The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
The test results have been shared with our Tier 1 partner and with Ford and opportunities to further improve the performance of V-Charge in a production-intent twin-stage boosting system have been identified. Working in conjunction with Bath and our Tier 1 partner and using our validated simulation model, we have specified a production turbocharger unit which is optimized to maximize the performance improvements and fuel economy of the V-Charge equipped engine. The partners expect that this revised configuration will demonstrate further benefits from the technology and confirm the full extent of engine downsizing and downspeeding that can be achieved with V-Charge. The Tier 1 partner in the programme has committed to delivering the adapted turbocharger unit in March 2016 and it is anticipated that the results from on-engine testing will be available in April 2016. The parties expect these results to show that this new V-Charge configuration outperforms other advanced boosting technologies.
Torotrak plc 120% Potential Upside Indicated by Cantor Fitzgerald Posted 2nd February 2016 Torotrak plc using EPIC/TICKER code LON:TRK had its stock rating noted as ‘Reiterates’ with the recommendation being set at ‘BUY’ this morning by analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald. Torotrak plc are listed in the Consumer Goods sector within UK Main Market. Cantor Fitzgerald have set their target price at 11 GBX on its stock. This now indicates the analyst believes there is a possible upside of 120% from today’s opening price of 5 GBX. Over the last 30 and 90 trading days the company share price has increased 1.4 points and decreased 0.73 points respectively. Torotrak plc LON:TRK has a 50 day moving average of 4.27 GBX and a 200 day moving average of GBX. The 1 year high share price is 15.75 GBX while the 52 week low for the stock is 3.28 GBX.
http://www.bpcplc.com/media/30280/bpc_shareholder_presentation__october_15___v10_.pdf
A US House Energy and Commerce subcommittee is expected Thursday to approve a bill to lift all limits on US crude exports. The House energy and power subcommittee is scheduled to vote on a bill from Texas Representative Joe Barton, a Republican, to repeal these limits, which have been in place for roughly four decades. In a joint statement, Michigan Representative Fred Upton, a Republican and the full committee’s chairman, and Kentucky Representative Ed Whitfield, a Republican and the subcommittee’s chairman, said current limits on US crude exports have become “obsolete.” “We have taken a thoughtful approach to reconsidering oil exports, and the time to lift the ban is now,” Upton and Whitfield said. The subcommittee vote, which will be the first of its kind in the House, is expected to set up a potential full House vote as early as this month. There are enough votes in the […] Click here to view full article at www.platts.com
DynamoHum 31 May'15 - 16:08 - 5768 of 5768 0 0 edit The U.S. oil market is on the brink of returning to a more bullish footing known as backwardation for the first time in six months, with the discount for prompt supplies vanishing as a domestic supply glut eases. The discount for prompt U.S. oil futures versus the second-month contract – a structure known as “contango” that signals a weak market – narrowed to its smallest in five months on Friday as strong demand and flattening production added to expectations that domestic stockpiles will continue to fall over the summer. If that spread flips to a premium, known as “backwardation,” it would come in sharp contrast to the global Brent futures, which is showing no signs of emerging from its 50-cent contango. On Thursday a prompt cargo of Forties crude, part of the European benchmark, traded at its lowest in 6-1/2 years. The prompt-month July contract for U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was 27 cents lower than second-month August at 1:35 p.m. EDT. That was the narrowest spread since Dec. 19. A month ago it was at a $1.50 discount. Oil futures typically trade in a contango structure when immediate supplies are in surplus; backwardation indicates a feared shortage. The vanishing contango means fewer incentives to store oil for later sale. Earlier this year, traders were racing to fill up tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, to cash in on a nearly risk-free storage trade when the 12-month contango reached around $12 a barrel. Now oil in a year's time is only some $2 higher. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Thursday domestic crude inventories fell by 2.8 million barrels last week, down for the fourth week in a row before Monday's Memorial Day holiday, which unofficially kicked off the peak summer driving season in the United States. The stock decline announced by the EIA was beyond a 857,000-barrel draw forecast in a Reuters survey and in contrast with a build of 1.3 million barrels estimated by the American Petroleum Institute. "If you continue to see weekly draws like this, you will continue to see a weakening in the WTI contango," said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho Securities in New York. Spot WTI jumped almost 5 percent on Friday, its biggest daily gain in six weeks, driven by the EIA data and a pause in the U.S. dollar's rally. But oil bears caution that the spot price could come under pressure again on broader implications from the global oil glut. The dollar's recent gains have also weighed on oil, which becomes costlier for users of other currency when the greenback rises.
