains. 

At the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo revealed his hope that 2019 will deliver a more balanced oil market. However, he also voiced his concern that the lingering trade dispute between the U.S and China -- two of the largest sources of energy demand -- may significantly affect international trade by disrupting growth prospects in major Asian markets. Outside of the U.S, India and China are the brightest spots in terms of demand for energy.

Oil prices fell about 2 percent on Friday amid worries about a global economic slowdown, but futures ended the week higher, keeping some gains from a week-long rally spurred by U.S.-China trade hopes. Read More...

But analysts expect the rise to be just temporary, amidst lingering concerns over a demand-supply imbalance. Driven by healthy demand and a suitable equilibrium, oil prices rose consistently from January to October 2018.After reaching a four-year high of $86.74 per barrel in early October, oil prices dropped continuously. After dropping nearly 25% in 2018, U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures ended the year at $45.55 a barrel.

American multinational oil giant, Exxon Mobil Corporation, on Thursday announced that the company has withdrawn its environmental assessment application for a $25-billion West Coast Canada LNG export facility. Exxon's exit from the West Coast LNG export industry, which at one time attracted more than 20 proposals, would mean apparent shelving of the WCC LNG project. The WCC LNG export project, located in British Columbia, was expected to produce ~15 million tons/year of LNG to serve Asian buyers, with plans to enhance production as much as 30 million tons/year. Exxon's decision to exit from the project, according to analysts, indicates that the company plans to enhance its focus on LNG projects with Qatar Petroleum and a proposed expansion of its chilled-gas operation in Papua New Guinea.

Royal Dutch Shell, one of the six oil and gas "super-majors," has finally sets it foot in the Japan’s electricity market, which is considered one of the world’s richest electricity markets. RDS is the second-largest energy firm by market capitalization.He further added that the move was in-line with company strategy, as it sees opportunities to balance the grid when there are supply-demand mismatches driven by intermittent wind and solar power. Japan, which meets nearly 15% of its electricity requirement from renewable sources, saw its power sales hover around 14 trillion yen ($125 billion) in 2017.

In an effort to stem the fall in oil prices, OPEC members are set to release a table detailing the voluntary supply cut quotas among its members and allies. As the influential oil cartel steps up its efforts to put a halt to one of the biggest oil price falls in years, OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo on Thursday said that to reach the proposed cut of 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd), the effective reduction for member countries would need to be 3.02% instead of 2.5% which was decided earlier this month. Concerns over an economic slowdown, demand and supply imbalance, reports of swelling inventories and forecasts of record U.S. and Russian output have all negatively influenced the oil prices in recent times.The above factors resulted into the oil prices crashing down by more than a third after reaching its four-year highs in early October. Despite production cutback efforts by OPEC members, the slide continued for oil prices and International benchmark Brent crude traded

The British multinational oil and gas company, BP Plc on Wednesday launched the sale of its U.S. oil and gas onshore assets to help pay for other U.S. based fields it bought from the BHP Group (BHP) in October. Expected to fetch more than $3 billion, the sale proceeds according to the company, would be utilized to partially fund the $10.5 billion acquisition of BHP’s onshore assets that are mostly around oil-producing fields in Texas and Louisiana.BP, post this acquisition deal, announced that it would finance the deal by selling assets worth $5 billion to $6 billion. London-listed BP justified this move by saying that this move is in line with the company’s strategy to focus on enhancing its production from its holdings in the Permian and Eagle Ford basins to match rivals Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) whose recent investment in the basin is expected to increase their production sharply in the coming years. Rebranded as BPX, BP’s onshore business, had sent out information pa

Falling for a third straight session, U.S. crude oil prices settled at their lowest since early October 2017 after dropping more than 1% last Tuesday.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures tumbled to $49.27 per barrel, dropping by 60 cents or 1.2%. Both U.S. crude and Brent have dropped more than 30% since early October amid swelling global inventories, with WTI currently trading at or below $50 levels not seen since October 2017. Some of the biggest names of the U.S. oil industry are feeling the sting, as reflected in stock prices. 

Oil prices have fallen more than 20% in the past couple of months, but it appeared that dividend-seeking investors preferred integrated oil giant ExxonMobil over ConocoPhillips. Why? There may be a few reasons.Oil is a key input on the chemical and refining side, meaning low oil prices are a benefit to this piece of Exxon's operation. Second, it’s true that oil prices dictate the top and bottom lines for Exxon.

