Anna Driver News

As U.S. shale oil boomed last decade, an oil pipeline company pitched an ambitious multi-billion-dollar export port off the Texas coast to ship domestic crude to buyers in Europe and Asia.In April, Enterprise Products Partners' SPOT became the first project to receive a license from the U.S. maritime regulator for a deepwater port that could load two supertankers, each of which can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil at a time.But multi-year regulatory delays, a loss of commercial backers and slowing U.S.

Dozens of oil tankers used by Russia have stopped sailing under the Liberian and Marshall Islands flags in recent weeks after the United States ramped up sanctions enforcement on ships linked to those registries, according to shipping data and interviews with industry and government officials.The shift reflects the close relationship between the U.S. and the flag administration companies of Liberia and the Marshall Islands, which are headquartered not in their home countries, but in Virginia, just miles from Washington D.C. and within the jurisdiction of U.S.

The world's biggest cruise operator Carnival Corp on Tuesday reported its busiest booking week in history as leisure travel continues to rebound from a long pandemic-led hiatus.The news sent shares of Carnival up nearly 4% in afternoon trading. The stock traded up more than 8% earlier in the session on the New York Stock Exchange. The news also earlier lifted rivals Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings.Carnival said in a news release that the week of March 28-April 3 showed a double-digit increase from the previous record 7-day booking total.The U.S.

Oilfield services company Halliburton's proposed $35 billion acquisition of rival Baker Hughes Inc will likely close in 2016 instead of this year as talks with U.S. regulators continue, a Halliburton executive said on Wednesday. The companies have already agreed to divest $5.2 billion in overlapping businesses to quell concerns the merger would lead to higher prices and less innovation. "Currently we are having substantive discussions with the (Department of Justice)," Christian Garcia, Halliburton's acting chief financial officer told Wells Fargo's Energy Symposium. Garcia said the companies were confident that the deal would be approved. Halliburton is "finalizing negotiations" with buyers for the drilling businesses it first announced it would divest, Garcia said.

An explosion and fire rocked the Ramsey natural gas plant in West Texas on Thursday, injuring at least two people and prompting evacuations, according to a company official and media reports.   Natural gas feeds were shut off at the facility in Orla, Texas, owned by Western Gas Partners LP, a unit of Anadarko Petroleum Corp.     (Reporting By Anna Driver and Terry Wade)

Business is so tough for oilfield giants Schlumberger NV and Halliburton Co that they have come up with a new sales pitch for crude producers halting work in the worst downturn in years. The moves by the world's No. 1 and No. 2 oil services companies show how they are scrambling to book sales of new technologies to customers short of cash after a 60 percent slide in crude to $45 a barrel. In some cases, they are willing to take on the role of traditional lenders, like banks, which have grown reluctant to lend since the price drop that began last summer, or act like producers by taking what are essentially stakes in wells. When its second-quarter net profit tumbled by more than half a billion dollars to just $54 million…

ConocoPhillips said on Thursday it will reduce future spending on deepwater drilling due to low crude oil prices while raising its dividend one cent.   The largest spending reductions will come in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Houston-based company said it will terminate a three-year contract for an Ensco deepwater drill ship that was due to be delivered late this year.   Conoco said it raised its quarterly dividend to 74 cents per share from 73 cents per share.     (Reporting by Anna Driver, editing by G Crosse)

Tropical Storm Bill punched the Texas coast with heavy rains and strong winds on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said, just three weeks after floods killed about 30 people in the state. The second named tropical storm of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season made landfall near Matagorda, a sportfishing town near the South Texas Nuclear Generating Station in Bay City, a coastal nuclear power plant. Spokesman Buddy Eller said the plant had prepared for the storm and operations were normal with full staffing. Companies said output from oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, which pumps about a fifth of all domestic crude, was unaffected. But BP Plc shut its Mad Dog and Atlantis fields early on Tuesday after a pipeline outage that was expected to be fixed soon, a source said.

