Chevron will be world’s third largest oil producer; Murkowski, Manchin & Carbon Capture

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Chevron Leaps to `Ultramajor’ Oil Status With Anadarko Deal
Simon Casey, Javier Blas, and Kelly Gilblom, Bloomberg, April 12, 2019

Chevron Corp. agreed to buy Anadarko Petroleum Corp. in a $33 billion deal that adds U.S. shale oil and African liquefied natural gas and puts it in the top ranks of the world’s largest energy companies. The takeover puts Chevron neck-and-neck with the oil and gas production of Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, both of which have dominated Big Oil over the past decade. The combined company’s cash flow last year, $36.5 billion, would have exceeded Exxon’s. “Chevron now joins the ranks of the ultra-majors,” Roy Martin, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie Ltd., said in a note.

From the Washington Examiner Daily on Energy:

MURKOWSKI, MANCHIN INTRODUCE BILL TO CREATE NEW DOE CARBON CAPTURE PROGRAMS: Murkowski and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., introduced a bill Thursday authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars to create four new Energy Department carbon capture research and development programs.

One program would focus on improving lower costs and improving efficiency and effectiveness of carbon capture and storage on coal and natural gas plants. Another would boost efforts to commercialize the captured carbon for other uses. A third program would center on improving carbon capture for alternative uses, such as for industrial plants.

And the bill also creates a carbon removal program, to aide “direct air capture” technologies being developed to remove carbon directly from the atmosphere.

“Carbon capture offers great potential to reduce emissions and will complement other clean technologies like advanced nuclear and renewable energy,” Murkowski said.

BP Pulls Out Of China’s Shale Patch
Tsvetana Paraskova, OilPrice.com, April 12, 2019

BP is set to become the latest international major to quit drilling for shale gas in China because of poor exploration drilling results so far, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing three sources with knowledge of the plans. Back in 2016, BP and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a production sharing contract (PSC) for shale gas exploration, development, and production in the Neijiang-Dazu block in the Sichuan Basin in southwestern China. Later in 2016, BP signed a second PSC deal with CNPC for shale gas exploration at Rong Chang Bei in the Sichuan Basin.   However, poor results from shale gas drilling are now making BP withdraw from the projects, according to Reuters sources. BP joins other international oil and gas majors such as Shell, Eni, Exxon, and ConocoPhillips that have stopped drilling for shale gas in China, leaving the country’s shale gas sector predominantly in the hands of the large Chinese state-held energy companies.

China, gas and Russia
Natural Gas News, April 12, 2019

Relations between Russia and China warm up as relations between either of them and the US cool down, making life difficult for long-term projects such as gas infrastructure.

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller has said that the 38bn m³/yr Power of Siberia, the Russian gas line destined to send gas to China, would be built ahead of time. This desire to speed up construction quite likely is due to two reasons:

  • China and the US could finally reach a deal which would send a considerable amount of American LNG to China, and this could lead to a decline in price.
  • China could be self-sufficient in the near future and need neither Russian nor US gas.