Peter Galloway News

The Canadian province of Alberta, the biggest source of U.S. oil imports, announced the members of its climate change policy review panel on Friday, part of its pledge to implement new rules on greenhouse gas reductions. Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said the panel would offer recommendations to the government by early November, ahead of a key United Nations climate change conference in Paris in December, but did not say when new GHG targets are likely to come into effect. The five members of the panel are University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach, former Suncor Energy executive Gord Lambert, Enbridge Inc executive Linda Coady, Pembina Institute board member Stephanie Cairns and Angela Adams, a Metis Fort McMurray school district trustee.

Colombia, Latin America's No. 4 oil producer, is changing the slate of crudes it exports in a bid to offset the falling prices that are crimping the revenues of its top oil companies. The country has started to deemphasize exports of several heavier crudes, mainly Castilla, and increase offerings of Vasconia, a medium blend that fetches about $3.50, or 8 percent, more per barrel. But to lift output of Vasconia, Colombia must increase imports of products such as naphtha and natural gasoline, which are used as diluents to lighten the barrels for export. State-run Ecopetrol has already started to make the shift and has pushed independent producers in Colombia, including Pacific Rubiales, to do the same, brokers and industry sources said.

The U.S. oil refining industry's association is not opposed to lifting the country's 40-year-old ban on crude exports as long as the move is part of a bigger effort to lower barriers to trade, the group's new head said on Tuesday. "We're not opposed to lifting the export ban, but we would like to think there could be a broader discussion," about all trade barriers in petroleum markets, Chet Thompson, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), told reporters. Other trade barriers include the Jones Act, which requires ships servicing coastal businesses to be built in the United States and mostly staffed by U.S.

Imperial Oil Ltd said on Friday it and partners Exxon Mobil Corp  and BP Plc need more time before they can drill an exploratory well in Canadian Arctic waters and are seeking an extension to their exploration license in the region. Pius Rolheiser, a spokesman for Imperial, said the license for the group's exploration parcel in the Beaufort Sea, a section of the Arctic Ocean, expires in 2020. He said the group is asking the Canadian government for a seven-year extension so it can complete the requirements of the regulatory process and have adequate time to make a decision on how, or when, it will drill a well in the region. "There's a significant amount of work between where we are today and where we would need to be if we were to drill a well by 2020," Rolheiser said.

The Canadian government has approved TransCanada Corp's proposed C$1.7 billion ($1.38 billion) North Montney Mainline natural gas pipeline that would connect natural gas fields in northern British Columbia with a Pacific Coast export terminal. The North Montney line would feed into a second new pipeline, the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line, that would serve an $11 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal, called the Pacific NorthWest LNG project, proposed by state-owned Malaysian energy company Petronas. The federal natural resources department announced the North Montney approval late on Wednesday. In April, the Canadian regulator…

A U.S. federal jury has begun its deliberations on whether a former BP Plc  executive lied about how much oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010. Prosecutors and a lawyer for defendant David Rainey made their closing arguments to the jury on Friday morning in a case brought by the government over statements Rainey made to agents from the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) nearly a year after the spill. Rainey, BP's former vice president of exploration in the Gulf, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison if found guilty of willfully making a fraudulent statement to federal law enforcement agents. The April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig led to 11 deaths and the largest U.S.

Four Petrobras oil platforms off the northeast coast of Brazil have halted production after a leak of about 7,000 liters of oil was detected coming from a pipeline linking them, a local oil workers union head said on Friday. Brazil's oil regulator, ANP, confirmed the leak in the Camorim field, 16 kilometers (10 miles) off the coast of the city of Aracajú, and said it had already been contained by Petrobras. The director of the Sindipetro oil workers union for Alagoas/Sergipe Basin, Stoessel Chagas, said the leak was detected coming from a pipeline linking the PCM-5 and PCM-6 production platforms of Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as Petrobras is officially known. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Access to Brazil's largest port, Santos, was fully restored for cargo and passenger vehicles on Monday after one entrance had been partially blocked for a week due to a fire at a nearby fuel-tank facility, highway operator Ecovias said. Authorities had blocked the entrance due to its proximity to the fire at the fuel-tank facility operated by Ultracargo, a unit of Brazilian chemical and fuel-distribution company Grupo Ultra. An entrance on the opposite side of the port's shipping channel, in Guaruja, was not affected.

