Tag Archives: PETREF

Business

Storm cuts U.S. oil, gas, power output, sending prices higher

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Dec 23 (Reuters) – Frigid cold and blowing winds on Friday knocked out power and cut energy production across the United States, driving up heating and electricity prices as people prepared for holiday celebrations.

Winter Storm Elliott brought sub-freezing temperatures and extreme weather alerts to about two-thirds of the United States, with cold and snow in some areas to linger through the Christmas holiday.

More than 1.5 million homes and businesses lost power, oil refineries in Texas cut gasoline and diesel production on equipment failures, and heating and power prices surged on the losses. Oil and gas output from North Dakota to Texas suffered freeze-ins, cutting supplies.

Some 1.5 million barrels of daily refining capacity along the U.S. Gulf Coast was shut due to the bitterly cold temperatures. The production losses are not expected to last, but they have lifted fuel prices.

Knocked out were TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA), Motiva Enterprises (MOTIV.UL) and Marathon Petroleum (MPC.N) facilities outside Houston. Cold weather also disrupted Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), LyondellBasell (LYB.N) and Valero Energy (VLO.N) plants in Texas that produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Sempra Infrastructure’s Cameron LNG plant in Louisiana said weather disrupted its production of liquefied natural gas without providing details. Crews at the 12 million tonne-per-year facility were trying to restore output, it said.

Freeze-ins – in which ice crystals halt oil and gas production – this week trimmed production in North Dakota’s oilfields by 300,000 to 350,000 barrels per day, or a third of normal. In Texas’s Permian oilfield, the freeze led to more gas being withdrawn than was injected, said El Paso Natural Gas operator Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI.N).

U.S. benchmark oil prices on Friday jumped 2.4% to $79.56, and next-day gas in west Texas jumped 22% to around $9 per million British thermal units , the highest since the state’s 2021 deep freeze.

Power prices on Texas’s grid also spiked to $3,700 per megawatt hour, prompting generators to add more power to the grid before prices fell back as thermal and solar supplies came online.

New England’s bulk power supplier said it expected to have enough to supply demand, but elsewhere strong winds led to outages largely in the Southeast and Midwest; North Carolina counted more than 187,000 without power.

“Crews are restoring power but high winds are making repairs challenging at most of the 4,600 outage locations,” Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks wrote on Twitter.

Heating oil and natural gas futures rose sharply in response to the cold. U.S. heating oil futures gained 4.3% while natural gas futures rose 2.5%.

In New England, gas for Friday at the Algonquin hub soared 361% to a near 11-month high of $30 mmBtu.

About half of the power generated in New England comes from gas-fired plants, but on the coldest days, power generators shift to burn more oil. According to grid operator New England ISO, power companies’ generation mix was at 17% from oil-fired plants as of midday Friday.

Gas output dropped about 6.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) over the past four days to a preliminary nine-month low of 92.4 bcfd on Friday as wells froze in Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

That is the biggest drop in output since the February 2021 freeze knocked out power for millions in Texas.

One billion cubic feet is enough gas to supply about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.

Reporting by Erwin Seba and Scott DiSavino; additional reporting by Arathy Somasekhar and Laila Kearney; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Kirsten Donovan, Aurora Ellis and Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Scott Disavino

Thomson Reuters

Covers the North American power and natural gas markets.

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Business

Five Chinese state-owned companies to delist from NYSE

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SHANGHAI/HONG KONG, Aug 12 (Reuters) – Five Chinese state-owned firms including China Life Insurance (601628.SS) and oil giant Sinopec (600028.SS) said Friday they would delist from the New York Stock Exchange, amid heightened diplomatic and economic tensions with the United States.

The companies, which also include Aluminium Corporation of China (Chalco) (601600.SS), PetroChina (601857.SS) and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co (600688.SS), said in separate statements that they would apply for delistings of their American Depository Shares from later this month.

The five, which were added to the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (HFCAA) list in May after they were identified as not meeting U.S regulators’ auditing standards, will keep their listings in Hong Kong and mainland Chinese markets.