Occidental Petroleum Corp told regulators on Friday that a top executive, Willie Chiang, has suddenly quit - a month after Vicki Hollub was picked to eventually replace Chief Executive Steve Chazen. Hollub, a longtime Occidental employee, will become the first woman to head a major U.S. oil company. That is expected to occur next year. Chiang was the company's executive vice president, operations, and had reported directly to Chazen. An Occidental spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.  (Reporting By Terry Wade and Anna Driver; Editing by Bernard Orr)

After being stuck in legal limbo for six months, a tanker loaded with 1 million barrels of Kurdish crude headed east on Tuesday to leave U.S. waters after Baghdad and the Kurds reached a deal to share oil revenue. The United Kalavrvta tanker, which had been anchored in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico since July, was headed across the Atlantic to Gibraltar, said the vessel's operator, Marine Management Services, based in Greece. It added that is has not received any orders to discharge the cargo. Last week, motions filed in a Houston court by lawyers for Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government showed the vessel would soon have to move to another destination in order to pass special surveys designed to maintain its class certification.

BP Plc, citing low oil prices, tried to whittle away at $13.7 billion in potential fines under the Clean Water Act on Tuesday as the penalty phase started in its trial over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP said its fine should be modest as it took extensive steps to mitigate the worst offshore disaster in U.S. history and that the defendant named in the case, BP's exploration and production unit, known as BPXP, cannot afford a big penalty. "There has been no collapse of the ecosystem," BP lawyer Mike Brock said in opening statements, contending that the Gulf has been more resilient than thought. Environmental groups say it could take decades for the Gulf to recover.

Talks that could lead to oilfield services provider Halliburton Co buying rival Baker Hughes Inc may herald increased deal-making in the energy business as companies bet on a protracted drop in oil prices, industry bankers said. Competing service companies including National Oilwell Varco Inc and Weatherford International may also be targets, bankers and lawyers said. In any deal, the incentives will be the same: consolidation would allow them to better weather the downturn and resist pressure from oil producers to slash prices. The Baker Hughes/Halliburton talks have stalled after the companies weren't able to agree on issues including price, people familiar with the matter said Friday. As oil prices fall, oil field service companies get squeezed, one industry lawyer said.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp reported a big quarterly loss on Monday, compared with a year-earlier profit, as a previously announced $5.15 billion settlement related to Tronox Ltd litigation hurt results. Anadarko, based in Houston, lost $2.7 billion, or $5.30 per share in the first quarter, compared with a profit of $460 million, or 91 cents per share, in same quarter a year earlier. Adjusting for one-time items, Anadarko earned $1.26 per share. Wall Street analysts on average had expected $1.15 per share. Anadarko said its average oil and gas production rose 3.2 percent to a record 819,000 barrels oil equivalent per day (boed), boosted by output from wells in fields including the Eagle Ford in south Texas and the Wattenberg in Colorado.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow saw no need for counter sanctions against the West, but could reconsider the participation of Western companies in its economy, including energy projects. "We would very much wish not to resort to any measures in response. I hope we won't get to that point," he told reporters after meeting with the leaders of Belarus and Kazakhstan. The United States on Monday unveiled a new round of sanctions aimed at business leaders and companies close to Putin, while the European Union followed up on Tuesday by naming 15 Russians and Ukrainians to its blacklist, moving to freeze assets and deny visas.

Baghdad wants to settle a high-stakes dispute over $100 million worth of Kurdish crude oil in Iraq's  courts, although the oil is sitting in a tanker off the coast of Texas, a U.s. court filing  said on Friday. Iraq's central government has also asked Iraq's Federal Supreme Court to block the Kurdistan Regional Government from exporting any crude until its ownership can be determined, said the filing in federal court in Houston. The central government contends it belongs to the country as a whole, not just the Kurdistan region. The latest legal challenge follows Iraq in May bringing criminal charges against the Kurdistan government, alleging theft of oil revenues. However, Kurdistan has failed to appear in court to address the charges, the filing said.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq asked a U.S. court on Monday to throw out an order to seize some 1 million barrels of disputed crude oil and allow the cargo to be freely delivered in Texas. The United Kalavrvta tanker, carrying about $100 million worth of Kurdish crude, has been anchored near Texas for nine days, as the Iraqi region of Kurdistan wages a legal battle over ownership with the central government of Iraq. At the request of Baghdad, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to take control of the cargo last week, but then said the tanker was outside its jurisdiction and beyond U.S. territory in the Gulf of Mexico.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has persuaded anti-fracking groups to scrap two ballot initiatives that would have curtailed oil and gas drilling, and news of the agreement on Monday lifted share prices of oil producers. Hickenlooper, in a televised news conference, said he had instead put together a task force with representatives from industry, environmental groups and local communities to set standards for the state's growing petroleum industry. This "will provide an alternative to ballot initiatives that…

