Aramco Overseas Co. BV and PetroChina Co. Ltd. have signed a memorandum of understanding for joint development of a 200,000-b/d grassroots refinery in Yunnan Province in far southwestern China.One can only assume the memorandum of understanding includes a clause for Saudi Arabia to supply the crude oil to keep the refinery running at full capacity (or at levels requested by PetroChina).
Tesoro Corp. will expand crude capacity of its 58,000-b/d refinery at Mandan, ND, to 68,000 b/d to handle oil from the Bakken shale and elsewhere in the Williston basin.This is a $35 million expansion project.
Halliburton reported first-quarter net income of $511 million, compared with $206 million for the same period last year.A better link here.
March 28, 2011: First hint that there may be some problems in the oil patch when 1Q11 earnings are reported. HAL is already reporting that weather-related issues and unrest in the Mideast will affect earnings.Comment: I wonder what their earnings would have been had there not been weather-related issues or unrest in the Mideast. Smile.
The number of wells idled by harsh weather in North Dakota's oil patch this year reached the highest level in a decade, stranding countless barrels of crude at well sites where they were unable to be shipped to market, state and industry officials say.
Oil drilling, however, continues at a record pace in the state.
Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources, said in a statement that there were 822 idle wells in February, up from 760 in January and the highest number since April 2001.The April Director's Cut is linked here.
Greenhouse gas emissions in the US dropped to their lowest level in 15 years in 2009 as the impact of the financial crisis led to decreases in fuel and electricity consumption, according to newly published figures.In 2009, the US saw its emissions of the six main greenhouses gases drop 6 per cent year-on-year to 6,633m metric tonnes, the lowest total since 1995. Despite that annual fall, emissions rose by more than 7.3 per cent between 1990 and 2009.
Sometime in the next few days, waves of snow geese will fill the sky across parts of North Dakota and western Minnesota as the birds race north toward their Arctic breeding grounds.Despite intensive hunting programs to reduce the numbers, the snow geese population remains too high and the arctic coastline continues to worsen, due to lost vegetation.
They're impressive to watch, these seemingly endless skeins, but after more than a decade of intensive hunting pressure to trim their numbers, the midcontinent population of snow geese remains too high, and the birds continue to threaten the fragile arctic coastline.
Liberalized regulations, including a spring "conservation order" in effect since 1999 - officials don't like to call it a hunting season - have slowed the rate of population growth. But they haven't resulted in fewer snow geese.Who woulda thought?