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There was no mention of the auditing row in separate statements by the Chinese companies outlining their moves, which come amid heightened tensions after last week’s visit to Taiwan by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Beijing and Washington have been in talks to resolve a long-running dispute that could mean Chinese firms being kicked off U.S. exchanges if they do not comply with U.S. audit rules.

“These companies have strictly complied with the rules and regulatory requirements of the U.S. capital market since their listing in the U.S. and made the delisting choice for their own business considerations,” the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said in a statement.

Some of China’s largest companies including Alibaba Group Holdings , J.D Com Inc and Baidu Inc are among almost 270 on the list and at threat of being delisted.

Alibaba said last week it would convert its Hong Kong secondary listing into a dual primary listing which analysts indicated could ease the way for the Chinese ecommerce giant to switch primary listing venues in the future. read more

In premarket trade Friday, U.S.-listed shares of China Life Insurance and oil giant Sinopec fell 5.7% about 4.3% respectively. Aluminium Corporation of China dropped 1.7%, while PetroChina shed 4.3%. Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co shed 4.1%.

“China is sending a message that its patience is wearing thin in the audit talks,” said Kai Zhan, senior counsel at Chinese law firm Yuanda, who specialises in areas including U.S. capital markets and U.S. sanction compliance.

Washington has long demanded complete access to the books of U.S.-listed Chinese companies, but Beijing bars foreign inspection of audit documents from local accounting firms, citing national security concerns.

The companies said their U.S. traded share volume was small compared with those on their other major listing venues.

PetroChina said it had never raised follow-on capital from its U.S listing and its Hong Kong and Shangai bases “can satisfy the company’s fundraising requirements” as well as providing “better protection of the interests of the investors.”

China Life and Chalco said they would file for delisting on Aug. 22, with it taking effect 10 days later. Sinopec and PetroChina said their applications would be made on Aug. 29.

China Telecom (0728.HK), China Mobile (0941.HK) and China Unicom (0762.HK) were delisted from the United States in 2021 after a Trump-era decision to restrict investment in Chinese technology firms. That ruling has been left unchanged by the Biden administration amid continuing tensions.

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Reporting by Samuel Shen in Shanghai, Scott Murdoch in Hong Kong and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Hugh Lawson, David Goodman and Alexander Smith

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World

Russian refinery says it was struck by drones from direction of Ukraine

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  • Fire broke out on Wednesday morning
  • Blaze has been put out
  • Russia investigating attacks on its oil installations
  • This content was produced in Russia, where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine

MOSCOW, June 22 (Reuters) – Two drones flying from the direction of Ukraine hit a major Russian oil refinery near the border on Wednesday, the plant said, sending a ball of flame and black smoke billowing into the sky and prompting the plant to suspend production.

Russian regions bordering Ukraine have reported numerous attacks and shelling after Moscow sent its troops into its former Soviet neighbour on Feb. 24 for what it calls a “special military operation”.

The Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region said the first drone struck at 8.40 a.m. (0540 GMT) hitting acrude distillation unit, triggering a blast and ball of fire.

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The second strike at 0623 GMT was aimed at crude oil reservoirs at the refinery, the largest supplier of oil products in southern Russia, but caused no fire, the plant said. No one was injured.

“As a result of terrorist actions from the Western border of the Rostov region, two unmanned aerial vehicles struck at the technological facilities of Novoshakhtinsk,” the plant said.

“Staff have been evacuated and technological equipment has been stopped to assess the damage.”

Rostov’s regional governor, Vasily Golubev, said the oil refinery suspended operations. He said fragments of two drones had been found at the refinery.

Social media footage showed a drone flying towards the refinery, located just 8 km (5 miles) from the border with Ukraine, before a large ball of flame rose up, prompting exclamations from those near the camera.

The refinery has an annual capacity of up to 7.5 million tonnes, and started operations in 2009.

Russia’s energy ministry said the fire had not affected gasoline and diesel supplies to consumers in southern Russia.

Russia is also investigating the cause of a large fire that erupted at an oil storage facility in the city of Bryansk, 154 km (96 miles) northeast of the border with Ukraine, in late April.

