UK to allow shale-license holders to retain bigger areas

The UK announced new license terms to spur the development of the resource that may supply the nation with half a century of natural gas from shale rock.

The measures will allow license holders to retain bigger areas and cut costs, Energy Minister Michael Fallon said today, June 24, at a conference. The 14th licensing will be launched “shortly,” he said.

“Unlike traditional oil and gas, shale gas is not concentrated in small high-value fields, but is likely to be dispersed across large areas with ‘sweet spots,’” he told a conference in London. “I am removing unnecessary barriers and introducing a new flexibility to licenses.”

At the same time, the changes will ensure everyone has access to information earlier by cutting the length of time explorers can keep data on drilling and flow rates confidential to six months from four years, he said.

Fallon’s Conservative Party is seeking to spur shale exploration to secure energy resources as North Sea reserves decline. The Bowland basin in northern England may contain as much as 1,300 Tcf of gas, the British Geological Survey has said. That will last almost 50 years based on an extraction rate of 10%, similar to U.S. fields, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Opponents fear that hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracing, causes earthquakes and water contamination as the process uses water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to blast the fuel out of rock.

The Labour opposition party said baseline monitoring should take place for a year before extraction to ensure well integrity and safety, Tom Greatrex, shadow energy minister, said at the same conference via videolink.

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Exxon, BP Evacuate Iraq workers amid limited oil drilling impact

Exxon Mobil and BP began removing employees in Iraq as militants continued a push toward Baghdad and a battle raged for control of the nation’s largest oil refinery.

The evacuations come amid government and company assertions that Iraq’s output of almost 3 MMbpd should remain unaffected by escalating sectarian tensions. Exxon has removed some workers from the West Qurna oil field as operations continue, according to a person familiar with the company’s Iraq operations. BP has removed non-essential workers, CEO Bob Dudley said.

While violence is sweeping northern Iraq, the conflict so far spared Iraq’s crude production in the south and the Kirkuk oilfield in the north is being defended by Kurds.

“The only infrastructure that is currently producing and supplying international markets is in the south and will remain untouched,” said Kyle Stelma, managing director of Dunia Frontier Consultants, which researches Iraq for clients.

Fighters from ISIL battled government forces for control of the Baiji refinery in northern Iraq today, a day after clashes in Baquba, 55 km northeast of the capital. A military spokesman said elite Iraqi forces were defending the Baiji refinery, but the comments contradicted local police who said militants had captured the facility.

A fuel tank at the refinery caught fire after shelling by militants, according to the Salahuddin provincial police command. The refinery halted operations because its storage tanks were full, according to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

The market impact of the clashing continued to be muted, with Brent crude little changed at $114.23 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange New York.

Companies such as Chevron, Total and Marathon Oil, which are drilling in the Kurdistan region, are continuing to operate. Marathon hasn’t evacuated employees, spokeswoman Lee Warren said. Chevron’s operations continue “as normal,” spokesman Kurt Glaubitz said. Oryx Petroleum reported successful testing and a ramp up in drilling activity in Kurdistan.

The rapid battlefield success of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, a Sunni Muslim al-Qaeda breakaway group also embroiled in battles in neighboring Syria, threatens to re-ignite a sectarian civil war in Iraq. It also risks escalating into a wider conflict that draws in the United States and Iran in defense of PM Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government three years after the withdrawal of United States forces. Iraq is the largest oil producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia.

BP CEO Bob Dudley said the violence, which he called “terrible” and said would have “far-reaching, wide-ranging implications” for the region, isn’t likely to spread all the way to the country’s southern oil fields.

“The implications for oil production at the moment appear limited,” he told reporters yesterday in Moscow. “We are of course very vigilant.”

Anti-terrorism forces killed a Saudi fighter identified as Abu Yamama al-Dossary during the “failed attack” on the Baiji refinery. A fuel tank at the plant caught fire during the clashes. The refinery has halted operations since June 15, the police said. Baiji has about 40% of Iraq’s refining capacity, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“Iraq will have to increase the import of oil products to make up for the loss of Baiji’s production,” Robin Mills, the head of consulting at Manaar Energy Consulting and Project Management, said “Baiji mainly supplies the north, but also Baghdad.”

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INPEX unloads first modules for Ichthys LNG Project processing facilities

The INPEX-operated Ichthys LNG Project is preparing for the next phase of its onshore construction effort, following the unloading of its first large pre-fabricated modules on June 29. The modules will be used to construct the Project’s LNG processing facilities at Bladin Point near Darwin, Australia.

Ichthys LNG Project Managing Director Louis Bon said the safe arrival of the first of more than 200 modules was an important milestone for the Project and marked the next phase for its onshore construction effort.

“Much of the work we have been doing to transform Bladin Point has been leading up to this event -- we have been setting the foundations to prepare for their arrival and installation at site,” he said

A modularized approach to construction is now common in Australia. For the Ichthys LNG Project, this approach involved having components of its onshore facilities assembled in modules at fabrication yards and tested before transporting them to site.

Designing and constructing modules in this way was a key part of delivering the global project on schedule and on budget, Bon said.

“The Ichthys LNG Project’s onshore facilities were designed so that some elements would be modularized while others could be stick-built on site in Darwin,” Bon added.

The Ichthys LNG Project’s pre-fabricated modules are being built at four yards in China, the Philippines and Thailand. Over the next 18 months, about 60 module shipments are scheduled to arrive in Darwin. The largest modules can weigh more than 6,000 tonnes.

Transported on large, custom-made marine vessels, module shipments will travel past Darwin on the way to the Project’s module offloading facility (MOF) at Bladin Point. The MOF supports the offloading of the large modules and oversized equipment that is too large to be transported to site by road.

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