The point of the article is how much cheaper it's going to be to produce shale oil, wherever the eventual price stabilises , but it won't be less than $60/$70 a barrel, because the world economy can't function on less without Destabalising oil producing country's and causing social upheaval which benefits no one. IMHO In fact longer term oil will be up around $ 100+
Continued Shale’s spectacular rise is also generating massive quantities of data: the $600 billion[7] in U.S. shale infrastructure investments and the nearly 2,000 million well-feet drilled have produced hundreds of petabytes of relevant data. This vast, diverse shale data domain—comparable in scale with the global digital health care data domain—remains largely untapped and is ripe to be mined by emerging big-data analytics. Shale 2.0 will thus be data-driven. It will be centered in the United States. And it will be one in which entrepreneurs, especially those skilled in analytics, will create vast wealth and further disrupt oil geopolitics. The transition to Shale 2.0 will take the following steps: Oil from Shale 1.0 will be sold from the oversupply currently filling up storage tanks. More oil will be unleashed from the surplus of shale wells already drilled but not in production. Companies will “high-grade” shale assets, replacing older techniques with the newest, most productive technologies in the richest parts of the fields. And as the shale industry begins to embrace big-data analytics, Shale 2.0 begins. Further, if the U.S. is to fully reap the economic and geopolitical benefits of Shale 2.0, Congress and the administration should: Remove the old, no longer relevant, rules prohibiting American companies from selling crude oil overseas. Remove constraints, established by the 1920 Merchant Marine Act, on transporting domestic hydrocarbons by ship. Avoid inflicting further regulatory hurdles on an already heavily regulated industry. Open up and accelerate access to exploration and production on federally controlled lands.
DynamoHum 28 May'15 - 13:17 - 5752 of 5752 0 0 edit Shale 2.0 Technology and the Coming Big-Data Revolution in America’s Shale Oil Fields Mark P. Mills, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute Executive Summary Center for Energy and the Environment. READ FULL REPORT With petroleum prices down 50 percent over the past year, many analysts and pundits are predicting the end of America’s shale oil boom. Recent headlines include: “Oil Price Fall Forces North Dakota to Consider Austerity” (New York Times);[1] “Oil Price Drop Hurts Spending on Business Investments” (Wall Street Journal);[2] “The American Oil Boom Won’t Last Long at $65 per Barrel” (Bloomberg Business);[3] and “The Shale Oil Revolution Is in Danger” (Fortune)[4]. High prices, shale skeptics argue, created a bubble of activity in unsustainably expensive shale fields. As shale-related businesses contract, consolidate, and adjust to the new price regime, a major shale bust is inevitable, they add, with ghost towns littering idle fields from Texas to North Dakota. It is true that the oil-price collapse was caused by the astonishing, unexpected growth in U.S. shale output, responsible for three-fourths of new global oil supply since 2008. And as lower prices roil operators and investors, the shale skeptics’ case may seem vindicated. But their history is false: the shale revolution, “Shale 1.0,” was sparked not by high prices—it began when prices were at today’s low levels—but by the invention of new technologies. Now, the skeptics’ forecasts are likely to be as flawed as their history. This paper explains how continued technological progress, particularly in big-data analytics, has the U.S. shale industry poised for another, longer boom, a “Shale 2.0.” The End of the Beginning John Shaw, chair of Harvard’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, recently observed: “It’s fair to say we’re not at the end of this [shale] era, we’re at the very beginning.”[5] He is precisely correct. In recent years, the technology deployed in America’s shale fields has advanced more rapidly than in any other segment of the energy industry. Shale 2.0 promises to ultimately yield break-even costs of $5–$20 per barrel—in the same range as Saudi Arabia’s vaunted low-cost fields. The shale industry is unlike any other conventional hydrocarbon or alternative energy sector, in that it shares a growth trajectory far more similar to that of Silicon Valley’s tech firms. In less than a decade, U.S. shale oil revenues have soared, from nearly zero to more than $70 billion annually (even after accounting for the recent price plunge). Such growth is 600 percent greater than that experienced by America’s heavily subsidized solar industry over the same period.[6] Shale’s spec