State-run Petroperu is offering to sell a 220,000 barrel cargo of fuel oil for delivery at Talara port on September 6 to 10, according to a tender document seen by Reuters on Tuesday. The oil company in July sold a similar cargo of fuel oil that will be loaded this week. It has also been actively buying crude and fuel cargoes on the open market in recent months. For this tender, the company is offering to deliver fuel oil with maximum 1.4 percent sulfur or heavy fuel oil with up to 1.5 percent sulfur. The product must be exported from Peru.

Costa Rica's refining company Recope has launched a tender to buy two 90,000-100,000 barrel cargos of fuel oil for delivery from September to December at Port Caldera, according to a document seen by Reuters on Friday. Previously this month, Recope bought three 25,000 barrel cargoes of MTBE, a component to oxygenate gasoline. The company, which operates the 25,000 barrel per day (bpd) Puerto Limon refinery, supplies most fuel for the Costa Rican domestic market. For this offer, the company is requesting fuel oil with maximum 1.8 percent sulfur. It will accept bids until August 25 and they must refer to fuel oil number 6 prices from the U.S. Gulf Coast. (Reporting by Marianna Parraga; Editing by Anna Driver)

A U.S. judge has decided that BP Plc was "grossly negligent" and "reckless" in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill four years ago, a ruling that could add nearly $18 billion in fines to more than $42 billion in charges the company took for the worst offshore environmental disaster in U.S. history. BP said it would appeal Thursday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans, Louisiana, who held a trial without a jury last year to determine who was responsible for the April 20…

Oil company Exxon Mobil asked a U.S. District Court on Friday to recognize a World Bank arbitration ruling that Venezuela must pay $1.6 billion over a nationalization claim filed in 2007. "Awards issued pursuant to the ICSID Convention are subject to automatic recognition and enforcement in the United States," the filing said in part. The International Court Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) published the arbitration ruling on Thursday. Venezuela said it will have to pay less than $1 billion after deducting a previous award. A spokesman for Exxon said the filing, made in federal court in Manhattan, was standard procedure in such cases. Reporting by Anna Driver and Marianna Parraga

Venezuela's state-run PDVSA launched tenders to sell one 240,000 barrel cargo of jet fuel and one 240,000 barrel cargo of ultra low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) for delivery in April, according to documents seen by Reuters on Friday. The company launched two previous tenders in recent days to buy heavy naphtha and catalytic naphtha. In March it offered seven cargos of different fuels, increasing its typical sales on the open market. The jet fuel cargo offered this time will be delivered April 20-22 at Amuay refinery, while the ULSD cargo will be loaded in Puerto la Cruz refinery on April 24-26. The company will receive bids until April 8 for both cargos. The destination should be the U.S. Gulf or East Coasts, Florida, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Northwest Europe or West Africa.

State-run Petroperu launched a tender to buy two 100,000 barrel cargos of biodiesel to be received from May 2 to June 6 at Talara, Conchan and Mollendo ports, according to a document seen by Reuters on Friday. The oil company, which operates most of Peru's refineries, this week also launched a purchase offer for a 220,000 barrel cargo combining cracked naphtha and high octane gasoline blend stock (HOGBS) for May. Petroperu will receive offers until April 9 for this tender and they must be indexed to diesel number 2 from the U.S. Gulf Coast. The biodiesel must contain a maximum of 15 parts per million sulfur, the document says. (Reporting by Marianna Parraga; editing by Anna Driver)