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LUKOIL CONTINUES FACILITY CONSTRUCTION FOR THE SECOND STAGE OF FILANOVSKY FIELD DEVELOPMENT IN THE CASPIAN SEA




LUKOIL commenced transportation of jackets for the offshore ice-resistant stationary platform #2 from the port of Astrakhan to the Filanovsky field in the Caspian Sea. The platform is intended for drilling and operation of wells within the second stage of field development.

Jackets for the platform were fabricated at the Galaktika shipyard in Astrakhan. Every jacket is sized 28.3х23.7х19 meters and weights over 2,500 tons. The topside of the platform is currently being fabricated in the Astrakhan region.

Topside of accommodation platform for the second stage is currently being built at shipyards in Astrakhan. Jackets for this platform were transported and installed in the Caspian Sea in early July.
　

Background information:
The Filanovsky field is the largest discovery in Russia in the past 25 years. It is located in the northern part of the Caspian Sea, 220 km away from Astrakhan. Water depth in the field area ranges from 7 to 11 meters. Production volume at the plateau will be 6 million tons per annum. Production launch is scheduled for September 2016.


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Not content with spoiling the land surface, oil companies are fucking up the earth below, leading to more frequent and more severe earthquakes.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/earthquake-shakes-swath-of-midwest-from-missouri-to-oklahoma-1472906357

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake rattled Oklahoma on Saturday, damaging buildings and tying for the strongest temblor ever recorded in the state, which has experienced a rash of earthquake activity in the past decade that U.S. seismologists have tied to the underground disposal of wastewater from oil and gas drilling.

The quake was the largest one in the continental U.S. this year, according to Lucy Jones, a quake expert and seismologist formerly with the U.S. Geological Survey. Only Alaska has had a larger quake this year, she said in a flurry of Twitter responses she typically unleashes after a significant quake.

Scientists have linked the increase in the rate of quakes in the region of Saturday’s temblor to the rise of the oil and gas industry, especially the injection of wastewater into the ground.
Click to expand...
 




http://binaryapi.ap.org/8209de0ce45e42a0a26a24fa8ed6956b/460x.jpg


GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) —...The U.S. Geological Survey had long estimated that offshore Guyana was rich in gas and oil. Now U.S.-based ExxonMobil has announced a "world-class oil discovery" off Guyana after drilling a well that struck oil-bearing sandstone with an estimated 800 million to 1.4 billion oil equivalent barrels.

Exxon and partner Hess Corp. haven't yet announced development or investment plans...


http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3627...dreams-wealth-fears-problems-guyana-finds-oil


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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-in-gazprom-even-after-80-percent-share-crash



Putin Keeps Faith in Gazprom Even After 80% Share Crash

by Elena Mazneva & Ilya Arkhipov
September 5, 2016

Putin: We Have no Plans to Sell Gazprom Yet

- Russian president says Gazprom is “clearly undervalued”
- Gazprom remains sure of its markets even as output falls

(Bloomberg) Perhaps no organization outlines the strengths and weaknesses of Vladimir Putin’s Russia better than Gazprom PJSC, the giant energy exporter that emerged from the Soviet Union’s gas ministry.

The company employs over 400,000, holds the world’s biggest gas reserves and generated more than a $1 trillion in revenue in the past decade. Yet, over the same period its stock-market value crashed more than 80 percent in dollar terms as the state-run company was wrong-footed by the rise of shale gas in the U.S., economic stagnation in its largest European customers and the crash in oil prices.

In an interview, Putin said he was unconcerned by the company’s share price and argued for the durability of Gazprom as a state-run enterprise and its central role in Russian life.

“Gazprom is clearly undervalued -- this is an absolutely obvious fact,” he said in Vladivostok last week. “We have no plans to sell it yet, and this is because of the peculiarities of the Russian economy, the social sphere and the Russian energy industry.”

Putin is also loyal to Gazprom’s leadership. Chief Executive Officer Alexey Miller, an associate of the president from his time in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office, has been in the post for more than 15 years and was recently appointed for another five-year term.

In 2008, Miller said Gazprom could become the world’s first trillion-dollar company. Since then, its market capitalization has fallen from more than $300 billion to less than $50 billion. Once Russia’s most valuable company by market capitalization, it was surpassed this year, first by the nation’s biggest crude producer Rosneft PJSC and later by the largest bank, Sberbank PJSC.

Asked to compare Miller to a general who’d lost 80 percent of his army, Putin said the comparison didn’t stand up.

