James West News

The United States is on track to become the world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) this year - ahead of current market leader Australia - once a fire-idled Texas plant is restarted, according to Reuters data.A June fire sidelined Freeport LNG, the second biggest U.S. export facility, and cut U.S. exports of the fuel by about 2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd). That outage dropped the United States behind top exporter Australia as global demand for the fuel boomed.In 2022, U.S. exports of natural gas as LNG rose 8% to 10.6 bcfd, just shy of Australia's 10.7 bcfd.

Offshore drilling contactor Valaris, which is exploring a bankruptcy restructuring, on Thursday said it could take up to two years to reactivate idle equipment as contracts dry up during a historic rout in oil prices.Global oil markets have collapsed since the beginning of March as the coronavirus pandemic has crushed fuel demand. Expensive offshore drilling projects have been halted or delayed, creating an uncertain outlook for service firms that had hardly recovered from the last oil price crash.London-based Valaris, the result of the 2019 merger of Ensco Plc and Rowan Companies, posted a $2.81 billion asset impairment charge in the first quarter.

The environment in oil patches onshore and offshore alike has been challenging throughout 2019; worries about an economic slowdown – whether cyclical or induced by a trade war – have weighed heavily on oil prices, even in the face of reduced production by the big producers. Though storm clouds persist, there appears a clearing on the horizon.The fate of Offshore Service Vessels (OSVs) is, naturally, closely tied to the price of oil. Seacor Marine’s John Gellert, in reviewing its Q2 results, said: “Activity levels in the U.S.

Any analysis of markets for offshore service vessels (OSV) usually begins with analogies to rough weather, best of times/worst of times or similar. OSV expert Seabrokers, with a home base in Stavanger, Norway, in the February edition of its Seabreeze market report follows this convention with a description of the “feast or famine” conditions in the North Sea. Recent day rate action highlights the localized nature of markets for anchor handlers (AHT), platform supply vessels (PSVs) and similar equipment…

U.S. oil drilling has seen its best quarter since crude prices tumbled two years ago mainly due to small operators returning to the well pad, but analysts say the continued recovery in the rig count depends on whether OPEC's output reduction plan can bring the market back to $50 a barrel. Since May, drillers have added 100 oil rigs with the rig count rising to 416 rigs last week, that included the most additions in a quarter since the first quarter of 2014, according to oil service firm Baker Hughes Inc. The number of rigs had plunged from a record high of 1,609 in October 2014 to a low of 316 in May after crude prices collapsed in the biggest price rout in a generation, in part due to U.S. shale producers adding to a global oil glut.

Not so long ago, advanced drillships costing more than half a billion dollars each and capable of operating in ever-deeper waters practically guaranteed big profits for oil-rig operators. Now, with oil prices down by half since June, many have become a burden on their owners as drilling activity slows. Drillship operators face a more brutal hit to margins than they did after the oil-price crash of 2008 because of the huge cost of maintaining the more than $10 billion worth of state-of-the-art vessels that have been idled at sea, analysts say. Noble Corp Plc, Ensco Plc and Transocean Ltd are among companies that have invested in advanced rigs which, unlike older jack-up rigs that attach to the ocean floor, rely on dynamic positioning systems using thrusters to keep them in position.

Rig contractor Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc said it expected a significant number of ultra-deepwater rigs to be idled across the industry by year-end as oil producers' capital budget is likely to be lowered by a fifth this year. The company also said it would not pay a special dividend as it had been doing since 2006 to save cash to take advantage of opportunities in a distressed market. "...This action saves the company about $415 million over the next year, potentially equivalent to the cost of an ultra-deepwater asset," Evercore ISI analyst James West wrote in a note.

A pickup in offshore drilling is swelling the orderbooks of the handful of helicopter operators that shuttle oil workers to and from remote rigs. Their stock prices, depressed after Big Oil's recent spending cuts, could also be readying for take-off. Bristow Group Inc plans to invest $1 billion this year to procure just some of the 300 new helicopters that Barclays estimates will be needed by the oil and gas industry over the next five years. "We will invest more in this one year than in the last two-and-a-half years combined," said Jonathan Baliff, the chief financial officer of Bristow who will take over as CEO on July 31. With a market value of $2.7 billion…