Posts Tagged ‘OPEC’

* “Less than 40,000 barrels of oil” leaked – Shell

* Field produces 10 pct of Nigerian oil exports

* Shell says oil flow now halted

By Emma Farge

LONDON, Dec 21 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell is shutting down its huge 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) Bonga oilfield off the Nigerian coast after a leak occurred while loading a tanker on Tuesday, the firm said in a statement.

The Anglo-Dutch oil major said “less than 40,000 barrels of oil” had leaked into the ocean. The flow of oil had now halted, a spokesman said.

The leak occurred while a tanker was loading oil from Shell’s Bonga facility, about 120 kilometres off the coast of the West African nation, according to the statement.

Shell’s pipelines in Nigeria’s onshore Niger delta have spilled several times, which the company blames on sabotage attacks and oil theft.

Bonga accounts for around 10 percent of monthly oil flows from OPEC member Nigeria, the continent’s largest exporter of crude oil, according to Reuters data.

“We are sorry this leak has happened. As soon as we became aware of it, we stopped the flow of oil and mobilised our own resources, as well as industry expertise, to ensure its effects are minimised,” said Shell Nigeria Country Chair Mutiu Sunmonu.

“It is important to stress that this was not a well control incident of any sort, and to make clear that no one has been injured. Our focus now is on a speedy and effective clean-up,” he added.

BP’s Macondo well ruptured in April last year, causing nearly 5 million barrels of oil to spew into the sea in what was the worst U.S. marine oil spill.

Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company is 100 percent owned by the Anglo-Dutch oil major.

FLOW HALTED

A Shell spokesman said the flow of oil had been halted on all three of the platform’s export lines where it is believed that the leak occurred.

An investigation will be launched into the reasons for the leak, he said, without giving a timeframe for the restart of production.

The company had not declared force majeure, a legal clause allowing a company to miss deliveries due to circumstances outside its control, he added.

Shell’s share price fell during the day by more than 1 percent on Wednesday to 2,274 pence by 1405 GMT. Brent oil prices were up 63 cents at $107.36 a barrel by the same time.

Oil traders and analysts said the Bonga closure could be supportive both for Brent oil futures and other Nigerian crude streams, where demand is expected to increase.

“Given the current sensitivity to potential supply disruptions and rising geopolitical tensions it just adds to the uncertainty in 2012… It will limit the downside on Brent should broader market sentiment turn,” said Andrey Kryuchenkov of VTB Capital.

Bonga was due to load around 161,000 bpd on five tankers in January, according to oil loading programmes.

SOURCE ARTICLE

* IEA sees continued gap between OPEC output and demand for OPEC oil

* Maintains that strategic petroleum reserves release is working

* No decision yet on further stocks releases

By Alex Lawler and Barbara Lewis

LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) – World oil demand growth will accelerate next year, adding to the pressure on available supplies, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday, contradicting a more conservative outlook from producer group OPEC.

In its first 2012 forecast in a monthly report, the IEA said oil use would grow by 1.47 million barrels per day (bpd) to 91 million bpd. The agency also trimmed its estimate of demand growth this year to 1.20 million bpd.

The IEA’s 2012 prediction was more than the 1.32 million bpd expected by OPEC and lower than a forecast from the United States’ Energy Information Administration. It expects all of the growth next year to come from emerging economies.

“Aside from economic growth, downside pressures from higher-than-expected oil prices also represent a risk to the forecast,” said the Paris-based IEA, which advises 28 industrialised countries.

Differences between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and consumer nations widened after the 12-member OPEC in June failed to reach a deal on a Saudi-led proposal to increase output.

In response, the IEA decided to release oil from emergency stocks for only the third time since it was founded in 1974 to fill the gap in supplies left by the disruption to Libya’s output.

The IEA on Wednesday maintained the stocks move had added supply of high-quality crude to a tight market and the agency took “a resolutely positive view” of the strategy so far.

“The point of the stock release was to add some liquidity and flexibility into the market. I think we’ve done that,” David Fyfe, head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets division, told Reuters Insider.

Oil LCOc1, trading at $117 a barrel on Wednesday, is higher than it was before the release. OPEC said the use of stocks had had no impact, while investor Jim Rogers on Wednesday called it “meaningless” to the market.

Fyfe said the IEA had yet to decide whether it would release more supplies and reiterated it would make a decision 30 days after the initial announcement on June 23.

2011 DEMAND GROWTH TRIMMED

Next year’s demand expansion follows on from lowered expectations for this year.

In the report, the IEA trimmed its 2011 global demand growth estimate by 70,000 bpd, citing the impact of high prices and a weaker economic outlook for developed economies.

While OPEC did not formally agree to boost its supplies at last month’s meeting, the IEA report added to evidence that core members are pumping more crude.

The IEA said OPEC output rose significantly in June following a unilateral supply increase from the group’s leading exporter, Saudi Arabia.

According to the IEA, Saudi Arabia pumped 9.7 million bpd in June, just shy of the 9.8 million bpd cited by a senior Gulf OPEC delegate on Tuesday.

Overall, OPEC production in June increased by nearly 850,000 bpd compared with May, the IEA said, but it still took the view that OPEC oil output would remain well short of expected demand.

It said demand for OPEC crude would average almost 31 million bpd in the second half of this year, around 1 million bpd more than OPEC produced in June.

The IEA also said Saudi Arabia’s crude exports could be eroded by a growing domestic need for oil for power generation, and OPEC’s oil production capacity would struggle until Libyan output began to recover.

It did not expect a Libyan recovery to happen until the end of 2012 and said OPEC capacity would fall to a low point of around 33.8 million bpd in the first quarter of next year. (Additional reporting by Simon Falush; Editing by William Hardy)

© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved

SOURCE ARTICLE

On Thursday, Royal Dutch Shell, BP’s Anglo-Dutch rival, is expected to report a 70 per cent fall in profits to $2.5 billion.

Refiners need to consolidate and close plants to increase profitability, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said yesterday. The Hague-based Shell put two refineries in northern Germany up for sale earlier this year. Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser has pledged to simplify decision-making and cut costs against a deteriorating economic backdrop.

The labor group didn’t receive any new proposals from Royal Dutch Shell Plc yesterday, Lynne Baker, a spokeswoman for the United Steelworkers union, said in an e-mail. “Both parties continue to discuss bargaining issues,” she said, without giving details.

“Even if we look back at 1998 and 1986, we’ve never had this violent a shift at this extreme in terms of prices,” said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates Inc., referring to previous bear markets. Yergin will also be attending the forum in Davos, as will Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive officer of The Hague-based Royal Dutch Shell Plc

Morgan Stanley is seeking a supertanker to store crude oil, joining Citigroup Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc in trying to profit from higher prices later in the year, four shipbrokers said.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc resumed contracted deliveries of Nigeria’s Bonny, Bonga and Forcados crude-oil grades after production was cut by pipeline attacks.

It says the cuts will be made from joint ventures between Venezuela’s state oil company and foreign companies including Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Corp. and France’s Total

In early November, Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the world’s second largest oil company, was the first to disclose it was hurt by an OPEC cut, when it called force majeure on some of its Nigerian crude exports