“Listen, that’s a different story,” he said. “If we were talking about a general, then the general in this case would have lost nothing, he’s sent it into reserves, which can be called back at any moment and put to use.”

Sixteen years after Putin first assumed the presidency, Gazprom stands as an example of his conservative approach to economic reform even as Russia remains mired in the longest recession in two decades.

Gazprom maintains its monopoly on pipeline exports of gas despite the lobbying of rivals including state-run Rosneft, headed by Putin’s long-time ally Igor Sechin, and Novatek OJSC, co-owned by another associate, Gennady Timchenko.

****​

In last week’s interview, Putin expressed optimism about Gazprom’s future. Sales are increasing to European customers as the region’s domestic production declines, the company’s building its first pipeline to China, and the outlook for global gas demand is strong, he said.

“Despite the development of alternative energy, when you still look at the economic element and environmental standard demand, then there is no other source of primary energy in the world other than natural gas,” he said. “There is a country that is, obviously, the world leader in gas reserves. That’s our country, the Russian Federation.”

Gazprom has increased its European exports by 10 percent to a record high this year as gas prices drop -- its export prices are mostly linked to oil with a time lag of as much as nine months. The company’s market share in the region reached a peak of 31 percent last year and it’s still growing, Miller said on Friday in Vladivostok.

Yet, Gazprom’s overall gas sales are falling. It’s been squeezed in Russia by domestic rivals whose lack of export rights make them dependent on the market at home. The Ukrainian market, once one of its largest, is almost lost amid political conflict and long-time pricing disputes.

Even in Europe, Gazprom may face challenging times in next two years as competition between suppliers intensifies on increased shipments of liquefied natural gas from the U.S. and elsewhere, according to the International Energy Agency.

“There are lots of factors affecting the markets, but as to fundamental factors Gazprom finds itself very confident,” Miller said in an interview in Vladivostok on Friday. The company is sure of its position both in Europe and Asia, aiming to keep its dividends at least at the previous year’s levels, he said...

...Gazprom is diligently carrying out the duties the state has assigned it: supplying households and power plants across the country, especially in the freezing winter months, Putin said.

The government is aware of the gas giant’s problems, Putin said. “I know that Gazprom’s management is taking the necessary steps to resolve these issues and that it fights for its interests on world markets. Whether it does that well or poorly? That’s another question.”

On the question of what the market thinks, Putin doesn’t care: “We know what Gazprom is, what it’s worth and what it will be worth.”


more...

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How An Engineer's Desperate Experiment Created Fracking**

** Not exactly accurate (but it's NPR, what did you expect?) as the technic known as "fraccing" has been around for fifty years.



The fracking boom in America kicked off almost by accident. An engineer worried about losing his job kept experimenting until he hit on a technique that changed the world.



ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Last week, NPR's Planet Money team got into the oil business. They bought and sold a hundred barrels of crude oil, following it from a field in Kansas to someone's gas tank. The oil business has changed a lot in the last decade, mostly because of fracking or hydraulic fracturing. Planet Money's Stacey Vanek Smith tracked down the man who invented fracking as we know it today.

STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Back in 1995, Nick Steinsberger was 31. He was working for an oil company called Mitchell Energy. And he had just gotten a promotion. He was put in charge of an area called the Barnett Shale. It was in central Texas. And the company had a bunch of natural gas wells there. A couple of months in, management called him in for a meeting.

NICK STEINSBERGER: The Barnett was failing. It was not an economic venture. And we probably were not going to be doing it much longer.

SMITH: So a couple of months after you got promoted here, they were like, we think we're probably going to shut this down.

STEINSBERGER: Yeah.

SMITH: Nick was desperate. He and his wife had a new baby. And Nick was worried if he lost this job, he would not be able to find another one.

STEINSBERGER: You know, over the next days, you know, at night - and, you know, thinking, well, what can I do? Well, you can become more efficient and cost-saving.

SMITH: Little trims here and there.

STEINSBERGER: Yeah. That's right.

SMITH: It cost almost a million dollars to drill a well in the Barnett Shale. You had to drill down a couple of miles to this incredibly dense rock. And then you had to blast it apart with this white gel and then collect the natural gas.

And Nick thought he knew just where to trim in this process, the gel. It was made up of all of these chemicals. And nearly half the cost of drilling a well came from this gel.

So just like a bar might water down the cocktails to save a little money, Nick started watering down the gel - little more water, little less chemical mix.

STEINSBERGER: So I was - keep on reducing those amount of gel - amount of chemicals we were pumping - just making small tweaks every week or two.

