Shutdown

President Trump’s decision to reopen parts of the federal government for three weeks may portend a hard line in the ongoing Sino-U.S. trade war, an issue that the oil and gas industry has been watching with increasing alarm, according to analysts.

A bomb technician with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said the ongoing partial shutdown of the federal government prevented him from meeting with oil and gas industry officials to discuss pipeline security, warning the industry is being exposed to security risks.

Representatives from the oil and gas industry are beginning to worry that the partial shutdown of the federal government, now the longest in U.S. history, could impact drilling on federal lands and blunt permitting for infrastructure, including pipelines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities.

American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO Mike Sommers said the partial shutdown of the federal government, which reached its 18th day on Tuesday, hasn’t had a major impact on the oil and gas industry to date, but he warned that could change should the impasse continue.

A partial shutdown of the federal government appears so far to have had a limited impact on the oil and gas industry.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) on Thursday ordered an oil and natural gas wastewater injection well shut down in Kingfisher County in response to overnight earthquake activity.

In the wake of the news Friday that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) would cease operations and furlough its staff thanks to the U.S. Government shutdown, traders and analysts are waiting to see how the natural gas futures market deals with the lack of a weekly storage inventory update.

President Obama and congressional Republicans traded accusations Tuesday over who was responsible for slowing or stopping of federal permitting for oil and gas drilling.

Despite the shutdown of the federal government, all of the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports should be released on schedule this week and next, the agency said Tuesday. FERC also was conducting business as usual Tuesday for an unspecified time until its reserve funds run out. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had only key personnel continuing to work.