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Reporting by Reuters; editing by Jason Neely, Guy Faulconbridge and Nick Macfie

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Behave normally, UK transport minister tells Britons queuing for fuel

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BRIGHTON, England, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Transport Minister Grant Shapps on Sunday called on Britons to behave normally when buying petrol, saying there was no shortage of fuel and the government was stepping in to ease a shortage of drivers bringing it to petrol stations.

In recent days long lines of vehicles have formed at petrol stations as motorists waited, some for hours, to fill up with fuel after oil firms reported a lack of drivers was causing transport problems from refineries to forecourts.

Some operators have had to ration supplies and others to close gas stations.

“There’s plenty of fuel, there’s no shortage of the fuel within the country,” he told Sky News.

“So the most important thing is actually that people carry on as they normally would and fill up their cars when they normally would, then you won’t have queues and you won’t have shortages at the pump either.”

Shapps said the shortage of drivers was down to COVID-19 disrupting the qualification process for drivers, preventing new labour from entering the market.

Others pinned the blame on Brexit and poor working conditions forcing out foreign drivers.

Drivers queue to enter a fuel station in London, Britain, September 25, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

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The government on Sunday announced a plan to issue temporary visas for 5,000 foreign truck drivers. read more

But business leaders have warned the government’s plan is short-term fix and will not solve an acute labour shortage that risks major disruption beyond fuel deliveries, including for retailers in the run-up to Christmas.

Shapps called the panic over fuel a ‘manufactured situation’ and blamed it on a hauliers’ association.

“They’re desperate to have more European drivers undercutting British salaries,” he said.

An Opinium poll published in the Observer newspaper on Sunday said that 67% of voters believe the government has handled the crisis badly. A majority of 68% said that Brexit was partly to blame.

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, speaking at his party’s annual conference in southern England, said ministers had failed to plan for labour shortages following the 2016 Brexit vote and called for a bigger temporary visa scheme.

“This is a complete lack of planning: we exited the EU … just one consequence was there was going to be a shortage of HGV (Heavy Goods Vehicle) drivers. That was predictable, it was predicted,” he told the BBC.

Reporting by William James and Elizabeth Piper, Editing by Angus MacSwan

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World

‘Eye of fire’ in Mexican waters snuffed out, says national oil company

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MEXICO CITY, July 2 (Reuters) – A fire on the ocean surface west of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula early on Friday has been extinguished, state oil company Pemex said, blaming a gas leak from an underwater pipeline for sparking the blaze captured in videos that went viral.

Bright orange flames jumping out of water resembling molten lava was dubbed an “eye of fire” on social media due to the blaze’s circular shape, as it raged a short distance from a Pemex oil platform.

The fire took more than five hours to fully put out, according to Pemex.

The fire began in an underwater pipeline that connects to a platform at Pemex’s flagship Ku Maloob Zaap oil development, the company’s most important, four sources told Reuters earlier.

Ku Maloob Zaap is located just up from the southern rim of the Gulf of Mexico.

Pemex said no injuries were reported, and production from the project was not affected after the gas leak ignited around 5:15 a.m. local time. It was completely extinguished by 10:30 a.m.

The company added it would investigate the cause of the fire.

Pemex, which has a long record of major industrial accidents at its facilities, added it also shut the valves of the 12-inch-diameter pipeline.

Angel Carrizales, head of Mexico’s oil safety regulator ASEA, wrote on Twitter that the incident “did not generate any spill.” He did not explain what was burning on the water’s surface.

Ku Maloob Zaap is Pemex’s biggest crude oil producer, accounting for more than 40% of its nearly 1.7 million barrels of daily output.

“The turbomachinery of Ku Maloob Zaap’s active production facilities were affected by an electrical storm and heavy rains,” according to a Pemex incident report shared by one of Reuters’ sources.

Company workers used nitrogen to control the fire, the report added.

Details from the incident report were not mentioned in Pemex’s brief press statement and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reporting by Adriana Barrera and Marianna Parraga; Additional reporting by David Alire Garcia; Writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Daina Beth Solomon, Philippa Fletcher and David Gregorio

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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