WASHINGTON, DC, May 20 Ending the US crude oil export ban will produce such significant energy, economic, and geopolitical benefits that it appears likely to come to a Senate vote during 2015, Energy and Commerce Committee member John Hoeven (D-ND) predicted. “Low prices or high prices, we’ll be in a better place economically if US producers can compete globally,” he said in keynote remarks at a May 20 forum sponsored by the American Council for Capital Formation. “We’ll need the right mix of pipelines, rails, and roads, but it will be a net win for the country and for consumers.” Other speakers at the event, where ACCF released a new report, “ Crude Oil Exports: Economic and Geopolitical Impacts ,” said it’s difficult to determine the White House’s actual stand on the idea of repealing the crude export ban which was imposed 2 years after the 1973 Arab oil […] Click here to view full article at www.ogj.com
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/us-usa-energy-investment-idUSKBN0O50B820150520
Caza has announced results this morning and not surprisingly show revenues down in line with the oil and gas prices. Production is still well up on this time last year and around the same as the last quarter with EBITDA rising 29%. Oil and NGL’s are rising as a percentage of hydrocarbons recovered and the netback is $21.02 per barrel against $57.76 last year. I will be writing more about Caza in the next few days as I spent a day with them this week at their offices catching up with the story but I think the market may be being rather harsh on the company. It has had significant success with the drill bit and the Bone Spring play is arguably one of the most exciting in the US at the moment. In comparison with its peers in the area it is up with the best and the technical team at Caza is genuinely on the case, more later…
Oil Rig 02 (Reuters) Oil prices rose more than a dollar to 2015 highs on Wednesday, as a month-long rally gained further impetus from a fall in U.S. crude stocks and conflict in the Middle East. Brent crude jumped by $1.36 to $68.88 a barrel by 0855 GMT, after hitting a 2015 peak of $69.14. U.S. crude traded $1.51 higher at $61.91 a barrel, near an intraday high of $62.05. "We haven't seen hedge funds and money managers to be as optimistic and bullish as they are currently," said Vyanne Lai, an oil analyst with National Australia Bank. "They are at their most bullish since July last year, when the oil market fundamentals haven't really changed that much." Industry group the American Petroleum Institution (API) said on Tuesday that U.S. crude oil stocks fell for the first time this year, giving a lift to oil prices. The API said that overall stocks fell by 1.5 million barrels while stocks at the key delivery point of Cushing, Oklahoma fell by 336,000 barrels. The U.S. government's Energy Information Administration will issue official stockpiles data later on Wednesday. Conflict in Yemen continued on Wednesday after witnesses said planes from a Saudi Arabia-led coalition struck Yemeni towns overnight, following mortar attacks from Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthi rebels. While Yemen is only a small oil producer, it sits on key shipping routes and any conflict involving its neighbour Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil exporter, shakes the market. In Libya, protests have stopped crude flows to the eastern port of Zueitina. Libyan output is currently below 500,000 barrels per day, a third of what the country pumped before 2010. Oil prices also drew support as the dollar fell 0.3 percent against a basket of currencies, on course for a fourth straight weekly loss. A weaker dollar makes greenback-traded commodities like crude oil more attractive for holders of other currencies. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that Tehran would not take part in nuclear talks if threatened with military force, state television said, as Iran and world powers try to meet a June 30 deadline for a final deal. Any breakdown in talks with the West and Iran would prolong any possible return of Iranian crude exports at full throttle, denying the market additional oil. (Additional reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Jessica Jaganathan in Singapore, editing by William Hardy)
