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06 February 2015

Fill ‘er up

As storage levels at the US pricing and delivery hub of Cushing, Oklahoma continue to swell, the immortal words of Yogi Berra come to mind.

04 February 2015

Union cause, union effect

The first nationwide strike of US refinery workers since 1980 is in its early days since beginning in the wee hours of 1 February. That’s when negotiators with the United Steelworkers (USW) union gave the word that they had been unable to reach an agreement with lead re

04 February 2015

Collateral damage

Lower oil prices are deemed to be good for the wider global economy, even if economists argue about how many $/bl less on fuel costs equates to one percentage point of GDP growth. Yet the casualty list of those wounded by tumbling values is populated not just by oil com

04 February 2015

Morale and debt

When Helge Lund stepped down as the chief executive of Norway’s state-controlled oil company Statoil last October to assume the same role at UK energy firm BG Group from March this year, Brent crude traded at about $85/bl.

02 February 2015

On the same page

Tumbling oil prices lead inexorably to companies cutting not just capex but also operating costs. And cutting operating costs inevitably involves casting a slide rule over staff numbers.

30 January 2015

Echoes of the boom

The crude price crash has producers scrambling and lawmakers planning, but from Cushing to the Atlantic coast the US oil production boom still echoes loud and clear.

30 January 2015

Salman bids for favour

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdel-Aziz is coming into his own, one week after becoming monarch. His generous hand-outs to large numbers of citizens — two months’ extra pay to all government employees and pensioners, and other recipients of government benefits, variou

29 January 2015

Political fracturing

Hydraulic fracturing — the process of drilling water, sand and chemicals into a hole in the ground to create cracks through which gas and/or oil will flow — is not new. But the debate on how it affects the landscape above and below ground level is hotting up in the UK a

29 January 2015

A dispatch from Cowboyistan

The theoretical land of Cowboyistan, which comprises the crude production of three major US shale fields, could drive about 70pc of US crude output growth in 2015, according to Continental Resources chief executive Harold Hamm. So decisions that US producers in those fi

28 January 2015

Tip of the iceberg

BP employees across the world found out this week that their pay is being frozen this year. Add to that voluntary redundancies being offered to BP staff in Trinidad and Tobago and hundreds of job losses in the UK North Sea and Azerbaijan, and you have a company taking s

27 January 2015

Calling a bottom, calling a top

In the new lower-price oil environment, one industry is booming — the business of calling a bottom, or the lowest point that will be reached by crude in this cycle.

26 January 2015

Polarised UK faces fracking D-Day

When politicians quote the former executive director of Friends of the Earth in a report on energy extraction, then the chances are that the energy industry is not going to like what follows. And when said former director has been an influential voice in London’s corrid

23 January 2015

A well-managed death

The death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz was a well-managed affair. His admission to hospital for “tests”, followed days later by the diagnosis of pneumonia, then a period of dignified silence, and finally the inevitable announcement of his demise.

21 January 2015

Sisyphus in Kurdistan

In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to eternally push a boulder up a mountain only for it to roll to the bottom.

20 January 2015

Zombie economics

Cheaper oil is a shot in the arm for the global economy, the IMF says in today’s updated World Economic Outlook (WEO). But as in zombie movies, “a shot in the arm is not always enough,” IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard notes.

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