Category Archives: Energy industry

Turkey insists on right to drill for energy reserves off Cyprus

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Dispute likely to escalate after Nicosia said it would seek to arrest anyone caught drilling

Tensions over energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean have risen sharply after Turkey said it would “exercise its sovereign rights” to drill off Cyprus in flagrant defiance of warnings from western allies.

As the dispute over potential gas reserves intensified, Ankara insisted its state-of-the-art drilling ship, the Fatih, and its support vessels would begin operations in waters viewed by the EU as being within the island’s exclusive economic zone.

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Saudi oil company named world’s most profitable business

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State-owned Saudi Aramco makes profits of £84.7bn last year, beating Apple and Exxon

Saudi Arabia’s state oil company has emerged as the most profitable business in the world, racking up profits of $111.1bn (£84.7bn) in 2018 to overtake Apple.

According to a rare glimpse into its finances contained in a bond-offering document, Saudi Aramco made the profit on revenues of $355.9bn last year, as it produced 10.3m barrels per day of crude oil.

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Double standards on oil spills in Nigeria must end | Letters

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Oil companies must respect human lives and clean up the damage their industry does wherever they operate, say Dr John Sentamu, Baroness Amos, Prof Michael Watts, Njeri Kabeberi and James Thornton

The devastating impact of oil spills is widely recognised. The past decade has witnessed the destruction caused to human life and the environment from spills including the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Montara spill in Australia in 2009.

On each occasion the global community has reacted with horror, demanding the oil industry clean up local ecosystems and communities. Yet in Nigeria, and particularly in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, these calls are ignored.

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Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says report

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Ad campaigns hide investment in a huge expansion of oil and gas extraction, says InfluenceMap

The largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m (£153m) a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change, according to a new report.

Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil were the main companies leading the field in direct lobbying to push against a climate policy to tackle global warming, the report said.

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US judge halts hundreds of drilling projects in groundbreaking climate change ruling

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In a rebuke of the Trump administration’s ‘energy-first’ agenda, a judge rules greenhouse gas emissions must be considered

In the first significant check on the Trump administration’s “energy-first” agenda, a US judge has temporarily halted hundreds of drilling projects for failing to take climate change into account.

Drilling had been stalled on more than 300,000 acres of public land in Wyoming after it was ruled the Trump administration violated environmental laws by failing to consider greenhouse gas emissions. The federal judge has ordered the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages US public lands and issues leases to the energy industry, to redo its analysis.

The decision stems from an environmental lawsuit. WildEarth Guardians, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Western Environmental Law Center sued the BLM in 2016 for failing to calculate and limit the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from future oil and gas projects.

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Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline likely to go ahead after EU deal

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Concerns had been raised over project increasing German reliance on Russian energy

Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, called it a mistake, while the US president, Donald Trump, has branded it very inappropriate and a “very bad thing for Nato”.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline to take Russian gas to Germany is arguably Europe’s most controversial energy project, drawing opposition from Ukraine, which it will bypass, and uniting the US, eastern EU states, and the European Commission which fears it will undermine the bloc’s ‘energy union’ plans.

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Cyprus: likely gas field find raises prospect of tension with Turkey

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Expected announcement by ExxonMobil of discovery off island’s south coast seen as potential game changer

Tensions between Cyprus and Turkey over energy could soon come to a head, with ExxonMobil apparently poised to announce a significant natural gas find off the divided island’s southern coast.

After more than three months of deep-water exploration in the eastern Mediterranean, the US firm is expected to unveil findings this week in what is being described as a seminal moment in the race to tap potentially profitable underwater resources.

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