Uruguay is considering extending the length of its oil exploration contracts with foreign companies drilling in its waters in order to shore up investment at a time of plunging crude prices, it said on Wednesday. BP, BG Group, Total, a joint venture of Tullow Oil and Inpex, and a consortium of YPF, Royal Dutch Shell and Galp all have exploration agreements with the South American country and have invested around $2 billion to date. But the recent fall in oil prices has made exploration in Uruguay unattractive, Hector de Santa Ana, exploration manager at state oil and gas company Ancap, said in an interview. "The (current) prices don't tally with any kind of prospect on our maritime shelf," he said.

Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA's exports to Asia and the Americas fell last year though shipments to Europe increased, according to a preliminary government report issued this month. The OPEC country's Oil Ministry did not explain the overall drop in exports in its report to Parliament, though ebbing oil output at mature fields and refinery problems towards the end of the year are likely to have crimped shipments. Asia remained PDVSA's top market last year as Venezuela has sought to diversify away from North America, though shipments to Asia clocked a roughly 8.3 percent drop to 953,000 bpd. Exports to North America fell about 4.8 percent to 837,000 bpd and those to Latin America dropped 8.5 percent to 418,000. European deliveries increased 11.9 percent to 132,000.

Brent crude was buoyed on Friday by market uncertainty over the future of Saudi oil output, while U.S. crude fell on more signs of oversupply. Saudi Arabia's new king, Salman, who took the throne on Friday morning after the death of his brother Abdullah, is expected to continue OPEC's policy of keeping oil output steady to protect market share. Some traders did not want to believe that, "clinging on some faint hope that the news is wrong, the Saudis can't possibly mean what they're saying," said Walter Zimmerman, chief technical analyst at United-ICAP. OPEC announced last November it would keep output steady at 30 million barrels a day, despite pleas from some members for it to cut output to support prices and revenues.

The Canadian government signed an order on Monday blocking the United States from applying controversial "Buy America" purchasing rules on the demolition and reconstruction of a ferry terminal that is located on Canada's Pacific Coast but operated by Alaska's Department of Transportation. The U.S. federal rules are designed to protect U.S. companies from foreign competition in transportation infrastructure projects. The state of Alaska has refused to waive the provisions for the $15 million rebuild of the Prince Rupert, British Columbia, ferry terminal although the project is solidly in Canadian territory. Canada is fighting back by invoking rarely used anti-sanction laws to prevent bidders on the project from agreeing to use only U.S.-made iron and steel.

Canada has picked Nova Scotia's Irving Shipbuilding Inc to build at least five Arctic patrol ships for the country's navy for C$2.3 billion ($1.9 billion) and has increased the overall program's budget, government officials said on Friday. The total budget for building the ships, part of the government's efforts to exert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, has increased by C$400 million to C$3.5 billion, with C$1.2 billion of that to be used for such things as infrastructure, ammunition, administrative costs and final operating capability.

Global benchmark Brent crude oil closed down nearly a dollar a barrel Friday after a day of choppy trading despite expectations of new investments in the new year, as strong mid-day rallies in crude fizzled. Brent was down 91 cents at $56.42 a barrel. Earlier, it touched a post-2009 low of $55.48, having averaged around $110 a barrel between 2011 and 2013. Front-month U.S. crude for February delivery settled down 58 cents a barrel at $52.69, before a steep 50-cent drop post-settlement. The U.S. dollar index was 0.9 percent stronger on Friday. The combination of the supply glut and the strong dollar has been a "double whammy" for crude oil prices, said Walter Zimmerman, chief technical analyst at United-ICAP. "This is a long-term cyclical downtrend," Zimmerman said.

