Posts tonen met het label olie. Alle posts tonen

maandag 12 december 2011

Bakken vol olie, ook in Australië: PetroFrontier Corp.

Company Profile

PetroFrontier is an international oil and gas corporation engaged in the exploration, acquisition and development of both conventional and unconventional world-class onshore petroleum and natural gas assets in Australia’s South Georgina Basin. PetroFrontier has a net 85.5% operated working interest in 13.6 milliongross acres (54,850 km2) of land in the region

Conventional and Unconventional Resources	Un-risked Undiscovered Original Oil in Place Expressed in Millions of Barrels			Un-risked Prospective (Recoverable) Oil Resources Expressed in Millions of Barrels
PFC’s Gross Lands	Low (P90)	Best (P50)	High (P10)	Low (P90)	Best (P50)	High (P10)
Thorntonia	3,548	6,278	10,700	556	1,026	1,838
Steamboat Sand	238	526	975	25	58	121
Hagen	155	273	460	16	31	58
Dolomitic Shoal	7	12	19	1	1	2
EP 103 & 104 Shale	137,229	192,190	257,899	8,879	18,883	27,799
EP 127 & 128 Shale	54,758	76,649	102,908	4,850	7,535	11,093
Total	195,935	275,928	372,961	14,326	27,534	40,911

According to Management, PetroFrontier's lands in the Southern Georgina Basin have similar geological features to the unconventional Bakken and conventional carbonate ramp plays in North Dakota and Southeast Saskatchewan, Canada’s Williston Basin. According to an April 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report, the Bakken oil shale formation has an estimated 3.65 billion barrels of recoverable light oil reserves. Comparably, according to the independent resource-evaluation firm, Ryder Scott Company Consultants Ltd. (Ryder Scott), PetroFrontier’s gross lands contain prospective (recoverable) un-risked, undiscovered resources totalling 11.3 billion barrels of oil. Of this amount, 8.9 billion barrels of oil come from the unconventional Arthur Creek Hot Shale.

PetroFrontier is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta and employs a highly experienced management team and board of directors with expertise in international oil and natural gas exploration and development. Conducting all of their operations in Australia, PetroFrontier also has an office in Adelaide, Australia and utilizes local expertise by employing local management, staff and consultants to assist in the development and implementation of the Corporation’s exploration projects. PetroFrontier believes that maintaining strong community, government and industry partnerships in Australia through sound corporate citizenship will be a key element of their overall success.

vrijdag 18 november 2011

Olie in Kurdistan

November 18, 2011 10:54 am

Trip report: The future of oil in Kurdistan

By Javier Blas in Erbil, northern Iraq

I have spent the past few days touring the oil-rich semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, visiting oilfields and interviewing its officials and foreign executives. It is boom time for Kurdistan, which optimists hope could soon produce more oil than some members of Opec. As I am leaving, Kurdistan is celebrating the arrival of ExxonMobil, the first of the so-called supermajors to enter the territory to explore for oil.

But the future will not be a simple trajectory.

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Exploration success. The oil and gas map of Kurdistan five years ago was largely blank. Today, dozens of oilfields dot it as companies discover hydrocarbons in commercial quantities in eight of every ten wells they drill. But drilling is not as easy as it appeared to be a few years ago, due to the complex geology of the region, and budgets are overrunning by more than a third in some cases.

Promises, but a tough reality. The Kurdistan Regional Government expects production to reach 1m barrels a day – more than double the output of Ecuador, the smallest member of the Opec oil cartel – by 2015, up from less than 200,000 b/d at present.

Yet future production depends on a political agreement between the KRG and the federal government in Baghdad to approve the long-awaited Iraqi petroleum law, which has been delayed since 2007. While an interim agreement allows for limited exports, which could run at 175,000 b/d next year, companies will be reluctant to invest heavily to lift output towards the 1m b/d target until a political agreement allows the passage of the petroleum law. The KRG and Baghdad say that the legal text will be done by the end of 2012, but cynical oil executives in Erbil note that both sides have repeated the same message for the past five years.