SMITH: To Nick's surprise, the watered-down gels produced just as much natural gas as the regular gel wells. So Nick kept adding more water and more water. And then Nick had this radical idea. Cut out the gel entirely and just pump water into the rock plus a little bleach to kill the bacteria and a little soap to help the water flow down the pipes.

Now, this was risky. The shale had a lot of clay in it. And everyone thought if you pumped too much water down there, the clay would swell up, and no gas would come out. But if it worked, the Barnett Shale would be profitable. And Nick's job would be saved. So he convinced Mitchell Energy to let him try.

So about 20 years ago today, you were driving up, as we are right now, to this well to see if your idea had worked.

STEINSBERGER: That's right.

SMITH: The well is near Justin, Texas. It is still running. And Nick remembers the chilly morning in June when he showed up here to try out his idea. Equipment and giant rigs were everywhere.

But his eyes were glued to one thing, a pressure gauge. It would tell him how much natural gas was coming into the pipe - how productive the well would be. Nick pumped 800,000 gallons of water down the well and waited.

And what did you see?

STEINSBERGER: We saw the pressure was going up and up and up and up. And we were excited.

SMITH: So the pressure valve was like the modern version of a gusher.

STEINSBERGER: I guess so, yeah. (Laughter) Yeah.

SMITH: The well fracked with water was almost twice as productive as the gel-fracked well - twice as productive and half as expensive. The technique was tried on oil wells. And the same thing happened. Hydraulic fracking was born. Twenty years later, the U.S. is the biggest oil and natural gas producer on the planet.

GARY SERNOVITZ: It made us a player in the global oil market again, which we weren't for a hundred years.

SMITH: Gary Sernovitz is the author of "The Green And The Black." He says this moment at this well in central Texas had an impact that was almost unimaginable.

SERNOVITZ: 2004 to 2014 - about 400,000 jobs are added. There's a couple trillion dollars of additional wealth of these reserves. That foreign policy - when you think about Iran and Russia and Saudi Arabia. And you think about all these kind of big decisions in the Middle East. These are all now being done without the United States fearing, being dependent on oil and gas imports.

SMITH: Of course, there is another side to fracking. There have been huge problems with some of the drill sites, contaminated water and earthquakes. Also fracking increased the supply of oil and pushed down the price, which means we're less likely to explore alternatives. Nick Steinsberger says he has heard all of this.

STEINSBERGER: You know, fracking is misunderstood. This country is so much better off with the shale boom - the amount of jobs, the amount of economic revenue, the security for our own country.

SMITH: Shortly after Nick's fracking innovation, Mitchell Energy was acquired by a larger company. Nick's boss became a billionaire. Nick didn't even get a bonus. But he's done very well. He is still in the oil business. And he works as a consultant. Stacey Vanek Smith, NPR News.​


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thør said:
Caelus
Click to expand...

Interesting. Thanks.

I don't believe a word out of these guy's mouths. If the geology (and the loud claims) are "real" Smith Bay will get done.

If the geology (and the loud claims) are "real" these guys are already rich— and the only thing that would stop further development is their greed. If Smith Bay (and the loud claims) is "real," financing won't be a problem. There are a lot of ways to skin that cat.



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What I believe is that these guys want to make as much money as they can. Smith Bay is a long way from TAPS and it's gonna be expensive. And, If they can get the state to take less money, they will.

trysail said:

Interesting. Thanks.

I don't believe a word out of these guy's mouths. If the geology (and the loud claims) are "real" Smith Bay will get done.

If the geology (and the loud claims) are "real" these guys are already rich— and the only thing that would stop further development is their greed. If Smith Bay (and the loud claims) is "real," financing won't be a problem. There are a lot of ways to skin that cat.



​
Click to expand...
 

Petrobras Says Deep-Water Opening Luring Big Oil to Brazil
by Sabrina Valle
Peter Millard

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-deep-water-opening-luring-big-oil-to-brazil

October 10, 2016

* State producer seeking partners in asset sale drive, CEO says
* Has group of 30 projects worth $40 billion looking to sell


(Bloomberg) International oil companies are reaching out to Brazil after it opened its most promising offshore region to increased competition, a move welcomed by Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Pedro Parente as he seeks partners to spread investment costs.

Producers rushed to contact Houston-based Brazilian officials last week after Congress removed a requirement that Petrobras control operations at all new projects in an area known as the pre-salt, Parente said. It’s the most investor-friendly change in regulation since the 1997 oil law that ended the company’s monopoly in Brazil.

