Energy Industry Archive

Fed to allow 1.9 million acres worth of shale development on public land… maybe — It’s a perfect illustration of the kind of dilemma that the incoming administration will face with energy policy, caught between the rock of energy independence and the hard place of environmental concern. On Monday the U.S. Department of the Interior announced regulations for the leasing of public...

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The Company: Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil company. The Filing: FORM 10-Q filed with the SEC on November 6, 2008. The Finding: Chevron earned pre-tax profits of $35.7 billion and paid $16.6 billion in income taxes for the nine-months ended September 30 — an effective tax rate of 46.5 percent. Should it pay even more in taxes? The Upshot: For the comparative nine-month...

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The Company: Capstone Turbine Corp., a producer of low-emission microturbine systems. The Filing: FORM 10-Q filed with the SEC on November 10, 2008. The Finding: Nothing much as changed at Capstone Turbine since I posted about the microturbine manufacturer back on September 26. The Company continues to incur significant operating losses, and sales growth remains insufficient to cover operating...

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China inks major oil production deal with Iraq — The China National Petroleum Corporation, Zhenhua Oil, and Iraq’s minister of oil have signed a 23-year service agreement to further develop the Al-Ahdab Oilfield in Baghdad. It is one of Iraq’s first joint-venture oil projects since the war began in 2003. The deal expands the strategic energy cooperation between Iraq and China. The...

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Billionaire oil man and BP Capital founder T. Boone Pickens has never been shy. Last night he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to stump for his Pickens Plan to wean America off of foreign fossil fuels and talk about his new book, “The First Billion is the Hardest.” We know just how he feels.

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The Company: Apache Corp., a U.S. oil and natural gas producer. The Finding: FORM 10-Q filed with the SEC on November 10, 2008. The Finding: Apache, the largest acreage holder in Egypt, continues to benefit from its active drilling program in the Western Desert, a gas-rich area of about 450,000-square kilometers. During the third-quarter ended September 30, an interruption in oil and natural...

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IEA report warns of supply crunch — In its 2008 World Energy Outlook report released Wednesday, the International Energy Agency said that world energy demand will rise 1.6 percent a year between 2006 and 2030. The organization expects that demand for oil will rise from the current 85 million barrels per day to 106 million barrels per day in 2030. The report called for a huge investment in...

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In the space of mere months, long-term investments in Canadian oil sands have gone from full steam ahead to… well, not exactly a grinding halt, but certainly a major slowdown. While handsome profits beckoned at $100-plus a barrel, the just-as-volatile shift toward the $50 mark has oil-sands investors worried. Almost every aspect of oil-sands spending is under review. The big players in...

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Will Reliant sell or just shut down? – Energy watchers are asking the question, Will Reliant sell its commercial business or be forced to shut down? Last Friday the Texas energy utility stopped signing new contracts or renewing existing ones with large commercial customers, and has said that it is exploring “the sale of all or substantially all of Reliant Energy as well as the sale...

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The Company: Delta Petroleum, a natural gas and crude oil producer. The Filing: FORM 10-Q filed with the SEC on November 6, 2008. The Finding: Investor Kirk Kerkorian’s Tracinda Corp., which owns 35 percent of Delta Petroleum Corp., withdrew its cash offer to buy an additional 14 million shares of the company for $11.00 per share, citing the recent decline in the share price of Delta and...

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