LONDON (Reuters) – North Dakota’s oil wells are some of the most expensive in the country, costing more than $8 million each to drill and complete. But the returns are among the highest, thanks partly to the valuable natural gas liquids (NGLs) being recovered alongside the crude and natural gas.

The associated gas bubbling up to the surface from the thousands of crude oil wells being drilled into the Bakken formation is laden with ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline, that can be stripped out and sold separately from the methane put into the gas pipeline network.

LONDON, Oct 26 (Reuters) – Severe maintenance overruns at
Nexen’s Buzzard oilfield have highlighted the need for
a better regime for disclosing price sensitive information about
oil output and problems in the North Sea.

Buzzard’s delays have slashed output of the
benchmark-setting Forties crude stream in October – contributing
to a significant short-term rise in the price of crude and
refined products such as gasoline for customers across the EU.

LONDON (Reuters) – More than 250,000 homes could be switched from heating with fuel oil to natural gas, cutting New England’s heating oil consumption by 10 percent and providing a new market for U.S. gas producers, under ambitious plans published by Connecticut’s Department for Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

Even if the plan is successfully adopted and implemented, only half of Connecticut’s households will be on gas. Hundreds of thousands of homes will be stuck on expensive fuel oil, especially in the more sparsely populated areas of the state.

LONDON (Reuters) – For much of the last decade, energy researchers at Goldman Sachs have been among the most influential and bullish forecasters in the oil market, predicting, much of the time correctly, that prices would continue to rise.

Like others, the bank failed to foresee the cataclysm that overtook the market in late 2008. But it won respect for correctly predicting the smaller downturn in prices ahead of the flash crash in May 2011.

LONDON, Oct 18 (Reuters) – For much of the last decade, energy researchers
at Goldman Sachs have been among the most influential and bullish
forecasters in the oil market, predicting, much of the time correctly, that
prices would continue to rise.

Like others, the bank failed to foresee the cataclysm that overtook the
market in late 2008. But it won respect for correctly predicting the smaller
downturn in prices ahead of the flash crash in May 2011.

LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) – Legislatures in 34 U.S. states,
from Alaska and California to Kentucky and Maryland, have
enacted no fewer than 94 separate laws relating to oil, gas and
coal so far this year, as the surge in exploration and
production pushes fossil fuels high up the agenda for state
lawmakers.

The number of new laws passed on fossil fuels has soared
from 66 bills in 22 states last year, and 55 bills in 27 states
in 2010, according to the online bill-tracking database run by
the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

LONDON (Reuters) – Requests from Shell, BP and Vitol, among others, to start sending substantial amounts of U.S. crude to refineries in Canada have hit the headlines, as oil producers try to find outlets for surging production of light oil from North Dakota and elsewhere by easing decades-old restrictions on exporting domestically produced crude.

Less well-known is that record volumes of light hydrocarbons such as propane, butane and pentane are already being exported, as oil and gas producers seek alternative markets for the prodigious quantity of natural gas liquids (NGLs) now being produced alongside oil and gas from shale formations.

LONDON (Reuters) – Frantic drilling activity across the United States has at last begun to moderate, as the industry responds to the plunge in prices for natural gas and now liquids such as butane and natural gasoline.

Production companies have switched towards oil-rich and liquids-rich plays since 2008, driven by the gas glut and falling gas prices. But now the number of rigs targeting oil and condensate plays also appears to have peaked.

LONDON (Reuters) – The shale boom has left some of the most sophisticated refineries in the United States hunting across Europe and Africa for more of the heavy residue left over from other refiners’ crude distillation units, as they try to find a use for all the expensive coking units built in the last decade.

U.S. refineries invested heavily in delayed coking units, anticipating they would be processing increasing quantities of heavy crude from sources such as Venezuela, Canada and Saudi Arabia. Instead they have found themselves processing light crudes from shale plays such as North Dakota’s Bakken and the Eagle Ford in Texas.

LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – The booming business of
transporting Bakken crude has thrown a lifeline to U.S.
railroads, at a time when shipments of coal, their main
commodity by volume, have fallen sharply.

Coal accounted for just over 43 percent of rail car loadings
by weight, and 25 percent of gross revenues, last year according
to the Association of American Railroads (AAR).