5月26日油气行业十大新闻

Oil Prices Near $50/bbl. Oil prices edged closer to the $50 mark on Wednesday as thecommodity’s gains continued amid signs of declining U.S. inventories. [USA Today]

Athabasca Oil Resumes Operations at Hangingstone. Athabasca Oil Corp. has resumed operations at its Hangingstone oil sands steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) project, located about 20 km southwest of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada. [Oilpro]

Venezuela’s Descent To The Bottom Of The Barrel. PDVSA’s output is being degraded by Venezuela’s deepening economic crisis. China is refusing to offer Venezuela fresh loans. Beijing has concerns about the longevity of the Maduro government. The government will continue to milk PDVSA for cash, which means fewer dollars will go into E&P. [Oilpro]

BP Inks New Deal With Socar. BP’s regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey Gordon Birrell and president of State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) Rovnag Abdullayev have signed an agreement to explore Block D230 in the Absheron basin in the Azeri waters of the Caspian Sea. [Oilpro]

First Schlumberger bought Cameron, and now FMC and Technip decide to merge. Neil Mackintosh writes that, while these events may seem more defensive in nature, they are really the culmination of relationships established by the OneSubsea and Forsys joint ventures, with the new conglomerations trying to capture increased market share. [Oilpro]

Saudi Arabia’s New Oil Plan Shows It’s Just Not That Into OPEC. Saudi Arabia, one of the founders of OPEC, is sounding the group’s death knell. The world’s biggest crude exporter has already undermined OPEC’s traditional role of managing supply, instead choosing to boost output to snatch market share from higher-cost producers, particularly U.S. shale drillers, and crashing prices in the process. [Bloomberg, Oilpro]

A Return To $100 Oil? Norway Is Neither Hoping Nor Planning For It. Norway’s Petroleum and Energy Minister Tord Lien all but said $100 oil is no more, even though the market is in the process of rebalancing. In fact, Norway is neither hoping nor planning for prices to return to pre-mid 2014 levels. [Oilpro]

Transocean Arctic Drilling In The Norwegian North Sea. The semisubmersibleTransocean Arctic drilling rig has started drilling for Faroe Petroleum, an independent explorer, at the Brasse exploration well 31/7-1 in the Norwegian North Sea. [Oilpro]

Sembcorp Marine Will Defend Itself ‘Rigorously’ In Sete Brasil Fraud Case. Singapore-based ship and rig builder Sembcorp Marine on Tuesday issued a media statement in which it acknowledged news reports last week that identified it as a co-defendant in a Petrobras-related lawsuit being brought in Washington DC. [Splash 247, Oilpro]

Meet Molly Agrimson Of Tulsa, Oklahoma, #HUMANSofOG. She writes, “The biggest change I see coming from the downturn is the loss in technical expertise and subsequent costly learning curve resulting from it. There is a great amount of knowledge and talent that has either been forced to retire or break into another industry to survive the downturn.” [Oilpro]