Alaska's source for oil and gas news
Alaska's source for oil and gas news
Sorted by date Results 1 - 18 of 18
In ConocoPhillips’ second round of spending cuts announced April 16, Alaska once again lucked out with only $200 million of the company-wide $1.6 billion capex reduction coming from the state. Alaska spending for 2020 spending was reduced March 18 from approximately $3.4 billion to $3.2 billion; the most recent announcement brings it down to about $3 billion. Some of the reductions will come from drilling - cutting short the exploration season, such as drilling only one well at Harpoon (Harpoon 2) instead of three this winter and not starting u...
Anchorage-based HEX LLC said it has entered into a binding term sheet with the debtors and key creditors in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Furie Operating Alaska LLC, moving closer to its goal to acquire Furie’s Cook Inlet assets. HEX President and CEO John Hendrix confirmed the deal in an appearance at an April 15 board meeting of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority in Anchorage. At the meeting, the AIDEA board unanimously approved a resolution allowing modifications to a previously approved AIDEA development-project f...
Following a few weeks of worldwide turmoil in response to the potential collapse of the global oil market because of grossly excessive oil supplies, on April 12 the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia finally signed an agreement to cut about 9.7 million barrels per day of production in May and June. The production cuts come in response to a collapse in oil demand as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. An oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia had greatly exacerbated the problem. President Donald Trump was...
During the first quarter of 2020, XCD Energy Ltd has taken steps to prepare the company to weather the low price environment and uncertainties thrust upon oil and gas markets by falling demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with breakdowns of supply restraints by OPEC and related parties. XCD - which is publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange, ASX - is the owner of Project Peregrine, a Nanushuk play within an area of 195,373 acres made up of 17 leases within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. XCD “immediately reacted t...
A three and a half hour executive session at the April 15 board meeting of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority that included the Mustang development loan did not produce a resolution the board could vote on in the public session that followed. “We’re not taking action on the matters discussed in the executive session,” AIDEA Board Chairman Dana Pruhs said after the confidential conference. Mustang, the first oil field on Alaska’s North Slope to have been developed and brought online by a small independent oil company...
Jason Kenney is having to rearrange his world - like everyone else - only a year after a landslide victory propelled him into the Alberta premier’s office and only weeks after boldly forecasting that his oil-dependent province might be close to turning the corner. The only problem was his inability to foresee that the turn was into a dead-end street. Now his greatest challenge is to contain COVID-19 which Alberta’s latest modeling has estimated could see up to 800,000 of 4.4 million Albertans infected with the virus and between 400 and 3,1...
As of April 14, two of the open state seismic permits in Alaska were issued to SAExploration and two were issued to Oil Search, per Division of Oil and Gas records. SAE’s permits were for the Narwhal 3D and the Kuukpik 3D surveys. Oil Search was issued permits for vertical seismic profiles, or VSPs, for the Stirrup 1 and the Mitquq 1 exploration wells, There was a public notice for SAE’s proposed Staines 3D survey posted by the division Dec. 3, saying the agency intended to approve the geophysical exploration permit and initiating a 30 day pub...
The Alaska Division of Oil and Gas has approved Cook Inlet Energy’s plan of development for Redoubt Shoal but warned in approving the West McArthur River plan that it wants to see the company move ahead with projects that have been in the planning stage, including the Sabre project. Cook Inlet Energy is a Glacier Oil and Gas company. The plans for both units cover May 2020 through April 2021. Redoubt In calendar year 2019 Redoubt produced 435,350 barrels of oil and 92.218 million cubic feet of natural gas, the division said. The field is p...
Last year the Alaska Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Oil and Gas updated its regulations, and among the updates it added a provision to allow online bidding for oil and gas lease sales. Previously, “sealed bid or at public outcry auction” were the only methods allowed. The regulation updates added “including online bidding” to acceptable methods. The regulation changes went into effect after last year’s Beaufort Sea, North Slope and North Slope Foothills sales, which were held in the traditional method - bids were submitted o...
