By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com – Holding some of the largest shale oil and gas reserves in the world, Argentina is often cited as the likely candidate for the next big shale boom, and Vaca Muerta is often described as having the potential to be South America’s Permian basin.
The United States blacklisted Mexican company Libre Abordo and a related firm, accusing them of helping Caracas evade US sanctions in the first formal action taken by the US Treasury Department against Mexican companies involved in trading Venezuelan oil.
The Vatican urged Catholics on Thursday to disinvest from the armaments and fossil fuel industries and to closely monitor companies in sectors such as mining to check if they are damaging the environment.
The first of five Iranian tankers carrying fuel for gasoline-starved Venezuela entered the country's exclusive economic zone on Saturday, despite a US official's warning that Washington was considering a response to the shipment. The tanker, named Fortune, reached the country’s waters at around 7:40 pm local time (1140 GMT) after passing north of the neighboring dual-island Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, according to vessel-tracking data from Refinitiv Eikon.
Petrobras set a new oil exports record of 1 million BPD in April, as domestic demand plunged, the Brazilian state-controlled oil firm said on Monday, days after a large group of other oil producers, OPEC+, began a 9.7-million-BPD collective cut aimed at rebalancing the market.
Royal Dutch Shell cut its dividend for the first time since World War Two on Thursday as the energy company retrenched in the face of an unprecedented drop in oil demand due to the coronavirus pandemic.
A Buenos Aires crude oil refinery operated by Argentine state-controlled energy firm YPF is running with a minimal level of workers due to a drop in consumption and a lack of storage space amid a crash in global oil prices during the coronavirus pandemic, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
Already grappling with one of Brazil’s most severe outbreaks of the novel coronavirus and a budget deep in the red, Rio de Janeiro state faces a potential threat to its solvency at the hands of investment giants PIMCO and Dodge & Cox.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered his administration to come up with a plan to aid US oil companies struggling with a massive supply glut and record low crude prices. “We will never let the great U.S. Oil & Gas Industry down,” Trump tweeted.
The price of US oil has turned negative for the first time in history. That means oil producers are paying buyers to take the commodity off their hands over fears that storage capacity could run out in May.