Fracking for oil dead ! Try telling Rolls Royce and Weir group. In a marked contrast to its century-old luxury auto and air engine roots, Rolls-Royce is forming a "fracking" joint venture with a U.K. engineering company. Rolls-Royce Power Systems company MTU, which produces engines and automation systems, and Weir Oil & Gas, which makes fracking pumps, claim the venture will serve as a "one-stop shop" for the oil and gas industry. The venture is entering the market following months of turmoil in oil prices. A glut in oil supply was a factor in the market price plunging from $110 a barrel last June.Brent crude oil is currently priced around $66 a barrel. A large part of this glut has been the increase in oil produced by the U.S. fracking industry. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process by which oil and gas companies use a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to release and extract fuel trapped within shale formations. However, the process is expensive and criticised by environmental groups. A start-up that's solved fracking's dirty problem Keith Cochrane, Chief Executive of the Weir Group, believes that the equipment produced by the venture will make fracking operations more efficient and potentially more profitable. In a statement announcing the deal, Cochrane said: "This joint venture again shows our ongoing commitment to innovation which reduces our customers' total cost of ownership and improves productivity. "By combining the frac pump, transmission and engine into one power system and supporting it using MTU and Weir's service networks, we will deliver significant benefits for our oil and gas customers." The venture company, which is currently unnamed, is expected to begin operating at the start of 2016. MTU and Weir Oil and Gas first announced they were collaborating to produce fracking equipment in May 2014. This week's announcement is intended to "broaden their relationship." Dr. Ulrich Dohle, CEO of Rolls-Royce Power Systems, was enthusiastic about the venture. In the statement, he said: "The new joint venture between MTU and Weir Oil & Gas will provide easier access to a completely integrated pumping power system that addresses the challenges faced by frac site operators."
The oil cartel OPEC has lost control over the price of oil. Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Al-Naimi, however, does not seem to think Saudi Arabia or OPEC can really control oil prices anyway. "No one can set the price of oil — it's up to Allah," he said Tuesday in an interview with CNBC. Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/al-naimi-says-oil-price-is-up-to-allah-2015-5?r=US#ixzz3ZH4t5nqg
Dynamohum,- - formally known as Brutus 💰💰💰💰💰💰💰 There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.
LONDON--Global oil prices are likely to rise to around $90 a barrel in the next two years, and the world will need U.S. shale oil production to meet demand following the drop in exploration now, the chief executive of the U.K.'s largest independent oil explorer Tullow Oil PLC said Thursday. Outside of the U.S., oil companies have been cutting budgets to search for new oil fields for the past two years and even more so recently, so by the time exploration resumes at least five years will have passed, Tullow CEO Aidan Heavey said. The drop in exploration coupled with potential instability in big oil producers will inevitably lead to a rise in prices in the near future, he added. "The question mark is if the international oil industry can keep up with demand. My view is it's going to struggle and any increase in demand world-wide is going to cause problems over the next few years," Mr. Heavey said. Tullow itself has cut its exploration budget to around $200 million from around $1 billion previously, amid the sharp decline in oil prices that began last summer and took prices down to below $50 in January. Mr. Heavey said that while day rates for onshore drilling rigs had decreased amid a 30% drop in oil services costs across the industry, costs for deep-water drilling were likely to remain high for a while.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3095956-u-s-shale-oil-a-grand-parade-of-cost-improvements U.S. Shale Oil: A Grand Parade Of Cost Improvements Well cost reductions by E&P operators are running well ahead of guidance. Feedback from oil service providers indicates a radical change in the industry’s cost structure for the next two years. With activity re-focused on best locations, the industry is likely to see solid well-level returns at WTI prices in the $60-$70 per barrel range.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2015/04/21/oilprice-dorcom-wall-street-oil-price-rally/26113693/ If the whims of speculators are anything to go by, then oil markets are poised for a rebound. Data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission show that bullish positions on WTI have reached their highest levels in eight months. Speculators make bets on the price of crude – long or short – depending on where they think prices are heading. Not since the end of the summer in 2014 have so many investors put money on the line, betting on a price rise. Obviously, elite investors are not always right. Few saw the bust coming. But the mounting belief that the worst is over for oil provides a bit of evidence that prices could be on the mend.
WTI $54 - - - - a tough nut to crack