International Petroleum Finance articles from November 2005

International Petroleum Finance archives from November 2005

Oil and apples (and money).
November 1, 2005... They are strange times indeed when Exxon Mobil feels the need to run newspaper ads explaining that it's actually a fairly mediocre company. But alter posting third quarter profits of $9.9 billion, and attracting the ire of US politicians and...

Questions for Shell on cash and costs.
November 1, 2005... Royal Dutch Shell had a welcome and long overdue positive surprise for investors when it presented its third-quarter earnings at the end of last month. Its profits beat consensus market expectations by around 12%, and the news from the Gulf of...

Shell may miss this year's target for 'Big Cat' wells.
November 1, 2005... Royal Dutch Shell may end up drilling less than three-quarters of the "Big Cat" exploration wells it intended to this year, largely as a result of tightness in the drilling rig market and the knock-on effect from the recent US hurricanes. ...

Paladin, Vintage deals bring asset market to boil.
November 1, 2005... High oil and gas prices do not appear to be deterring merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the way that conventional wisdom would normally suggest. While 2005 is a long way from offering a repeat of the mega-merger frenzy of the late 1990s,...

Big profits leave big oil in the spotlight.
November 1, 2005... Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which swept through the Gulf of Mexico in the third quarter, may have wreaked havoc on oil company production and output goals, but with oil prices averaging $60 per barrel in the period, the world's biggest...

Green light, finally, for PetroKazakhstan.
November 1, 2005... Blink and you might have missed it, but tucked away on the second page of Kazakhstan's official government newspaper one day last month was the news that shareholders in Calgary-based PetroKazakhstan had been awaiting nervously for three...

Norway's big two try to learn from the past.
November 1, 2005... Norwegian majors Statoil and Norsk Hydro have burst out of the blocks in the latest quarterly results season, surprising the market by not only reporting record profits but also increased production and drilling success. Both majors have backed...

Spot growth prompts rethink in Asian LNG.
November 1, 2005... After 25 years of little change, a range of new and different ways of doing business in Asia's LNG market is swiftly emerging. An increasing number of LNG carriers are appearing on the seas without being dedicated to one single route, allowing...

Putin slams soaring costs at Sakhalin LNG.
November 1, 2005... Russia's controversial Royal Dutch Shell-led Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, where costs have doubled to a staggering $20 billion, is back in the limelight once again. During an official visit to the Netherlands last month,...

Few LNG routes open to US investors.
November 1, 2005... Like much of the global energy industry in this period of rising demand, security fears and high prices, companies with LNG operations are doing exceptionally well financially. This would be enough on its own to draw Wall Street's attention,...

Strong quarter for M&A.
November 1, 2005... Global merger and acquisition activity in the upstream oil and gas business amounted to $61.3 billion in the third quarter, more than double the revised tally for the second quarter, according to data compiled by energy research firm John S....

Rig rates keep rising.
November 1, 2005... US independent Anadarko has signed one of the biggest drilling rig deals in industry history, agreeing to a multiyear contract with Transocean valued at just under $1 billion. The agreements cover Transocean's Discoverer Spirit and...

Hunt Yemen exit nears.
November 1, 2005... Yemen has moved closer to ending US independent Hunt Oil's concession for the 75,000 b/d Marib-Jawf Block 18, with the cabinet announcement that a new government entity, Safer Co. for Exploration and Production Operations, will take over when...

Dana completes IPO.
November 1, 2005... The initial public offering (IPO) for the UAE's Dana Gas, the first regional gas company to be publicly listed, was completed at the end of last month, and was oversubscribed some 222 times, a further sign of the appetite for new energy...

Gazprom closes Sibneft deal.
November 1, 2005... Russia's state-owned Gazprom has completed its purchase of oil producer Sibneft for more than $13 billion. The deal, Russia's biggest-ever takeover, means nearly 30% of the country's oil industry is now under state control (IPF Oct.,p3). ...

Moody's boost for Russia.
November 1, 2005... Moody's Investors Service boosted Russia's sovereign debt rating one step further into investment grade territory last month, in part because of the country's rapidly expanding revenues from oil. Moody's raised Russia's foreign-currency country...

BP rig claims denied.
November 1, 2005... The engineering firm that designed BP's $1 billion Gulf of Mexico Thunder Horse platform has rejected the supermajor's claim that "design weaknesses" led to the near-capsizing of the facility in July. "We do not consider this incident to be...

EnCana chief quits.
November 1, 2005... Gwyn Morgan, who founded EnCana in 2002 and mined it into North America's biggest independent producer of natural gas and Canada's second largest company overall, is to step down as chief executive at the end of this year. Morgan, 59, will...

Kerr-McGee to pay off debt.
November 1, 2005... US independent Kerr-McGee plans to retire debt issued to finance a $4 billion share repurchase program about one year earlier than originally planned, thanks to a raft of asset sales that are expected to close before the end of this year. The...

Tax boost for Pemex.
November 1, 2005... Mexico's Senate has approved a long awaited tax reform bill that is expected to save state-owned oil company Pemex as much as $10 billion over the next tour years. The tax cut has now been overwhelmingly approved by both houses of the country's...

BP, Hindustan ink JV.
November 1, 2005... BP and India's state-controlled Hindustan Petroleum have signed a letter of intent to form a 50-50 refining and marketing joint venture. with the JV's focus on plans to build $3 billion refinery at Bhatinda in the northern state of Punjab, with...

Inpex, Teikoku merge.
November 1, 2005... Japan's largest exploration company Inpex is absorbing its smaller rival Teikoku Oil in an all-share deal worth 360.5 billion yen ($3.09 billion). In a first stage, the two firms will transfer stock to form a new joint holding company,...

Oil equities suffer in worst October since 1987.(EQUITY MARKETS)
November 1, 2005... Oil equities have benefited handsomely from the run-up in global crude prices, with ConocoPhillips, for example, watching its share value soar 35% this year. Unfortunately for investors, share values also suffer when oil prices come off, as...

Sasol looks to chemicals sale to fund GTL ambitions.(EMERGING MARKETS)
November 1, 2005... South Africa's Sasol is planning to sell its main European chemicals division to help fund its global ambition of reaching 450,000 barrels per day of gas-to-liquids (GTL) production by 2014. "The surfactants business is not integrated to...