Musings: oil

Govt clears 3-yr drilling moratorium for oil explorers

written by atul at Thursday, July 8, 2010

Faced with global shortage of offshore drilling rigs, the government today decided to give a three-year drilling holiday or moratorium to firms such as state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Reliance Industries.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved a drilling moratorium from January 1, 2008, on 30 exploration blocks -- 16 of ONGC, 13 of Reliance Industries (RIL) and one of Italy's Eni, official sources said.

Companies such as ONGC and RIL have not been able to meet their work commitments for the blocks they had won under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) rounds because of a crunch in availability of deep-sea drilling rigs.

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Credits--www.Business-Standard.com

Oil Price prediction for rest of 2009

written by Unknown at Friday, March 27, 2009

Oil prices to average $50 for rest of 2009

Political and Business Daily, New Delhi, March 26, 2009Dubai:

Oil prices are expected to average $50 per barrel for the remainder of the year based on Dated Brent as the benchmark, a Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) report has said.The reference case forecast takes into account the dire state of the world economy and expects global demand to fall by 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2009. It also does not foresee any further compliance by OPEC countries with the quota reductions announced last December.Dated Brent was expected to have average $45 per, barrel in the first quarter, rising to $50.4 per barrel in the second and $51.8 -per barrel in the, third, then up to $53.4 per barrel in the last three months of this year."With demand set to fall dramatically, it is what happens to supply that will determine the price of oil," CGES said in its monthly, oil report.The report assumed that OPEC will keep its output relatively constant through the first quarter before leaking oil as prices marginally rise.But if OPEC fully complied with "the quotas, the report suggested that oil prices would rise much more rapidly throughout 2009, reaching an average of $74.3 per barrel in the final quarter, leaving an average of $57.4 per barrel for the year.