ConocoPhillips picks up another oil prospect west of Prudhoe Bay
Elizabeth Harball, KTOO, June 17, 2019
ConocoPhillips today announced it intends to buy 21,000 acres from Caelus Natural Resources, which includes the Nuna oil discovery. State documents show Nuna previously was estimated to contain between 75 million and 100 million barrels of oil. But ConocoPhillips said it will spend the next few years doing its own appraisal of the field before it decides to move forward with the project.
Our take: Cheers to Conoco Phillips! We look forward to the results of their appraisal and study of the newly acquired discovery.
Trump’s Tariffs Disrupt USMCA And The U.S. Oil & Gas Boom
Jude Clemente, Forbes, June 16, 2019
Bluntly put then, OPEC and Russia are benefitting from unrealistic Western environmental groups that seek to block our own domestic production and infrastructure build-out for oil and gas. They are doing the bidding of our adversaries. We simply cannot afford to listen to those who ignore the reality that oil, for instance, is the world’s most vital source of energy, has no large-scale substitute, and has ever-growing demand. In other words, any policy that blocks U.S. oil and gas production and exports is ultimately helping the other suppliers that know global demand faces a single direction: up.
If we don’t get our act together, we will dangerously be handing the market to OPEC and Russia.
Our take: We often hear the same song being sung in Alaska. Create robust regulations to keep our environment safe, but burdensome overregulation or pages of policy do little other than slow production and negatively impact our economy.
U.S. shale oil output to rise to record 8.52 million barrels per day in July: EIA
Devika Krishna Kumar, Scott DiSavino, Leslie Adler and Marguerita Choy, Reuters, June 17, 2019
U.S. oil output from seven major shale formations is expected to rise by about 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July to a record 8.52 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its monthly drilling productivity report on Monday. However, the EIA has revised lower its total U.S. crude oil production growth forecast. It said last week in a monthly report that output will rise 1.36 million bpd to 12.32 million bpd in 2019, 140,000 bpd less than previously forecast. That will top the current all-time high of 10.96 million bpd set in 2018.
From the Daily on Energy:
THE FUTURE OF THE PARIS CLIMATE DEAL ON THE TABLE AT BONN: Energy companies and researchers, as well as climate activists, are arguing over the direction of the Paris climate agreement on Tuesday as the United Nations meets in Bonn, Germany, to place the finishing touches on the climate deal’s “rulebook.”
A new report from renewable advocates, released Tuesday morning to coincide with the summit, concluded that the world isn’t doing enough to stop the use of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy.
REN21’s Renewables 2019 Global Status Report said the problem is that renewables aren’t penetrating the market fast enough outside of the electricity sector. Solar and wind have been slow to displace fossil fuels for heating, cooling and transportation, and in fact have seen significant drops in these areas.
The report blames the “lack of ambitious and sustained policies” for the lack of progress, calling for a global phaseout of all subsidies for fossil fuels.
The Paris agreement calls for countries to work to slow the Earth’s temperature from warming 2 degrees by the middle of the century. But more recently, U.N. climate scientists have called for more aggressive actions to stop the Earth from warming 1.5 degrees beginning in the next decade.
A place for fossil fuels: But others believe renewables are only part of the solution to hitting the U.N. targets. Energy officials gathering at a conference in Norway on Tuesday say meeting the goals of the deal will not come from completely curbing the use of fossil fuels, but rather from upping the world’s financial commitments to so-called carbon capture technologies.
These technologies are seen as the only way to keep burning coal and other fossil fuels in a carbon-constrained world. Climate advocates rebut the idea that carbon capture is a real solution.
“Europe needs to reach deep into their wallets to make the Paris Agreement work,” said Nils Røkke, chairman of the Board of the European Energy Research Alliance, who will be addressing the conference. He said that he believes research on carbon capture is “key to a low-carbon Europe.”
