LONDON, Feb 8 (Reuters) – Canada badly needs to find a way
to get its crude to customers in Asia and avoid the oversupplied
North American market to fetch a better price for its oil.

Surging output of light sweet oils from North Dakota and
Texas is crowding out demand for heavier, sourer crudes from
Alberta – pushing the price of blends such as Western Canadian
Select (WCS) to a $25 discount against West Texas Intermediate
(WTI) and down as much as $45 against Brent.

LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Abundant, affordable, clean,
diverse and secure energy is in the U.S. national interest.

So finds a report on the future of the country’s energy
system published on Monday by Senator Lisa Murkowski, the
highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee.

LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Native American communities are
often portrayed as victims of avaricious oil and gas drillers
and pipeline companies, who despoil the prairie with little
thought for sacred sites.

In fact, tribes are some of the largest petroleum developers
in the United States and are pressing the federal government for
more control over drilling on their own territory.

LONDON, Feb 1 (Reuters) – Spot Brent prices are at
their highest level since October and almost $16 (16 percent)
above Saudi Arabia’s theoretical target of around $100 per
barrel.

“Current high oil prices are a major challenge … for the
global economic recovery,” the International Energy Agency’s
chief economist Fatih Birol warned on Thursday.

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Shareholders must be hoping the
removal of Aubrey McClendon as Chesapeake’s chief executive will
end the corporate governance discount attached to the company’s
share price and unlock superior returns. They are likely to be
disappointed.

Removing McClendon does not the resolve the company’s basic
problem: it is the second-largest producer in a market (U.S.
natural gas) which has been transformed by the advent of a new
technology (hydraulic fracturing) and now faces years of
oversupply as well as a radical change in the cost of production
which has left many old assets stranded and devalued.

LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – The arrival of a swarm of
activist hedge funds and investors in the oil and gas sector may
be good news for corporate governance, and possibly for
shareholders. But it risks killing off the innovation and
risk-taking which has revolutionised U.S. petroleum production
over the last decade and transformed the global energy outlook.

Activist Carl Icahn has finally pushed Chief Executive
Aubrey McClendon out from the Chesapeake, the firm he
founded in 1989, and grew into the country’s second-largest
producer inside two decades.

LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – TransCanada has promised
to adhere to 57 special safety conditions, and in the event of
an accidental oil spill from its Keystone XL pipeline would be
responsible for all cleanup costs, Nebraska Governor Dave
Heineman promised this month when he approved the company’s
revised route through the state.

Responding to concerns about the possibility of catastrophic
pollution, the pipeline has been re-routed to avoid the
environmentally sensitive Sand Hills, though it still crosses
parts of the High Plains (Ogallala) Aquifer.

LONDON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Energy
must make a historic decision in the next few months: whether to
allow large-scale natural gas exports from the United States.

The issue is as much about philosophy and foreign relations
as the practical impact on gas prices and big energy users such
as the chemical, fertiliser and steel industries.

LONDON, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Oilfield services company
Halliburton blamed the upfront cost of rolling out its
“frac of the future” efficiency initiative, as well as lower rig
rates and idled equipment, for shrinking margins in its North
American business, when the company presented its Q4 results on
Friday.

Frac (or frack as it also called) of the future maybe
causing the company some discomfort in the short term. But it is
a perfect case study of how the drilling industry is innovating
in response to pressure to cut costs and its environmental
footprint.

LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Most analysts and journalists
still draw a sharp distinction between the production of oil and
gas from conventional fields and from unconventional resources
such as shale. The reality is more complex.

In practice it is not easy to tell where conventional
petroleum production ends and unconventional production begins.