The arrival of Big Oil: Five years ago only a few small companies ventured into the region, but the nametags at a recent oil and gas conference in Erbil read like a Who’s Who of the industry. The pioneers, including the Oslo-listed DNO that is privately owned by Genel Enerji of Turkey, and London-listed Gulf Keystoneare still there, but new entrants are arriving, including large groups such as Hessand Marathon of the US, Repsol YPF of Spain, and OMV of Austria. Exxon has become the first supermajor to sign a contract to explore the region. Oil executives, diplomats and regional officials say other supermajors could soon join the world’s largest oil company.

The impact of the arrival of Exxon is unclear. Optimistic oil executives say it could force Baghdad to accept the KRG’s demands to develop its own industry, but others say that could sour relationships between Kurdistan and the federal government, delaying indefinitely the approval of the petroleum law. The arrival of another supermajor – Chevron of the US, Total of France and Eni of Italy are the names frequently mentioned – could give the KRG the upper hand, however.

The time for M&A. Most of the territory open for exploration has already been snapped up, so new entrants have just two routes: a so-called farm-in agreement, whereby a company buys a stake in a field or exploratory area in exchange for financing, or buying existing companies. The KRG, which by necessity backed small companies at the very beginning, would now prefer to see a consolidation in the sector that leaves fewer and bigger players.

After the arrival of Exxon, the market is valuing the current players at much higher multiples, so expect multibillion dollar deals. Oil executives in Erbil talk in particular about two deals: Gulf Keystone, which could be bought by a supermajor seeking a quick entry; and a potential merger of DNO and Genel Enerji.

Turkey is the new friend. Five years ago, Ankara branded some of the most senior KRG officials as terrorists. Today, Turkish diplomats see Iraqi Kurdistan as a source of energy to power the country’s rapid economic growth. Ankara wants to buy natural gas from Kurdistan for power generation. Moreover, Turkey wants to consolidate Ceyhan as the oil port of the eastern Mediterranean. The port is already the end of the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline and the Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Ankara would like to see another oil pipeline – most likely to low-quality Kurdish heavy oil – reaching the port and, potentially, a natural gas pipeline from Kurdistan feeding an LNG plant. Ankara and Erbil even dream that the Iraqi Kurdistan could supply natural gas to the Nabucco pipeline.

The Kurdish boom towns. Erbil, the political capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, is entering an oil boom. The city of 1m people, which still lacks a good hospital, has seen the opening of its first luxury hotel – and another three are under construction. Oil executives fly in and out with airlines offering new routes each month. But while money is pouring in, the region has yet to develop services to benefit from it, importing everything from equipment to food. Costs are rising fast too. Housing prices are rocketing and salaries in the oil industry have doubled in the past five years. And with more than 40 companies elbowing for space in Erbil and the region, retaining competent staff is a problem. Local political commentators are already warning that the region – like others in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East – could see the blessing of oil turning into a curse.

maandag 13 juni 2011

Alles over olie- en gaswinning en -aandelen

ma 13 jun 2011, 17:08

'Meer dan 500 miljard in zoektocht naar olie'

LONDEN - De gezamenlijke investeringen van oliemaatschappijen wereldwijd in de zoektocht naar olie en gas komen dit jaar naar verwachting voor het eerst uit boven 500 miljard dollar. Dat meldde de Britse bank Barclays maandag op basis van eigen onderzoek.

Daaruit bleek dat er dit jaar ruwweg 529 miljard dollar (367,5 miljard euro) zal worden geïnvesteerd. Dat is 16 procent meer dan vorig jaar en 8 procent hoger dan de raming van 490 miljard dollar die Barclays in december naar buiten bracht. De miljarden zullen vooral worden gestoken in grote gasprojecten en het boren in diep water in West-Afrika en Brazilië.