The gridlock at U.S. West Coast ports that has forced McDonald's to ration French fries at its Japanese restaurants and interrupted supplies to retailers such as Lululemon is unlikely to be alleviated by routing cargoes through Canada, whose Pacific ports face their own problems. Capacity is already limited at Canada's largest port, Port Metro Vancouver, which is also staring at the possibility of another crippling strike by container truck drivers. Tensions are mounting as talks to resolve longstanding complaints at the port drag on between government…

Petronas, Malaysia's state-owned oil and gas company, delayed giving the final investment go-ahead on Wednesday for its $11 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal in British Columbia, citing high costs and other outstanding issues. "Costs associated with the pipeline and LNG facility remain challenging and must be reduced further before a positive FID (final investment decision) can be undertaken," the company said in a statement. Petronas, which had hoped to give the project the green light before yearend, said it will continue to invest in natural gas in British Columbia and will keep working to secure necessary federal approvals and permits for the project. (Reporting by Julie Gordon; Editing by Peter Galloway, Reuters)

Canada is set to badly miss a 2020 target for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, in part because of its failure to regulate the booming oil and gas sector, Parliament's environmental watchdog said on Tuesday. The scathing report by Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand will add to the political challenges faced by the right-leaning Conservative government, which polls show could lose power in an election set for 2015. The government has deep political roots in energy-rich Western Canada - home to the Alberta tar sands - and says it will do nothing to harm economic development. Gelfand found Ottawa did not even have a plan for how it would meet a commitment under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord to cut emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Canada's largest oil and gas producer, Suncor Energy Inc, is shipping its first ever tanker of Western Canadian heavy crude from Canada's East Coast to Europe, a company spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Suncor spokeswoman Sneh Seetal confirmed Reuters shipping data that shows the aframax tanker Minerva Gloria was set to pick up a cargo of crude oil from the port of Sorel-Tracy on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. Seetal declined to comment on where in Europe the crude cargo is going, citing commercial confidentiality. According to Reuters data it will be discharged in the Mediterranean. The crude was delivered by rail to a storage facility in Sorel-Tracy that is owned by Kildair Service Ltd.

Brazilian mining company Vale SA plans to double its iron ore exports to China within five years, Jose Carlos Martins, the company's head of ferrous metals, told reporters on Thursday. Rio de Janeiro-based Vale is the largest producer and exporter of iron ore, the main ingredient needed to make steel. Martins also said the company plans to export about 400 million tonnes of iron ore a year within five years, nearly 50 percent more than the 270 million tonnes it exported in 2013.

Oil from a spill or oil well blowout in the Arctic waters of Canada's Beaufort Sea could easily become trapped in sea ice and potentially spread more than 1,000 kilometres to the west coast of Alaska, a World Wildlife Fund study showed on Friday. The WWF contracted RPS Applied Science Associates to model 22 different oil spill scenarios and map the spread of the oil, potential impact on the water and shoreline, and interaction with sea ice, wildlife and the surrounding ecology. Types of oil spills analyzed included shipping spills, shallow-water blowouts and deep-water blowouts. The BP Plc Macondo oil well rupture in 2010 that unleashed more than four million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico was a deep-water blowout.

Net profit at Sao Martinho SA , one of Brazil's biggest sugar and ethanol groups, was 6.4 million reais ($2.9 million) in the quarter ended March 31, down 50 percent from the year-earlier period, the company said in a filing on Monday night. The results for the final financial quarter of the company's 2013/14 cane crop season were hurt by the acquisition of Boa Vista milling assets formerly controlled by Biosev, a local sugar and ethanol unit of global commodities company Louis Dreyfus. The company's debt to EBITDA ratio remained stable in the quarter at 2.02, roughly the same as a year earlier and in the previous quarter. Net revenue was up 3 percent from the year-before quarter at 320.3 million reais.

Brazil's Senate opened an inquiry on Wednesday into alleged corruption and mismanagement at state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, a probe that could complicate President Dilma Rousseff's bid for reelection in October. A panel of senators will look into the costly purchase of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, for which critics say Petrobras paid 20 times the market value. The senators will also probe allegations that Petrobras officials took bribes in exchange for steering contracts to SBM Offshore NV…

Canada moved on Tuesday to strengthen its response plan for oil spills at sea ahead of the development of new pipelines that would sharply increase tanker traffic in Canadian waters if they are built. Among the new measures, the federal government said it would remove a per-incident liability cap on a domestic clean-up fund, which means that all the money in the fund could be made available to clean up a single spill. It also pledged to cover spill costs if clean-up funds were exhausted. It also said it will lift its ban on the use of dispersants in cases when using them offers a net environmental benefit. Dispersants are chemicals that break down oil slicks but can also harm marine life.