long-dated U.S. crude oil futures

Declining demand in a global recession has produced a glut of crude at the massive Cushing oil storage terminal. Storage capacity at Cushing, about 70 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, is expected to exceed 55 million barrels by the end of the year. The premium for long-dated U.S. crude oil futures has grown dramatically since mid-July 2009, which should spur traders to hoard more crude on land and at sea to turn a profit.

Norway supply renewed in Norwegian Sea

A/S Norske Shell, operator of production licence 326, has hit gas with wildcat well 6603/12-1. The discovery is located 150 kilometers (93 miles) northwest of the 6506/6-1 Victoria gas discovery in the northern Norwegian Sea.
Well 6603/12-1 is being drilled by Ocean Rig semisub "Leiv Eiriksson". The prospect is located in license PL 392. “The well hit a 16-metre gas column in the Upper Cretaceous, in a reservoir of varying quality,” the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said.


Leiv Eiriksson Drilling Rig
- Semisub - 5

The offshore drilling rig Leiv Eiriksson is a Semisub type rig. It is currently owned by Ocean Rig Asa.
Leiv Eiriksson Semisub Drilling Rig Specification:
Design: Trosvik Bingo 9000
Built: Friede & Goldman at the Friede & Goldman, Pascagoula, Mississippi shipyard
Age: 2001
Drilling Rig Type: Semisub
Additional Type Spec: 5
Water Depth Rating: 8,200 ft
Drilling Depth: 30,000 ft
Classification: DNV

crude storage facilities brimming

The U.S. government last week said crude storage facilities were brimming with more oil than they've had in 16 years. Combined with the strategic petroleum reserve, the nation now has 1.05 billion barrels of oil in storage -- enough to fuel roughly 44 million cars for a year.

Western Hemisphere's largest find in three decades.

Exxon Mobil Corp.’s oil discovery off the coast of Brazil may hold enough crude to rival the nearby Tupi prospect as the Western Hemisphere’s largest find in three decades.

Exxon Mobil’s Azulao-1 well in an offshore region designated BM-S-22 tapped a reservoir that could contain 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, A floating drilling rig began boring a second well, called Guarani, into the reservoir in BM-S-22 earlier this week.

“We have no idea how big it is,” McGinn said “We’re nowhere near that yet.

Petrobras triggered a flood of interest in Brazil’s offshore crude deposits with the November 2007 announcement that Tupi may hold the equivalent of 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That would make it the largest find in the Americas since Mexico’s Cantarell field was discovered in 1976.

Domestic oil production is expected to increase this year over last, for the first time since 1991. That swing is attributable in part to increased production in the Gulf of Mexico from two giant new platforms that were years in the making. Domestic natural gas output rose by almost 8 percent last year from 2007, the biggest annual jump in more than a generation.

Crude should trade at $21.

In the late 1990s, oil companies traded on valuations that assumed a long-term oil price around $15 a barrel. The oil price should rise at the rate of global inflation, all other things being equal. Assume it was $15 in 1995. Then today it should be $21. Crude oil traded near $37 a barrel in New York on Tuesday, February 17, 2009.

Hayward says increase refinery capacity now

The challenge for all of us is to not allow this cyclical fall to pitch us into a structural loss in capacity," BP Plc Chief Executive Tony Hayward said. BP operates five U.S. refineries that in aggregate can process 1.54 million barrels of crude a day,

World's need for oil is ebbing quickly

The steep continued drop in Chinese oil use is one of the main reasons analysts are now predicting that world-wide crude consumption will decline both this year and next. The world's need for oil is ebbing so quickly that big producers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran may not be able to trim production fast enough, leading to an oversupply that some analysts now say could keep prices below $50 a barrel for all of next year.The US Energy Information Administration said in December 2008 that it expected global oil demand to slump by 50,000 barrels a day this year and 450,000 barrels a day next year, representing the first year-to-year drop in world oil demand since 1983