September 2015

Investors’s fears that Royal Dutch Shell will fail to complete its planned £43bn acquisition of BG Group have been exaggerated, Shell’s chief executive has said.

U.S. Rig Count is down 16 rigs from last week to 848, with oil rigs down 10 to 652, gas rigs down 6 to 196, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 0.

OAO Rosneft will sell a stake in one of its largest oil-producing projects to ONGC Videsh Ltd., the overseas-investment arm of India’s biggest explorer, for $1.27 billion, people familiar with the plan said.

The latest tumble in the price of oil, which hit a six-year low in August, is expected to cut non-OPEC supply in 2016 by nearly 0.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) – the biggest decline in more than two decades.

A derivatives contract would give the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, known as INE, a slice of an oil futures market worth trillions of dollars, offering a rival to London's Brent and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI).

With U.S. crude oil prices 47% lower in first-half 2015 compared to first-half 2014, U.S. onshore companies experienced a significant reduction in cash flow from operations. Most companies responded by reducing capital expenditures.

“Russia and OPEC have talked about cooperation in cutting production many times in the past, but the results of that were always dismal and disappointing,” said Nordine Ait-Laoussine, president of Geneva-based consultant Nalcosa and former energy minister of Algeria. “Russia has assumed that when oil prices go down, OPEC countries are in a weaker position and are more likely to be the first to cut its production, and they always did.”

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia sees no need to hold a summit of producing countries' heads of state if such discussions would fail to produce concrete action toward defending oil prices, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

LNG imports by 10 nations in the region that receive the tanker-delivered fuel dropped 3.4% from a year earlier in August, after reaching a two-year high in March, according to data from Genscape. Russian pipeline supplies soared about 20% from a year earlier in August, remaining at the highest level this year, tracking declining crude prices, according to data from Gazprom, the world’s biggest gas producer.

Brent crude oil prices will average $54/b in 2015 and $59/b in 2016. Forecast West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices in 2015 and 2016 average $5/b lower than the Brent price. The current values of futures and options contracts for December 2015 delivery suggest the market expects WTI prices to range from $32/b to $73/b (at the 95% confidence interval) in December 2015.