Patrick Rucker News

The U.S. Interior Department on Friday said it would cancel two potential Arctic offshore lease sales after Royal Dutch Shell PLC said that it was not interested in those leases. "In light of Shell's announcement, the amount of acreage already under lease and current market conditions, it does not make sense to prepare for lease sales in the Arctic in the next year and a half," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement. Shell said last month it was giving up its Arctic search for oil after failing to find enough crude oil. (Reporting By Patrick Rucker; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Lifting the ban on U.S. crude exports could push the price of domestic oil up roughly $2.50 a barrel in the coming decade, a report from the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday.   "CBO estimates that authorizing exports of domestically produced crude oil without restrictions would increase wellhead prices of light oil by an average of roughly $2.50 per barrel over the 2016-2025 period, on an expected value basis," the report said.   The study, which weighs how crude exports could impact the federal budget, expects dropping the ban would stoke production and boost federal fuel royalties by about $1.4 billion in the next decade. (Reporting By Timothy Gardner and Patrick Rucker; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

The price of U.S. gasoline could fall if Washington were to allow crude oil exports, an independent government report on Tuesday concluded, adding political firepower for those who want to change the law to expand such trade. Exports would put more crude on global markets and push down prices for international Brent oil "which in turn results in lower petroleum product prices for U.S. consumers," according to the report by the Energy Information Administration, entitled "Effects of Removing Restrictions on U.S. Crude Oil Exports. The United States has severely limited oil exports since the early 1970s in the wake of the Arab oil embargo. The Obama administration has taken steps to increase exports of minimally-processed light oil called condensate and allow crude swaps with Mexico.

The U.S. Interior Department said on Friday it has received a plan by Royal Dutch Shell PLC to explore drilling opportunities in the Arctic.   The company's plan envisions "exploration drilling in the shallow waters of the Chukchi Sea Outer Continental Shelf, off the northwest coast of Alaska."   Late last month, the Obama administration upheld a 2008 Arctic lease sale, clearing an important hurdle for Shell.   The Interior Department will now consider the company's drilling plan, which could take 30 days.   (Reporting By Patrick Rucker; Editing by Sandra Maler and Will Dunham)

U.S. oil trains delivered more than 13.5 million barrels of crude oil from the Midwest to the East Coast in January, according to government data that gives a first of its kind snapshot of such shipments. The data from the Energy Information Administration is the first if its kind from the independent statistics arm of the U.S. Energy Department. Oil producers in North Dakota have relied on oil trains to reach East Coast refiners eager to process the light, sweet crude from that energy patch. Link to data: http://tinyurl.com/nlhsvak Reporting By Patrick Rucker and Timothy Gardner

The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed allowing for the first time oil and gas exploration in a wide swath of U.S. waters off the Atlantic Coast. The 2017 to 2022 drilling plan begins a process that could take many years before waters off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina or Georgia are cleared for drilling. It expands on the last five-year plan initially issued in 2010 that allowed drilling off Virginia. The administration canceled a lease sale there after BP Plc's deadly explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that year. The plan includes a potential lease sale in the Atlantic around 2021 but it could be withdrawn if scientists discover that the area is too fragile.

U.S. coal companies will no longer be able to settle royalties at low domestic prices when they make lucrative sales to Asia according to reforms proposed by the Interior Department on Friday. American taxpayers by law are due a 12.5 percent royalty on the sales of millions of tons of coal pulled each year from federal land that mining companies lease. In past years of strong global demand, U.S. miners have been able to avoid a royalty hit on lucrative exports by first selling to affiliated traders at low domestic prices. The reforms proposed on Friday will update rules on how energy companies settle their royalty payments on coal, oil and gas pulled from federal land but the changes to the coal program may have the biggest impact.

Runaway oil production could slow road traffic as drivers face longer delays to cross train tracks in many congested regions, a U.S. study released on Friday predicted. Oil, coal and grain shipments are taxing the national rail grid as the deliveries of those commodities are expected to climb along with commercial shipments in the coming years, according to the report from the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress. Freight movements on the tracks are due to rise 51 percent over 2007 levels by 2040, according to the Transportation Department, and so exceed 28 billion tons per year. One factor is oil train deliveries out of North Dakota's energy patch that neared 250,000 carloads in 2012 compared with roughly 10,000 in 2007, says the study.