Baker Hughes reports the number of rigs drilling for oil and natural gas in the U.S. April 9 was 602, down by 62 rigs from the previous week, and down by 420 rigs from 1,022 a year ago. The count has declined steeply in recent weeks, dropping by 64, 44 and 20 in each of the previous three weeks. In its weekly rig count the Houston oilfield services company said 504 rigs targeted oil, down 58 from the previous week and down by 329 from a year ago, while 96 targeted natural gas, down four from the previous week and down 93 from a year ago. There...
ConocoPhillips Alaska has applied to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for a small expansion to the area covered by the commission’s rules for the Kuparuk River oil pool. The expansion request is for section 22 in township 13 north, range 3 east, Umiat Meridian, an area which is within the Kuparuk River unit and is already covered by the commission’s area injection order for Kuparuk. ConocoPhillips is the Kuparuk operator. A section is an area of one square mile area containing 640 acres; Division of Oil and Gas records indicate th...
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s Division of Spill Prevention and Response said April 13 that Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. had reported an oily water spill at the Valdez Marine Terminal. Alyeska personnel discovered the spill - they observed sheen near the VMT small boat harbor - and reported it to ADEC April 12. Responders were on the scene within an hour of the sheen being reported at about 8 p.m. April 12, Alyeska said in an April 14 release, with response activities including deployment of sorbents sweeps, sausage b...
The Alaska Gasline Development Corp., the state entity which is the project sponsor for the Alaska LNG Project, got the final environmental impact statement for the project in March, and is scheduled to receive final approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in June. AGDC’s goal now is to move the project to a private sponsor. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy made clear after the final EIS was issued March 6 that the state did not intend to continue as project sponsor. “The final EIS is a milestone in the Alaska LNG permitting process - a...
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a notice April 8 suspending the environmental review schedule for Trans-Foreland Pipeline Co.’s application for the Kenai LNG Cool Down Project in Nikiski. FERC said a revised schedule, issued Dec. 12, identified an April 24 environmental assessment issuance date, based on Trans-Foreland providing complete and timely responses to data requests. FERC’s original schedule called for release of an EA for the project Dec. 13, with the 90-day federal authorization decision deadline March 12. FERC said t...
The Alaska Division of Oil and Gas March lease report had activity on only five leases, all surrendered by Hilcorp Alaska on March 2. All five are on the southern portion of the Kenai Peninsula in Southcentral Alaska; none are adjacent to existing production. The most southerly, ADL 392254, is southeast of the North Fork field, on the southern border of the Cook Inlet lease sale area. A block of three surrendered leases, ADL 392244, 392246 and 392247, are east of the Deep Creek field, with one abutting the eastern border of the Cook Inlet sale...
Forget the distractions of coping with a pandemic, four First Nations in British Columbia have demonstrated they are not ready to give up their legal fight against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, TMX. They have each filed applications with the Supreme Court of Canada in a bid to overturn a Feb. 4 Federal Court of Appeal verdict that found the Canadian government cabinet’s approval of the work to increase capacity to 890,000 barrels per day of oil sands bitumen from the current 300,000 bpd. Two of the leaders said they are challenging the...
One feature of the recent turmoil in the global oil market is the disconnection of the price of North Slope crude oil from the benchmark Brent Crude price. The North Slope oil price has dropped below the Brent price to track more closely to the West Texas Intermediate benchmark — for years Alaska North Slope oil has tracked close to the Brent index. And this price adjustment matters for the economics of the North Slope oil industry and Alaska state revenues, since WTI typically tracks at a lower price than Brent. According to the Alaska Departm...
The April 19 issue of Petroleum News includes coverage of ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil. Furie, HEX, XCD Energy, Oil Search, Cook Inlet Energy, Glacier Oil and Gas and Hilcorp, all active in Alaska’s oil and gas industry. ConocoPhillips ConocoPhillips’ second round of global spending cuts brought its Alaska budget down from $3.2 billion to about $3 billion; a much smaller hit than elsewhere. Another story, “Conoco applies for expansion at Kuparuk”, deals with the area covered by the Kuparuk oil pool. HEX LLC, Furie Also featured: The Alaska...