Following two days of grueling negotiations, OPEC members and its close allies have finally reached a deal to cut oil production, going against President Donald Trump and helping to boost market sentiment. Following the news of the deal, crude oil futures surged more than 5%, putting an end to oil's continuous losing streak.WTI gained +4.9% to $54.03/bbl, while Brent crude gained +5.2% to $63.19/bbl. The alliance has confirmed to remove 1.2 million barrels per day from the market, in-line with expectations of 1 million to 1.4 million bpd.

Further, he added that a cut of 1 million barrels should be sufficient enough to stop the fall. With analyst’s expectations of 1.3 million fewer barrels per day from production, the news of only a 1 million product cut hit the market hard.Oil prices dropped 4.7%, renewing fears that the cartel is struggling to respond to a supply glut.

Brazilian state-run oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, commonly known as Petrobras, revealed that it plans to raise around $26.9 billion through asset sales and partnerships by 2023, as part of its new five-year business plan. Under this plan, the company intends to raise $84 billion in investments, while boosting investments on the front edge of anticipated production boom in Brazil. According to the company, it aims to make $84.1 billion in investments from 2019 to 2023, compared to its previous five-year investment plan of $74.5 billion from 2018 to 2022. The Company plans to put its fertilizer plants, liquefied petroleum gas unit and its biodiesel and ethanol businesses under the hammer. With Petrobras trying to stay on course for its effort to reduce one of the heftiest debt loads among oil companies worldwide - $88 billion in gross debt -- this divestment strategy can be highly beneficial for the company. Although this plan doesn’t seem contain any major surprise, i

Qatar has been part of the OPEC council since 1961, but the country just announced its intent to leave on Monday. Should the severance move forward, Qatar would leave the cartel on January 1, 2019. According to Qatar's newly-appointed energy minister, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s decision to withdraw from the OPEC council mainly owed to the fact that it wanted to focus its efforts on plans to develop and increase its natural gas production from 77 million tonnes per year to 110 million tonnes in the coming years.Left with just 14 members now, the future of the OPEC is now exposed to systematic risk with the exit of Qatar. Though Qatar's exit was sudden and unexpected, at the end of the day it should not have a significant impact on the oil markets, as Qatar is not a major oil producer when compared to other OPEC members.

Exxon entered a 12-year agreement with Denmark’s Orsted A/S to buy 500 megawatts of wind and solar power in the Permian Basin, in-line with the company’s strategy to use renewable energy to produce oil in West Texas. Although the terms of the contract are yet to be disclosed, according to Bloomberg NEF it is the largest ever renewable power contract signed by an oil company in the fastest growing U.S. oil field. As per the company’s investor presentation, 50% of the power that Exxon will buy would come from the Sage Draw wind farm, which Orsted plans to get operational in 2020.The other 50% would come from the Permian Solar farm, scheduled to be operational in 2021. Exxon, which has for some time now been criticized for downplaying the risks of climate change, has finally turned to clean energy as it also becomes cheaper.

During the U.S. shale oil and gas boom over the past 15 years, one of the major challenges for different U.S. energy sector companies is how to provide for the perennial infusion of cash needed to finance their exploration, production, and investment activities. With rising oil prices during early 2018, many analysts anticipated the challenge subsiding, as several energy companies revealed in third-quarter earnings reports that they were able to cover their capital spending from operating cash flows. Two of the country’s largest oil companies, ExxonMobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX), reported healthy profits from their US operations after reporting losses in 2017. But these profits were recorded when the benchmark US WTI crude was trading around $73 a barrel.  It follows that the recent plunge in oil prices over the past two months has brought financing concerns/challenges back to the surface again.

U.S.With one of the largest oil reserves in the world, the Permian basin helped Texas emerge as the third-largest oil producing region in the world, only behind Russia and Saudi Arabia. With nearly 114,000 companies drilling in the region and many turning profitable even with crude prices as low as $50 a barrel, OPEC is feeling an oncoming threat to its oil dominance OPEC’s concern is likely to increase in the next year, when bottlenecks related to pipelines eases  with the addition of three new pipelines, thus enabling combined production of nearly 2 million barrels of oil a day.  

Global oil supply will outpace demand throughout 2019, as a relentless rise in output swamps growth in consumption that is at risk from a slowing economy, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday. READ MORE...