2001.12.31
Oil and Gas International:
Congo
ex-pres convicted of treason. Oxy deal leads to trial and conviction of
Pascal Lissouba, former Congo Republic president, for treason and embezzlement.
Houston Business Journal:
Enron
Wind sells wind project to AEP.
"American Electric Power said Monday that it has purchased the wind
turbines that will supply power to City Public Service from Enron
Wind Corp. of California for $175 million. "
2001.12.28
Oil & Gas Journal:
Oil
prices rise as OPEC sees in the New Year with output cut. (Thursday)
"The agreement reached in Cairo means that OPEC, with a 60% share of the world oil
export market, will reduce production by 6.5% starting Tuesday."
WSJ (subscription):
Oil Futures
Fall Despite OPEC Production Cut. (Friday)
"February crude-oil prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange ended near the
day's lows, down 49 cents at $20.47 a barrel."
2001.12.27
Oil & Gas Journal:
EIA
predicts 32% increase in US energy demand by 2020.
"The agency predicts world oil demand will increase to 118.9 million b/d in 2020
from 76 million b/d in 2000, in part because of higher demand in the US and
developing countries, including in the Pacific Rim and Central and South America.
However, OPEC production is expected to reach 57.5 million b/d in 2020, nearly
twice 2000's number. Non-OPEC production will reach 61.1 million b/d by 2020."
Houston Chronicle:
Devon to pay down
debt. But selling assets as prices decline will be problem.
"Devon's higher profile in Houston will soon be obvious after a familiar downtown
skyscraper is renamed for the company. The 36-story Two Allen Center will be
renamed Devon Energy Tower because the company signed a lease for 193,000 square
feet of space.
Devon has about 335 employees here now and will be adding an undetermined number
of Mitchell's 370 workers. There will be layoffs, but no specifics have been
offered as to how many. Devon plans to keep Mitchell's Woodlands office building,
which will give it a total of 559,000 square feet of office space in the Houston
area."
2001.12.25
A couple of months ago I announced here that I was looking for employment, so
now I should announce that I'm not. Right after the first of the year, I am
starting a new position as a research geophysicist with Ensign Geosciences (USA). They are a
medium-small processing company with some really great technology (that's
not listed on their web page!). It should be hard work, and I'm really
looking forward to it.
I want to thank everyone who gave me a lead or said a good word for me over the
past two months. Even the dead ends were marvelous morale boosters.
2001.12.24
Here's another story about the Arthur Andersen survey I pointed to on the
7th and the CERA study from the 13th ->
Houston Business Journal:
Oil
surveys predict lower prices, more volatility in coming years.
"Also not surprisingly, 80 percent say advances in technology will improve
exploration success and lower production costs.
"That view is confirmed by Cambridge. Volatile oil price cycles and increasing
competition will make astute application of technology a key determinant of
success for the oil industry, Cambridge reports in its Global Oil Trends 2002,
a study conducted with Sun Microsystems."
2001.12.23
Reuters:
Antitrust suit reinstated
against oil companies.
"The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision dated on Thursday, threw
out a lower court ruling dismissing the suit, brought against 14 major
companies that employ about 80 percent to 90 percent of the industry's work
force." ...
"The suit was brought by Roberta Todd, a former Exxon worker on behalf of
herself and other Exxon employees. She alleged that the companies violated
federal antitrustlaw by regularly sharing detailed information about
compensation paid to nonunion managerial, professional and technical
employees. The suit alleged the companies agreed that they would use the
data to set salaries."
Bloomberg:
Ruling revives
pay-fixing suit in oil industry.
"This appeals court decision follows a big settlement in an oil industry case
in Houston. Fifteen offshore drilling companies agreed to pay $75 million to
settle a wage-fixing case here last month after employees complained that
employers conspired to keep their wages and benefits depressed for three
decades.... In that Houston case, about 60,000 employees are expecting
settlements. "
Oil and Gas International:
Argentina
operators told to return funds.
