America's LargestPosts Tagged Oil Corporations
Exxon Could Pay $1 Billion for Sabotage of Texas Oil Wells
by Josh Garrett, editor of The HEAT Zone
It’s easy to make villains of Big Oil. They take home record profits while we struggle to pay for that extra gallon of gas or heating oil. But realistically, oil companies are just doing what all companies do—chasing profits. So it’s not really fair to single out oil [...]
Oil Market Advantage Shifts from Speculators to Physical Traders
To grossly over simplify things, there are two ways to trade oil. You can actually move oil, or you can move pieces of paper—contracts—for oil without ever taking delivery of crude. Oil companies and oil trading companies, such as BP, Vital, Trafigura, or Hess, move oil. Banks and hedge funds mostly move contracts, speculating (or [...]
Read More »As US Troops Leave Iraqi Cities, International Oil Cos. Poised to Enter
International oil companies are preparing to move into Iraq, bidding for contracts to run oilfields such as Al-Sheiba (above) near Basra on the Gulf coast. (AFP photo via independent.co.uk)
The U.K.-based Independent reported on Sunday that Iraq will begin awarding lucrative contracts to international oil companies on June 29th. The next day is the deadline for [...]
Read More »Drilling Debate Heats Up in Congress as New Rules are Considered
Republicans in Congress have tended to support the expansion of offshore drilling in American waters, while Democrats have traditionally opposed it. As reported recently on The Heat Zone, Congress allowed an 18-year old general moratorium on offshore drilling to expire last year, and coastal reserves in the Gulf of Mexico were re-opened as well.
There are [...]
Native Peruvians Clash WIth Government Over Oil Wealth
Peruvian Indians have been blocking transportation routes in the Amazon jungle and occupying oil facilities for two months to protest the government’s opening of Amazon land to oil and other resource development. Lately, the protests have turned violent: according to the Washington Times, a clash Friday between police and protestors left at least 30 dead, [...]
Read More »Big Oil Gets into the Biofuel Business
A recent article in the New York Times described how oil giant BP has taken a sudden and unexpected interest in ethanol, one of the so-called “biofuels,” a development that it and other major oil companies have long resisted.
Biofuel, which represents about 9% of the nation’s market for liquid fuels, has typically been made from [...]
Chávez Nationalizes Oil Service Companies in Venezuela
Over the weekend Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez made good on his promise to further nationalize the oil industry in the country. Taking advantage of a law passed in the National Assembly just hours before, President Chaves ordered the military to seize the assets of sixty oil field service companies, several of which are foreign. This [...]
Read More »Iraqi Goverment OKs Kurdish Oil Exports
A new major oil producer may soon take the stage.
In June, crude oil will begin flowing from Kurdistan, the semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, to Ceyhan, a major oil port on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. It’s expected that 60,000 barrels per day worth of crude oil will be pumped from Kurdish oil sites. And, if all [...]
Should Big Oil Return to Venezuela?
An article in the Houston Chronicle this week reports that Venezuela has recently “put out feelers for the majors to consider new projects in the country’s oil-rich Orinoco Belt.” The question the article raises is this: Should Big Oil accept the invitation?
When crude was selling for $120 a barrel, Venezuela’s socialist president Hugo Chávez made [...]
Iraq Sweetens Deal for Foreign Oil Cos.; China, Shell Make Joint Bids
After six years of conflict and infrastructure devastation, Iraq is seeking investors to pump cash into their weak economy.
Luckily for Iraq, the world’s third largest oil reserves exist within its borders. Because new sources of crude are perpetually in demand, the Iraqi government has attracted dozens of investors to two bidding rounds, the first of [...]
Salazar Begins Tour of Public Meetings on Offshore Drilling in New Jersey
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was in Atlantic City, NJ yesterday to kick off a series of public meetings on the subject of drilling for oil off of the US coast. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, citizens who oppose new drilling projects off the coast of New Jersey made up [...]
Read More »French Oil Company Total Maintains Investments, Predicts Rebound in Oil Prices
French Oil Giant Total will maintain its investment budget this year, predicting price rebounds as world oil production reaches capacity. Traditionally one of the more frugal estimators of the oil industry’s ability to meet up with demand, Total CEO Christophe de Margerie estimates peak world oil production to be 89 million barrels a day. He [...]
Read More »The Debate Over Domestic Oil
TOP: Oil shale extraction (image: sfgate.com), BOTTOM: Oil platforms off the coast of Southern California (image: patdollard.com)
With a new president in office formulating a new energy policy that promises to be a major departure from that of his predecessor, the debate over domestic sources of crude is heating up once again. All [...]
Read More »Oil Shale R&D Continues, Despite Resistance from Gov’t and Environmentalists
The debate over oil shale as a potential solution to America’s dependence on foreign oil continues in the wake of the Obama Administration’s revocation of exploratory leases to oil companies. Under Obama appointee Ken Salazar, the US Department of the Interior appears to favor classifying oil shale resources as an environmental dead-end due to the [...]
Read More »Carbon Emissions Regulations: To Tax or to Cap-and-Trade?
Energygem.com has been following the this week’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates CERAWeek conference in Houston–a meeting of representatives from the world’s biggest oil and energy companies–and linked to a Houston Chronicle article on future carbon emission regulations in the U.S.
The Obama Administration has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% by the year [...]
Oil Industry Faces Tough Road
Although they were hit hard by plunging oil prices at the end of 2008, most major oil corporations still came out of the year with hefty profits.
2009 could be a different story. The economic downturn has deflated demand for oil around the world, keeping the price of crude more than $100 below its peak of [...]
Oil Companies’ Profits Hurt by Recession
Plummeting oil prices didn’t put much of a damper on Exxon’s 2008 profits, but they did take a large bite out other oil companies’ earnings. An Associated Press article published yesterday reported on dwindling profits in 2008 posted by Shell, BP, and ConocoPhillips.
ConocoPhillips was hit hardest, losing $31.8 billion in the fourth quarter, due mostly [...]
