Tag Archives: spill

Britain worried that BP oil spill may hit ties with US

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IANS     Monday 7th June, 2010     

The British government is concerned that criticism towards energy company BP for its failure to curb the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may hamper the country’s relationship with the US.

The scale and ferocity of the US attacks are said to have disturbed David Cameron, The Telegraph reported quoting government sources.

With American midterm elections only five months away, Whitehall officials are understood to be concerned that the issue is becoming a political football in the US.

Some American politicians have suggested that BP should be barred from future government contracts. The move would be likely to benefit US rivals such as ExxonMobil and Chevron.

The disaster has come up in discussions between William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and his US counterpart, Hillary Clinton, the daily said.

However, Downing Street has declined to comment on whether the issue has been raised between Cameron and US President Barack Obama.

Business Secretary Vince Cable warned that the crisis was having ‘major indirect effects’ on the British economy.

BP is the biggest supplier of oil and gas to the US military with contracts worth $2 billion (1.4 billion pounds) a year.

The company is loosing its support from other oil firms as the industry faces the prospect of a halt to the expansion of offshore drilling. Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, was called ‘the most hated and clueless man in America’ by the New York Daily News.

Referring to the attacks against him, Hayward said: ‘I think it is understandable when something of this scale occurs… that people are frustrated and emotional’.

The Knowland Group Releases Oil Spill Survey Findings Following Memorial Day

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p> Lewes, DE (PRWEB) June 7, 2010 — The Knowland Group, the world’s largest data firm in the global meetings and conventions industry, today released their third round of survey findings on the effects of the Gulf oil spill on the region’s hospitality industry. Knowland surveyed 50 hotels across the Gulf Coast that host meetings and events and found 60% of hotels experiencing group booking cancellations, up 18 percentage points from the survey conducted two weeks prior, and up 25 percentage points from the group’s initial survey.

Hotels are also seeing increased difficulty in booking future events, with 28 percent of those surveyed stating significant difficulty in booking future events; double the amount from the previous survey. Additionally, 28 percent of those surveyed described the effect of future bookings as moderate, a 20 percentage point increase.

Oil Industry Suggests Government Raise Safety Standards Due To Spill

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HOUSTON -(Dow Jones)- Chevron Corp. (CVX) Chief Executive John Watson saidWednesday the oil and gas industry has asked the U.S. government to raise thesafety standards for offshore drilling in order to avoid another “tragedy” likethe massive spill that is still threatening the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Speaking at the company’s shareholder meeting in Houston, Watson said thecompany leads one of the two industry task forces that last week gave U.S.Interior Secretary Ken Salazar a report with recommendations about theprocedures that should be implemented and improved to avoid another massiveaccident.

“The energy industry is learning a great deal,” Watson said. “If there issomething we need to adopt, we will adopt it.”

The head of Chevron, the second largest U.S. oil company by market value afterExxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), said the company reviewed its own safety standards andoperational procedures after the spill, which followed the explosion and sinkingin April of Transocean Ltd.’s (RIG) Deepwater Horizon rig. The blast aboard therig, leased by BP PLC (BP), killed 11 workers.

Chevron, which is one of the biggest oil and gas producers in the Gulf ofMexico, has a team of experts currently working with BP to try to stop thespill, Watson said. He added that more studies on the cause on the spill will becertainly done by the industry, which will raise offshore drilling standards andalso point to how to improve clean up operations.

BP said Wednesday it is still conducting tests to determine whether it canplug the oil spill using heavy drilling fluids, even as it continued toalleviate the leak by siphoning oil from a gushing deepwater well and ponderingother options.

Watson said production by the San Ramon, Calf.-based company will rise 1% to2% through the middle of the decade, and 4% through 2017. The figures areconsistent with the production guidance the oil giant gave in March at itsanalyst meeting.

Watson confirmed that three major projects of more than $1 billion will startproducing this year: the Perdido Regional Hub in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico,the first expansion of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Canada and the thirdphase of the Escravos gas project in Nigeria.

The company plans to start production of seven multi-billion dollar projectsin 2011 and 2012. These projects, along with new start-ups, are forecasted todeliver 800,000 barrels a day by 2012, Watson said.

Chevron increased its production 7% last year.

Exxon Mobil voiced standby supports to avoid future oil spill in AOGC conference

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Exxon Mobil Corp has been providing assistance in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, said Andrew Swiger, the U.S. oil major’s senior vice president. ”We stand ready to support efforts to determine how such an incident can be prevented from happening again,” he said in a speech at the Asia Oil and Gas Conference (AOGC) in the Malaysian capital. He added that the incident highlighted the importance of upholding the highest standards of safety.

BP’s containment cap is capturing an increasing amount of oil spewing from a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well, but the U.S. admiral leading the government relief effort said on Sunday the coast will be under siege from the massive spill for many more months. BP said at the weekend its latest effort had captured 10,500 barrels of oil (439,950 gallons/1.67 million litres) in 24 hours and a second containment system should enable it to soon control the vast majority of oil spewing from the leak about 1 mile (1.6 km) below the water’s surface.

 

Oil Spill Disaster from Gulf of Mexico Crude is causing oil prices to go up

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The US oil spill disaster currently spreading across the Gulf of Mexico will help drive energy and crude oil prices higher as new measures to prevent further disasters bump oil production costs, the head of commodities and energy at BNP Paribas told the Reuters Energy Summit on Monday.

The massive spill, caused by a well blowout and rig explosion last month, is one of a number of factors that will help oil prices rebound to the mid $70 a barrel range or higher this year after dropping sharply in recent weeks.

“We see crude moving back to the mid $70, $80 area, with Chinese demand continuing and increased costs coming through to production by virtue of what we are seeing in the Gulf right now,” said Lincoln Payton. “At some point that will trickle through to the consumer.”

Oil prices have sunk to $70 a barrel after rising to nearly $90 a barrel at the beginning of May, as swelling US inventories and euro zone economic woes weighed on sentiment. But, going forward, natural resources are a relatively safe investment as continuing economic uncertainty tarnishes other purely financial plays, Payton said.

“This is a very dangerous time,” he said. “With the European stress in the last few weeks, we have seen a change in sentiment. That has brought a lightening of risk but also a lack of confidence.

“I think you can take a medium long-term position comfortably in certain natural resource businesses because we can assume that they are and always will be fundamental to our economies.”

“We have seen natural gas go through a cycle where there was a perceived surfeit and I think in the medium term that is going to change,” Payton said. “I see natural gas being a good investment in the medium term and that probably kicks in about a year.”

Despite low prices, the number of rigs drilling for gas has been on a mostly steady uptrend this year, a trend Payton puts down to the promise of future price rises.