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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JimisJim who wrote (186890)	12/4/2014 2:54:10 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206326

Multibillion-dollar offshore jobs more resilient to price volatility Complex, high-dollar projects will survive because companies already have invested heavily and spent years to develop them, but cheaper shale drilling will suffer. "You just don't stop a development like this," said Terry Marshall, senior vice president at Moody's Investors Service. "It's up and it's producing oil. This is an investment decision that would've been made years ago." Chevron said Tuesday that the fields, about 25 miles apart, have begun sending oil and gas to a floating production unit moored between them - the largest of its kind in the Gulf of Mexico, deploying surface and subsea infrastructure nearly as wide as Rhode Island. The facility is about 280 miles south of New Orleans in 7,000 feet of water. The Jack and St. Malo reservoirs are 19,500 feet below the seabed. Oil prices have tumbled in recent months as rising supply outpaces flat global demand, but long-term projects like deep-water production are more resilient to short-term price volatility because they produce vast amounts of oil and natural gas for years. "We take a long-term view of prices because our investments last for decades," Chevron spokesman Cam Van Ast said in a statement. "We continue to believe global demand for oil and natural gas will grow, while existing sources of supply will inevitably decline." The Jack/St. Malo fields are projected to produce 500 million barrels ofoil equivalent over the next 30 years. That much production remains economic unless oil falls below about $40 a barrel, said Imran Khan, a deep-water Gulf of Mexico analyst at energy analyst firm Wood Mackenzie. Chevron has a 50 percent stake in the Jack field and a 51 percent interest in the St. Malo field. Other partners are Statoil, Maersk, Petrobras, Exxon Mobil and Eni. International benchmark crude fell to $70.54 per barrel on Tuesday, while domestic benchmark crude settled at $66.88. That has some onshore producers poised to slash spending and lay down rigs next year - their success in drawing oil from once-inaccessible shale plays having created the supply-demand imbalance that sent crude prices down. But multibillion-dollar offshore projects already under development chug forward, undeterred by prices that have scared companies away from drilling marginal shale plays. The deep-water development CLOV off Angola started producing in June, four years after the French oil company Total developed it. It will continue to see increased investment and production growth regardless of current crude prices, according to a report by financial services firm Raymond James. In October, Hess Corp. announced plans to move forward with plans to develop a deep-water Gulf of Mexico field called Stampede that's expected to cost more than $6 billion, with no production until 2018, Khan said. "The prices are lower right now, but it's not expecting to come online for another four years," he said. "You're not going to stop that project because your prices are lower right now." Because multinational oil and gas giants have integrated businesses including pipelines, refining and petrochemicals that buffer them against price swings, their investments in expensive deep-water projects will likely continue, said Rich Eychner, an equity research associate at Raymond James. But smaller independent operators may take a more cautious approach in water and on land. "There's not much margin for error for them," Khan said. Projects that have yet to secure investments, or those early in the exploration and appraisal process, could wind up on the chopping block, Khan said. "If prices persist, they move to the back of the line," he said. houstonchronicle.com

To: JimisJim who wrote (186890)	12/4/2014 3:26:49 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 206326

A chart of Crude Oil, priced in Australian Dollars from 1995 to the current date probably looks more flat over time as the AUD and oil have been subject to many of the same forces. (Too bad I can't find one, as Australians typically use charts of crude oil in U.S. Dollars) Global oil demand sinks but lower Australian dollar pushing up the price of fuel abc.net.au ABC Rural By Babs McHugh 15 Sep 2014 Photo: At $1.66.9, the price of ULP at Longreach in western Queensland is 20 cents a litre more than in the capital Brisbane and 25 cents more than on the Sunshine Coast. (Lydia Burton) The falling Australian dollar may be good news for exporters, but it will drive up the price of fuel. After hitting a 15-month low earlier in September, petrol and diesel prices are expected to head upwards, despite a much lower oil price on the back of rapidly dropping demand. The International Energy Agency has described the sudden drop in global demand as nothing short of remarkable. Forecaster OPEC has recently cut its forecast and says output will exceed demand by more than one million barrels a day by 2015. Economist with CommSec, Savanth Sebastian, says the problem for Australia is that its fuel, which comes from Singapore, is priced in US dollars. "In Australian dollar terms, the Singapore gasoline price rose by over $3 a barrel last week," Mr Sebastian said. Audio: Global oil demand drops but fuel prices to rise due to lower Aussie dollar (ABC Rural) "Keep in mind, in US dollar terms, the Singapore gasoline price actually fell, so it just highlights the impact of the falling currency. "So it will lift fuel prices across Australia. We're expecting the national average price to probably lift by about 2-3 cents a litre over the next fortnight. "That usually takes about ten days to wash through to the bowser." Australia imports 80 per cent of all the petrol and diesel it uses. Country motorists likely to feel more petrol pain Traditionally drivers in rural and remote areas pay more for their fuel, a constant source of friction. But that's not always the case, and in a number of regional areas in Queensland the differential (between city and country prices) is the opposite. "The differential can be a negative one," said Susan Furze, senior transport economist with Queensland motoring body, the RACQ. "Frequently we see across Queensland the best fuel price over a month is usually out in a regional area as opposed to Brisbane. In Australian dollar terms the Singapore gasoline price rose by over $3 a barrel last week, whereas it fell in US dollars. That just shows the immediate impact of the lower AU$ Savanth Sebastian, senior economist, Commsec -- "So we often see that in somewhere like Warwick or Toowoomba or, in the case of last month, the Sunshine Coast, they can actually have cheaper prices on average than in Brisbane. "That's cheaper by 4-5 cents a litre. "However, that's not always the case, and if you're talking of some extremely remote areas like in Weipa, in Queensland's far north, the price is much more expensive. "Now that is largely a factor of two things; the distance to get the fuel there and low volumes that are actually needed, so there's a fairly hefty distribution cost. "And to give you an idea of how much it pushes the price up, we saw an across-the-board price of $1.79 per litre of unleaded petrol (ULP)." Ms Furze also anticipates a rise in the fuel price, but she believes a more modest increase of between 1-2 cents. "Every time we see the Australian dollar drop against the US dollar, we do expect that to put pressure on the bowser price." As you might have guessed, "bowser" is an old Australian word for a gas station.