“Our foreign ministry representation unit in Houston, in the very following day, received seven manifestations of interest of big companies," Parente said at Bloomberg’s offices in New York City.

The policy shift comes as the state-controlled producer is selling assets to slash debt, which stood at $125 billion in the second quarter. The Rio de Janeiro-based producer has a group of more than 30 projects worth about $40 billion that it is marketing to potential buyers, Parente said.

Allowing others to control drilling and production in the potentially oil-rich pre-salt will provide a larger group of offshore operators for Petrobras to team up with at upcoming licensing rounds. Foreign oil companies haven’t had a chance to bid for licenses to operate in the pre-salt since before anyone knew how vast the reserves were.

The nationalistic oil policies were put in place in 2010 when the government moved to put Petrobras in control of the biggest group of offshore discoveries this century. This limited access to bidding with Petrobras as a minority partner, or trying to buy into an existing license awarded under previous rules.

Pre-salt oil was formed when the South American and African continents began separating more the 100 million years ago. The repeated flooding and evaporation of salt water in what is now the South Atlantic created a layer of the mineral as thick as 2,000 meters that blankets the deposits. The biggest discovery in the area, Libra, holds an estimated 8 to 12 billion barrels of recoverable reserves.

Interest in the region is strong. Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as it is formally known, recently sold its stake in a pre-salt concession to Statoil ASA for $2.5 billion. The government is planning to offer new pre-salt exploration acreage in 2017, and the new rules let Petrobras bid more selectively as it looks to contain capital expenditures. The company is likely to continue shedding staff in the next two years, said Parente.

Higher-than-expected output at the pre-salt has cut Petrobras’s break-even cost to $40 a barrel, and the company can lower it further, said Parente. The company will continue efforts to reduce spending even if oil prices rebound, he said, adding that he sees oil at $50 to $55 a barrel next year.

“Productivity of the pre-salt fields in Brazil is amazing,” said Parente. “Some wells produce 40,000, 50,000 barrels a day per well. So I think this is what is in the mind of these companies.”

Petrobras is also looking to bring in partners for its refineries, which posted losses in four out of the past five years. The "ideal" partner would supply knowledge, not just money, according to Parente.

The influx of partners, asset sales and increased competition in offshore fields from foreign producers will force Petrobras to become more efficient, the company’s top managers said.

“Five to ten years from now the market landscape will be completely different,” said Nelson Silva, Petrobras’ head of strategy who was at the interview. “It will put pressure in us to improve.”
​



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trysail said:

Interesting. Thanks.

I don't believe a word out of these guy's mouths. If the geology (and the loud claims) are "real" Smith Bay will get done.

If the geology (and the loud claims) are "real" these guys are already rich— and the only thing that would stop further development is their greed. If Smith Bay (and the loud claims) is "real," financing won't be a problem. There are a lot of ways to skin that cat.



​
Click to expand...
Latest from a source in the prelim engineering world is that the find is too big for Caelus to handle.
 
thør said:
Latest from a source in the prelim engineering world is that the find is too big for Caelus to handle.
Click to expand...

I knew that right from the git-go (assuming the geology measures up to the hype).

If Caelus really wants to get this done, they're going to need outside financing (and that, of course, will require verification/due diligence/investigation by outsiders).


Farm out? ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP will be on this like "white on rice" if the resource is real.



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Last edited:
trysail said:

I knew that right from the git-go (assuming the geology measures up to the hype).

If Caelus really wants to get this done, they're going to need outside financing (and that, of course, will require verification/due diligence/investigation by outsiders).


Farm out? ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP will be on this like "white on rice" if the resource is real.



​
Click to expand...

Conoco's current policy is to not touch anything in the water (no matter how shallow it is) off the North Slope. BP has just turned over operation of all their off shore stuff to Hilcorp. Exxon?.....I suppose they're a maybe.

Caelus is typically a flipper. They find, prove out the property and then sell it.
 
thør said:
Conoco's current policy is to not touch anything in the water (no matter how shallow it is) off the North Slope. BP has just turned over operation of all their off shore stuff to Hilcorp. Exxon?.....I suppose they're a maybe.

Caelus is typically a flipper. They find, prove out the property and then sell it.
Click to expand...


If real (and "I'm from Missouri" on that score), I believe that 200,000 BOPD would have a truly surprising ability to change minds.

The "flipper" characterization speaks volumes. Is Caelus operating on a "greater fool" model ?

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