Oil Activity News

Cargill and Maersk Tankers are aiming to unlock more competitive and transparent bunker pricing and improved customer service through a new strategic partnership combining their bunker volumes, offering a new bunker procurement service to tramp shipping companies and trading houses. The initial goal is to procure bunker fuel for Cargill and Maersk Tankers’ combined fleet, while aiming to attract additional customers in the coming months. The service will leverage Cargill’s in-house bunker expertise and Maersk Tankers’ commercial and operational capabilities and will launch on April 1…

Increased commercial and oil activity in Liberia's territorial waters has seen the number of tankers and other ships supporting the oil activities, rise significantly.These activities are critical to the Liberian economy but pose a risk in the event of an oil spill, said a press release from International Maritime Organization (IMO).To address this issue, the Global Initiative for West, Central and Southern Africa (GI WACAF) has organized a workshop in Monrovia, Liberia (29 April – 2 May) which provided participants with incident management process information as well as an opportunity to test the newly learned material through an exercise.The…

Canada may ask oil companies to contribute to the hundreds of millions of dollars or more the country has to pay to an international body if they drill far offshore, according to an internal government memo. If that happens, it could make the operations more expensive and strain talks that companies will have with provincial governments, which already require them to pay royalties. A United Nations convention, which Canada ratified in 2003, says signatories need to pay the International Seabed Authority (ISA) if companies drill on the "extended continental shelf," the seabed part of a country's landmass, but more than 200 nautical miles (230 miles) offshore. It was never clear from where that money should come.

The year 2014 has proved to be a chilly one for Arctic shipping. Just 31 ships sailed between Europe and Asia across the Northern Sea Route, and 22 did part of the route, according to an Alaska Public Radio Network report. That’s down from a total of more than 70 in 2013. Thirty-one ships used the Northern Sea Route over Russia to sail between Europe and Asia and another 22 used part of the route, Alaska Public Radio Network reported. Last year, 70 vessels used the Northern Sea Route. Malte Humpert, executive director of the Arctic Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, says this year has served as a reality check on some of the over-heated Arctic predictions of recent years.

Faced with an earnings slump and added pressure from a recent federal court ruling, Shell has abandoned plans for offshore drilling near Alaska in 2014. Shell’s new CEO Ben van Beurden announced to investors today that the company will undergo a major refocus aimed at reversing down financial results, and part of that plan involves leaving Alaska off its agenda—at least for 2014. The major cog Van Beurden referenced was a federal ruling that said the U.S. government miscalculated…

According to a report from PennEnergy.com, California’s legislature might vote later this week to authorize the first new oil activity off Santa Barbara in 40 years as a way to help resolve the state’s budget crisis. The proposal reportedly was part of an agreement Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reached on July 20 with majority and minority leaders of the state’s senate and assembly to eliminate California’s $26.3b budget deficit. It includes some $15.5b in cuts, defers other costs, and takes funds from cities and counties, several news reports said. (Source: PennEnergy.com)

Teekay Shipping Corporation announced that it will buy Statoil's wholly-owned shipping company, Navion ASA, on a debt free basis, for approximately $ 800 million in cash. The transaction positions Teekay as a strategic logistics provider of shuttle tanker services to Statoil and other oil companies, and increases Teekay's presence in the conventional crude oil and product tanker trades. In 2001, Navion transported a total of 160 million tons of crude oil and petroleum products, exceeding the 135 million tons carried by Teekay in that year. Operating from Stavanger, Norway, Navion has built a leading franchise in the complex North Sea offshore loading business.

Freight rates for small fuel oil tankers in the Mediterranean have taken a long-anticipated hit. "Demand fell off a while back and there's been a build up of old ships, it was bound to happen," said a London tanker broker, who pegged the cross-Med trade for 30,000 tonners at around W185, compared to W210 two weeks ago. Italian brokers said on Wednesday that rates of W170-180 were currently the norm, and blamed holidays in Russia for a lack of fuel oil activity out of the Black Sea. Traders said on Tuesday that low sulfur was relatively balanced with little in the way of fresh demand and few if any cargoes now available. Cargoes were valued in the $129-$131 cif region. "Low sulfur seems to have been disappearing from the market," one regional trader said.