Tuesday, December 2, 2014; Weatherford Sells Chemical/Drilling Fluids Business to Lubrizol; Meanwhile, Might Orange Peels Be The Magic Potion?

Active rigs:

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RBN Energy: update on ethane. Ethane is worth more as natural gas; won't last forever.

Warren's Lubrizol buys chemicals, drilling fluids form Lubrizol. Link here, Reuters via Rigzone:

Oilfield services provider Weatherford International Plc said Berkshire Hathaway Inc's Lubrizol Corp would pay $750 million in cash for two businesses that provide chemicals and drilling fluids for oil and gas production.

Weatherford said the sale of its engineered chemistry and integrity drilling fluids businesses also included a potential increase of $75 million tied to the performance of the units after the closure of the deal, expected by the end of this month.

From Yahoo!In-Play:

Chevron announces first oil from Jack/St. Malo project in the Gulf of Mexico: Co announced that crude oil and natural gas production has begun at the Jack/St. Malo project in the Lower Tertiary trend, deepwater U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Jack/St. Malo is a key part of CVX's's strong queue of upstream projects and was delivered on time and on budget.

Bloomberg has a more in-depth story. 

Undeterred by the worst slump in oil prices this decade, Chevron (CVX) Corp. began pumping from a half-billion barrel deposit beneath the Gulf of Mexico more than 10 years after its discovery.

Crude and natural gas is flowing from the Jack and St. Malo fields through a platform built to service both developments simultaneously, Chevron said in a statement today. The $7.5 billion project -- Chevron’s costliest active Western Hemisphere investment -- is expected to produce for at least 30 years, according to the San Ramon, California-based company.

St. Malo was discovered 11 years ago in an area 280 miles (450 kilometers) south of New Orleans by Unocal Corp., which Chevron acquired in 2005. Jack was found by Chevron in 2004 about 25 miles from St. Malo. Both formations are part of a subsea mountain range called Walker Ridge. Daily production is expected to reach 94,000 barrels of crude and 21 million cubic feet of gas.

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Internecine War of Words

A little more clarity. The Telegraph is reporting:

The kingdom may also be forcing the price lower to damage the Iranian economy amid a bitter political dispute between to the two regional powerhouses over the future of Syria. Prince Turki said that both Russia and Iran should stop supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and if they both got out of the country the government in Damascus would fall in a few months.

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Off-Shore Drilling/Ultra-Deep Drilling vs Saudi

Statoil defers decision on $6 billion recovery project. Link here, Retuers via Rigzone:

Norway's Statoil said it has postponed a decision to invest $5.74 billion in a mature field, saying that it needed more time to refine the project as its profitability was under threat.

Statoil said it would decide in October next year instead of March whether to go ahead with a new platform at the Snorre field in the Norwegian Sea as it hoped to cut costs and get more precise cost estimates.

The project, which could squeeze another 240 million barrels of oil out of the field, has been in doubt due to high costs, and uncertainty has risen since oil prices tumbled to a five-year low. Statoil said a final decision on whether to build a new Snorre platform and extend the field's lifetime to 2040 would be taken in the fourth quarter of 2016 and production would start in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Analysts estimate that the Snorre platform's break even cost, including the investment and actual production spending, would be over $80 per barrel, well above the current $69 per barrel oil price.

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Will California Ship Orange Peels To Utah? 

Reuters via Rigzone is reporting:

While North America has been gripped by controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline that would ship crude to the United States from the Canadian oil sands, a small Canadian company has been quietly digging in the oil sands of Utah with a secret weapon it thinks may end the environmental argument: citrus.

U.S. Oil Sands Inc says its method will cut the cost and reduce the energy needed to separate oil from sand, lowering the environmental impact. Opponents are far from convinced.

The Calgary-based firm is developing its PR Spring project on a 32,000-acre lease about 280 kilometers (174 miles) southeast of Salt Lake City. It plans to start producing 2,000 barrels per day next year with the potential to reach 10,000 barrels per day.

Its patented technology uses a solvent whose main ingredient is derived from orange and lemon peels.

The solvent, it says, can separate tar-like oil deposits, known as bitumen, from sand more efficiently than methods currently used in the Canadian oil sands in northern Alberta.

I know one can use peanut butter to get chewing gum off clothes, so why not orange peels to separate thick oil from sand?

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November Car Sales -- US -- Incredible

Audi: up 22%
GM: up 6%, above estimates; best November sales in 7 years
Ford: down 2%
Fiat Chrysler: up 20%