Upstream

Oil and gas executives are more pessimistic than they were a year ago about crude oil prices and only slightly more enthusiastic about a bump in natural gas prices, according to a survey by Deloitte.

With global demand increasing, liquefied natural gas (LNG) by 2025 will be the largest source of carbon emissions growth for the biggest oil and gas companies, according to an analysis by Wood Mackenzie.

Houston-based Tellurian Inc. last week veered into the upstream sector, making a deal to buy gassy Haynesville Shale acreage near its planned natural gas export facility in Louisiana.

North America’s top oil and gas company ExxonMobil Corp. on Friday reported a strong comeback earnings-wise for the second quarter, as oil and gas realizations increased and refining margins improved.

Chevron Corp. turned around a year-ago loss during the second quarter, while production increased and operating costs fell.

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.

When Brazil’s energy industry was reformed more than a decade ago, state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, aka Petrobras, raised $70 billion through an initial public offering (IPO) amid a buying frenzy in the Sao Paulo stock exchange. Mexico’s state-owned Petroleos Mexicano (Pemex) had no such luck in the country’s oil and gas reform, but the company has no plans to go it alone.

After years of relative inactivity, dealmaking in the Appalachian Basin is once again healthy but tenuous, as the region’s larger natural gas producers and private equity (PE) firms reassert their dominance in a market filled with both opportunities and risks.

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.