"... the remaining government temporarily headed by head of the Argentine Senate
Ramon Puerta has ordered operators ChevronTexaco, Perez Companc, Repsol-YPF, and
TotalFinaElf, among others, to repatriate their profits from the Argentine oil
and gas they have produced and to seek special authorization from the Central
Bank of Argentina if they must withdraw any funds and if they intend to service
any external debt with funds deposited in Argentine banks."
Oil and Gas International:
Roxar
signs Statoil for 3D modeling system.
2001.12.21
Oil and Gas International:
Petrobras
shopping for US Gulf acquisition.
"Petrobras is actively seeking to acquire an oil company active in the US Gulf
of Mexico for approximately US$3 billion, according to the company's director of
finance, Joao Nogueira Batista."
> Well, who fits the bill?
Oil and Gas International:
Landmark
& SGI form visualization JV.
"Halliburton's Landmark Graphics and SGI have joined forces to market GeoProbe
software and SGI Reality Center facilities. The GeoProbe software was developed
by Magic Earth, a recent acquisition and wholly owned business unit of
Halliburton." ...
"`There are more than 550 SGI Reality Center facilities around the world, over
120 of them in the energy sector,' added SGI CEO Bob Bishop."
Oil Online:
Shell
awards contract to Landmark.
"The scope of the work includes management of more than two terabytes of Shell
seismic data using PetroBank(TM), the most advanced data management system in
the E&P industry...."
> Maybe I'm getting jaded, but 2 Tbytes almost doesn't seem worth a PR release
any more. Anyway, congratulations to the former PGS Data Management.
Houston Business Journal:
Core
cuts earnings outlook.
2001.12.20
Oil and Gas International:
Seitel
opens new seismic data center.
"Seitel's Seitel Solutions is opening its seismic data hosting facility in
Houston. The new 72,000 sq ft facility will house Seitel's 1.4 petabytes of
seismic data that will be accessible 24 hours per day/seven days a week via
the Internet." ...
"[Paul Frame, president and CEO of Seitel, said] `Our clients will have the
capability to receive seismic data ordered from our on-line archive, delivered to
their workstations on average in less than ten minutes. We currently offer
24-hour response time on all orders while the industry norm is significantly
longer than that.'"
2001.12.19
Loren Carroll, World Oil:
Technology,
environment drive service / supply's future during weak 2002.
"In its 2002 Drilling and Production Outlook released in September, Spears and
Associates forecasts declines ranging from 21% to 40% within the service /
supply market.... However, a handful of segments, such as subsea equipment,
geophysical services and FPSOs, are predicted to see flat-to-moderate growth." ...
"Onshore environmental centers are now treating waste as a resource to be
recovered and re-used for other purposes. The onus will be on service companies
to not only treat waste, but to dramatically minimize the amount generated at
the wellsite. Consequently, environmental issues should be considered an
opportunity for growth."
Hart's E&P:
Emerging Technology --
Stuck at the starting gate.
"It is the service companies that drive that cost reduction. They shoulder an
increasing share of the cost (and risk) associated with technology development,
and they have a huge incentive to commercialize it quickly to make a return on
their investment. This raises the specter of applied science replacing pure
science in the oil patch, but it also offers the hope that service companies,
many of which have absorbed some of the displaced R&D folks who used to work
for oil companies, will move technology through the pipeline a little more
quickly."
Oil and Gas International:
TGS-NOPEC
acquires major multi-client surveys in $32 million deal.
"TGS-NOPEC now fully owns and controls the Mississippi Canyon 3D Survey along
with all derivative pre-stack depth migration products. This state-of-the-art
survey, completed in 2001, covers perhaps the most active deepwater region of
current exploration and development in the entire Gulf of Mexico."
2001.12.13
Oil & Gas Journal:
CERA
sees demand drop pushing oil prices $6/bbl lower in 2002.
"CERA said global oil demand growth has seen a significant slowdown. In 2000,
daily global oil demand increased by 700,000 bbl, but in 2001 it is expected to
grow only 200,000 bbl, the smallest year-on-year increase in more than 5 years.