Met het opvoeren van de investeringen hopen de olieconcerns te profiteren van de stijgende vraag naar olie en gas. Die hogere vraag heeft dit jaar al geresulteerd in een toename van de olieprijzen met ongeveer 12 procent. Brentolie kostte maandag 119,30 dollar per vat, ruwe Amerikaanse olie werd voor 98,50 dollar per vat verhandeld.

Definitions:

Bcf Billion cubic feet.
Bcfe Billion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent.
bbl Barrel of oil.
bbl/d Barrel of oil per day.
boe Barrel of oil equivalent. Boe's may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. The Colombian standard is a boe conversion ratio of 5.7 Mcf:1 bbl and is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead.
boe/d Barrel of oil equivalent per day.
Mbbl Thousand barrels.
Mboe Thousand barrels of oil equivalent.
MMbbl Million barrels.
MMboe Million barrels of oil equivalent.
Mcf Thousand cubic feet.
MMcf Million cubic feet.
MMcf/d Million cubic feet per day.
Tcf Trillion cubic feet.
WTI West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil.

maandag 18 oktober 2010

Het Europese 'Bakken': 100 miljard barrels onder Parijs

Paris Oil Drillers Target 100 Billion Barrels Near Brie, Wine By Tara Patel - Oct 8, 2010 1:01 AM GMT+0200

A crude oil storage tank stands at the Vermilion Energy Trust pipeline and storage site in Vaudoy-en-Brie, near Paris. Photographer: Antoine Antoniol/Bloomberg
Patrick Monget, district head of Vermilion Energy Trust, turns a valve on a crude oil pipe at the company's pipeline and storage site in Vaudoy-en-Brie, near Paris.
Pumpjacks operate at the Vermilion Energy Trust pipeline and storage site in Vaudoy-en-Brie, near Paris.
Pierre Henry farms wheat and corn east of Paris in an area famous for its Brie cheese. The next big hit might be crude oil.
Henry’s farm, 78 kilometers (49 miles) from the French capital, sits atop what geologists call the Paris Basin, an area bordering Champagne and Chablis vineyards that struck oil in 1958. Henry leased a field to Exxon Mobil Corp. in 1985, which drilled wells that have pumped for a quarter century.
These days Vermilion Energy Inc., Toreador Resources Corp. and partner Hess Corp. are targeting a bigger prize, oil trapped in Paris Basin shale rock that was previously too hard to tap. Techniques developed to pulverize rock and release petroleum have revolutionized exploration and boosted U.S. natural gas production 20 percent since 2006. Vermilion said it has had “positive” results so far in the area.
“If the Paris Basin was in West Texas it would already be drilled and would have pretty substantial production,” Craig McKenzie, Toreador’s chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview in August.
Geology of the basin, a saucer-shaped rock formation extending over 140,000 square kilometers (34 million acres), is similar to the Bakken Shale in North America. While the Paris Basin may hold 100 billion barrels, it’s unclear how much is recoverable, according to the French Energy Ministry.
Last year, conventional oil output from wells around Paris declined to about 10,000 barrels a day, a quarter of the peak in 1988. Shale oil production around Paris may rise to about 50,000 barrels a day by 2020, according to Bernstein Research.
‘Positive Results’
New York-based Hess in May agreed to invest $120 million to help Toreador, based in Paris, search 800,000 hectares (1.97 million acres). Toreador plans a well this year about 50 kilometers away from Henry’s farm near the Napoleonic battle site of Chateau Thierry. Vermilion has over 176,000 acres and plans further tests in the region.
Toreador shares have risen 52 percent in New York trading since the agreement with Hess was announced on May 10, while Calgary-based Vermilion is up 23 percent in New York. The Morgan Stanley World/Energy index has dropped 3.1 percent.
Vermillion’s well is “clearly encouraging” for Toreador, Thomas Martin, analyst at Stifel Nicolaus who has an “overweight” rating on Toreador, wrote in a June report. The potential of shale oil production would provide “significant upside” for Toreador shares, he said. Martin declined to comment for this story.
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http://seekingalpha.com/article/244178-toreador-resources-how-the-paris-basin-shale-oil-play-was-discovered?source=yahoo