Citing rapidly increasing costs, Norwegian energy giant Equinor, and its partner BP, elected on May 31 to postpone for up to three years further development of the Bay du Nord deepwater oil project offshore Eastern Canada. Well advanced in terms of planning and design, a final investment decision (FID) was expected to be made on the $10 billion (C$13.5 billion) project by Equinor and BP late this year or early in 2024. With up to a three-year delay now possible, hopes that Eastern Canada’s offshore oil production would receive a significant boost by the end of this decade have been considerably reduced.
Featured Articles
- Blog
I Am a Rock - Building Toward Another Revival of Canada's East Coast Oil Production
Though much smaller in scope than the oil-and-gas producing behemoth of Western Canada, oil production from the offshore of Canada’s easternmost province of Newfoundland and Labrador already has decades of experience behind it. With five offshore fields producing a little under 230 Mb/d as of early 2023, the region’s slow decline is likely to continue unless existing fields undertake additional development work or new fields are discovered. Building on the province’s commitment to double output by the end of this decade, it has worked with various offshore operators to enhance its royalty regime for two existing sites that will generate increased production in the next few years. In addition, one major discovery has the real potential to meet the pledge of doubling output by the early 2030s. In today’s RBN blog we consider the history of the region’s offshore oil production and future plans to increase output.
- Blog
Good Thing - High-Grading Crude Oil Production Assets to Reduce GHG Emissions
There’s a growing acknowledgment in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere that crude oil will remain an important part of our energy future for decades to come. At the same time, however, the drive to decarbonize will continue, and as part of that effort, oil producers will be working to ratchet down their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A lot of that will be achieved through the purchase of carbon offsets or the use of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but another approach is for producers to “high-grade” their portfolios by divesting production assets that generate inordinately high volumes of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane during production and investing instead in assets with much lower carbon intensity. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the push by some producers to shift to “lower-carbon oil.”
- Blog
Surprise, Surprise - Chevron Shuns Permian for $60 Billion Grab of Guyana-Focused Hess
Rumors about potential oil and gas mergers are always swirling, but the announcement of ExxonMobil’s record-breaking deal to acquire Pioneer Natural Resources a couple of weeks ago generated a fever pitch of speculation about potential matchups. In the past week, we’ve seen media reports of possible courtships between Devon Energy and Marathon Oil and then Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern Energy. However, it was Chevron that shocked the oil patch by swiping right on former integrated oil company Hess Corp., opting for a $60 billion acquisition of an E&P with no Permian Basin exposure. In today’s RBN blog, we analyze the drivers and implications of what is now the second-largest U.S. upstream transaction ever.