It said daily world oil demand is estimated to fall in the fourth quarter 2001
by 500,000 bbl from the year-earlier level. Nevertheless, projected 2001 oil
demand of 76.1 million b/d will be a record."
Oil & Gas Journal:
Gov.
Knowles tightens Alaska's environmental, safety oversight.
"Under the program, the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission will increase
well inspections, testing, and follow-up. The governor said the number of wells
in Alaska has increased from less than 1,000 in the early 1980s to over 3,600, yet
the commission's staff is the same as it was 20 years ago."
2001.12.12
I attended the first annual review meeting for Art Weglein's
seismic research consortium last Thursday at UH. It was an impressive meeting.
Weglein attracted 19 companies to join his consortium in its first year, so it
was quite well-attended -- probably 60 attendees in the morning, including UH participants.
The agenda included about a dozen technical presentations, half of which were
from outside Weglein's program. The main attractions of the meeting, however,
were the UH presentations on inverse wave scattering techniques. In addition
to Arthur's obligatory presentations describing the basis of wavefield
scattering inversion, two of his students showed solid progress on wavelet
estimation and depth imaging.
Very cool stuff.
Oil & Gas Journal:
IEA
confirms non-OPEC producers take bigger share of global market.
"Orrin Middleton, an energy specialist at Barclays Capital in London said, `If
OPEC fails to come up with anything by the end of the week, prices won't pause
for breath until Brent hits $15/bbl. Even if OPEC comes up with something, prices
are bound to fall back as people wait for compliance figures.'"
2001.12.07
Oil & Gas Journal:
Industry
poll indicates lower oil prices, more spending for 3 years.
"Although Andersen officials couldn't explain the dichotomy between projections of
less capital and more spending, Burk noted that 80% of the respondents expect
greater success and lower costs because of technology advances."
Wall Street Journal (subscription):
Halliburton
Shares Tumble 43% After Verdict Against Subsidiary.
"As of 4 p.m. Friday, Halliburton's stock dropped ... to close at a 52-week low
of $12 on the New York Stock Exchange." ...
"Its 52-week high is $49.25."
2001.12.06
Houston Chronicle:
Oil leases off
Florida go for $340 million.
"Anadarko Petroleum Corp., a Houston-based independent, had the most high bids,
totaling $167.4 million on 28 tracts, followed by Shell Offshore with $127.9
million in winning bids on 28 tracts."
Oil & Gas Journal:
Sale
181 has mix of successes and underachievers.
"But some industry observers are still scratching their heads over several
established deepwater stars who either were underachievers or didn't even bid
in the first lease sale in those waters since 1988."
2001.12.02
Conoco is really hyping their new gravity patent --
Houston Chronicle:
Formerly secret
military technology aids Conoco's search in Gulf.
"The Houston-based oil company is using gravity and magnetic readings, coupled
with traditional seismic readings, to better visualize the shapes of the salt,
which is an important detail when trying to pinpoint prospects."
> Back in 1995 I was co-author of an SEG presentation that Manik Talwani
gave on "defining base of salt by inverting gravity data." The truth is,
though, I'm not a big gravity fan. A bad gravity interpretation by some
unknown (to me) contractor ruined a commercial subsalt imaging project I
conducted around '94, and I've never really believed gravity results since
then. (For salt, that is. For big, regional plate tectonics, I'm sure gravity
is great.)
> If you believe the hype, though, full tensor gravity gradiometry produces
much more accurate gravity results than traditional gravity methods.
Oil and Gas International:
PGS
scores $33 million offshore Brazil survey.
"Continuous Long Offset technology was developed by PGS to improve efficiency,
reduce cost and achieve high data quality. CLO acquisition uses physical
streamers 1/2 the length of the desired maximum offsets, combined with an
additional source vessel."
> Monica Miley's thesis used data from a
two-ship survey that was aquired for HARC in the Green Canyon area in 1991. It
was a 2D line, but it was still a processing nightmare; I guess PGS has streamlined
the processing sequence.
Oil and Gas International:
US
Republicans trying to slip ANWR past Senate.
