Marathon Oil Corp News

Oil and natural gas producers began evacuating staff at U.S. Gulf of Mexico platforms on Thursday ahead of Tropical Storm Nate, the second storm in as many months to threaten Gulf Coast oil and refining facilities. Nate, which has already killed three people in Costa Rica, according to local authorities, is forecast to scrape past Honduras and Mexico, enter the Gulf and strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall early on Sunday in Louisiana, near several major refineries. That path takes it through an area populated by offshore oil and natural gas platforms, which pumps more than 1.6 million barrels of crude per day, about 17 percent of U.S. output, according to government data. Forecasts for Nate have shifted in the past 24 hours.

U.S. drillers this week added oil rigs for a sixth consecutive week, according to a closely followed report on Friday, despite crude prices falling to April lows below $40 a barrel this week. Some producers are still boosting spending on expectations for higher prices in the future. Drillers added seven oil rigs in the week to Aug. 5, bringing the total rig count up to 381, compared with 670 a year ago, energy services firm Baker Hughes Inc said. They have added a total of 51 rigs since the week to July 1, the longest streak of weekly additions since July-August 2015, when 37 rigs were added over six weeks. Energy firms continued to add most rigs in the Permian shale in west Texas and eastern New Mexico.

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.

More than a dozen U.S. oil producers have joined to lobby the federal government to reverse the 40-year-old ban on U.S. crude exports, a move that supporters hope would create jobs and boost national security, a spokesman for one of the companies and a lobbyist for another one said on Friday. Producers for American Crude Oil Exports, or PACE, is the first lobbying group to form on reversing the ban. "The end game here is legislative repeal of the ban," said a lobbyist for one of the member producers, who did not want to be named because the group was only recently formed. Congress passed the trade restriction in the 1970s after the Arab oil embargo caused fears of domestic oil shortages.

Petchem producers unlikely to buy due to impurities in oil. Big middle distillates yield, less naphtha, LPG; wide variance in API gravities in assays, samples. Tests on samples of the same type of U.S. condensate now heading to South Korea and Japan have raised questions about the ultra-light crude's suitability for use in Asia, sources said, making some potential buyers wary about taking the oil. The uncertainty could delay a rapid build-up in the flow of U.S. condensate to Asia after the arrival of the first exports of U.S. crude in 40 years. Asian refiners and chemical producers will have to first determine the best use for the ultra-light oil before starting to buy in large volumes.

A second tanker is waiting to load oil at Libya's Es Sider port, state-run National Oil Corp (NOC) said on Thursday, as the country's biggest crude export terminal swung back into action after being closed for a year. The OPEC member's oil production has risen in the past few weeks as major ports in the east have resumed work under a deal with a group of federalist rebels, adding to a crude market that is already well supplied. A first tanker has been loading oil at Es Sider since Wednesday but a second had already arrived, NOC spokesman Mohamed El Harari said. Technical problems and mistrust between the rebels campaigning for regional autonomy and the government had delayed implementing an oil port deal but output has risen to 562,000 barrels per day (bpd), NOC said on Tuesday.

A second tanker is waiting to load oil at Libya's Es Sider port, state-run National Oil Corp (NOC) said on Thursday, as the country's biggest crude export terminal swung back into action after being closed for a year. The OPEC member's oil production has risen in the past few weeks as major ports in the east have resumed work under a deal with a group of federalist rebels, adding to a crude market that is already well supplied. A first tanker has been loading oil at Es Sider since Wednesday but a second had already arrived, NOC spokesman Mohamed El Harari said. Technical problems and mistrust between the rebels campaigning for regional autonomy and the government had delayed implementing an oil port deal but output has risen to 562,000 barrels per day (bpd), NOC said on Tuesday.

Marathon Petroleum Corp is poised to expand its growing Midwest and Gulf Coast fuel trading operation to the East Coast with Thursday's deal to buy Hess Corp's retail network and transport contracts. The purchase will give Marathon control of Hess's gasoline stations and access to pipelines, including the capacity to ship approximately 40,000 barrels per day on the sought-after Colonial Pipeline from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast, according to the companies. The $2.9 billion deal is expected to close late in the third quarter. That likely means opening up new trading opportunities. Marathon's nearest refinery is nearly 500 miles east of New York City in Canton, Ohio, with few major pipelines in between.

Statoil ASA (STO, STL.OS), which built its oil and gas expertise in Norway's offshore waters, is stretching its land legs in the U.S., where it seeks to partake of the shale bounty. Like many international oil and gas companies, Norway's Statoil has poured billions into joint ventures with some of the North American independents that in the last decade figured out how to profitably unlock the oil and gas trapped in shale, bankrolling their drilling while hoping to learn some of their techniques. But peering over its partners' shoulders is not enough: Statoil plans to run its own U.S. shale operation in South Texas's Eagle Ford Shale by early 2013, said the company's executive vice president for North America, Bill Maloney.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, oil and gas companies began halting exploratory drilling in the deepwater of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico following a federal government order. Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) said they have stopped drilling two wells in the Gulf. Chevron Corp. (CVX), the second-largest publicly traded oil company after Exxon, warned that an offshore drilling moratorium extension will have a lasting negative impact in the U.S. economy. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

According to an Associated Press report, Marathon Oil Corp. said its second-quarter profit fell 47 percent from a year ago when crude barrels fetched twice the price. Houston-based Marathon said net income of $413m, or 58 cents a share for the April-June period. That compared with earnings of $774m, or $1.08 a share, in the same quarter last year. (Associated Press)

Bloomberg has reported that the Bush administration wants Marathon Oil Corp., Kerr-McGee Corp. and 54 other oil and gas producers to renegotiate Gulf of Mexico drilling leases that let them avoid paying as much as $10 billion in government fees. The Interior Department may ask the companies to voluntarily rewrite contracts from 1998 and 1999 to add a provision for royalty payments when oil and gas prices are high, said Johnnie Burton, head of the department's Minerals Management Service. Price thresholds for relief from royalty fees were accidentally omitted in those years and were included in 1996, 1997 and 2000. The U.S. House of Representatives last month approved a measure that would bar companies from any new U.S. leases until they agreed to fix the contracts from 1998 and 1999.