Mackenzie

Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) plans to drill a test well later this year for the offshore Zama reservoir, a private sector-led discovery that may overlap with a neighboring block controlled by the state oil company.

As oil and gas operators become “leaner and meaner,” they are reducing the size of projects and their costs, with a number of big investment decisions on the horizon, according to Wood Mackenzie.

It’s a case of natural gas all around and not an MMBtu to burn. Communities on Canada’s Beaufort Sea coast, hoping to retrieve their lost status as a breeding ground of production and pipeline designs, have set out to melt their industrial deep freeze by developing local gas.

BHP Billiton Ltd., whipsawed by sharp impairments and activist investors that want the company to train its development solely on conventional oil and mining, is actively marketing its U.S. onshore portfolio, an 800,000-plus leasehold that runs through the Permian Basin, Haynesville, Eagle Ford and Fayetteville shales.

The southern gale of shale production propelled by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has blown rich deposits on Canada’s northern frontier off the North American natural gas market, according to the National Energy Board (NEB).

Final investment decisions (FID) within the global upstream sector are on pace to double from 2016, marking a positive turning point for the long-depressed oil and natural gas markets.

Oil and natural gas exploration companies plan to keep the focus on low-cost opportunities this year, with an emphasis on creating value, capital efficiency and returns on investments, according to Wood Mackenzie Ltd.

Centrica plc said this week it plans to shutter permanently its Rough natural gas storage facility off the east coast of England after concluding it could not be returned safely to operation. The closure of the largest gas storage site in the UK could lead to more reliance on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, analysts said.

For the Big Oil majors, the portfolios are shifting considerably over the next decade toward natural gas and low breakeven oil, but they also are eyeing more penetration in renewables as investor sentiment toward carbon hardens, Wood Mackenzie researchers said Monday.