MRPL MD H Kumar said in a release the company intended to produce ‘Syngas’ and subsequently to produce value-added chemicals, such as urea (fertiliser), acetic acid, acryilate among others.

A man holds a pool of black oil in his hands, collected from pollution caused by a damaged pumping station © Bloomberg

Plan includes building a dedicated pipeline network through GCGSC while the supplier would be decided on the basis of competitive bidding.

“RIL’s GRM out-performed the regional benchmark by $6.5 a barrel during the quarter which was the highest in the last eight years,” Moody’s Investors Service said.

State oil firm Saudi Aramco has traditionally been the main supplier to India and Riyadh could face pressure to deepen crude price cuts to regain market share.

By directly transferring subsidy to cooking gas consumers’ account, the state oil companies have been able to weed out about 3.25 crore duplicate or inactive consumers.

By directly transferring subsidy to cooking gas consumers’ account, the state oil companies have been able to weed out about 3.25 crore duplicate or inactive consumers.

Plans by to sell a stake in one of the biggest development projects in the North Sea show how independent oil and gas producers are scrambling to shore up their balance sheets in response to prolonged oil price weakness.

EnQuest on Monday it was in talks about selling 20 per cent of the Kraken oilfield east of the Shetland Islands to Delek Group of Israel, in a deal analysts estimate would reduce the UK company’s debts by as much as $190m this year.

Kraken was in 2013 when oil prices were over $100 a barrel but, in common with many energy projects, its multibillion-dollar development costs have become a heavier strain since oil prices crashed in 2014.

While the final terms of the deal were still under negotiation, analysts said the main financial component was likely to be the share of capital expenditure taken on by Delek, which has agreed to backdate its contributions to January 1.

James Hosie at Barclays said this was likely to result in a cash injection of $170m for EnQuest in 2016, in addition to a $20m loan from Delek which will only be repayable if the Israeli group has not recovered its project costs after five years.

He added the deal was likely to be dilutive to EnQuest’s shares and highlighted “both the with oil prices below $50 per barrel and EnQuest’s need to reduce its debt levels”.

Shares in EnQuest closed 0.84 per cent down at £29.50 yesterday.

Other London-listed independent explorers have also been scrambling to strengthen their finances in recent weeks, as low prices and high exploration costs on companies across the sector.

, another big North Sea producer, secured an for its debt covenants to be waived for a month to give it more time to reduce borrowings. Meanwhile, Africa-focused launched a to cut dependence on bank lending facilities linked to the price of oil.

Mr Hosie estimated the Delek deal would reduce EnQuest’s net debt to $1.75bn at the end of this year, down from his previous forecast of $1.94bn. He described it as “a necessary step to improve the balance sheet” at the expense of sacrificing a slice of future production.

EnQuest owns 70.5 per cent of Kraken, with the remainder held by , another UK-based oil company. The field is expected to reach peak production of 50,000 barrels a day, with the first oil expected to flow next year.

The project was initially expected to cost EnQuest $3.2bn to bring on-stream, but that figure has been reduced by about 13 per cent through contract renegotiations with suppliers and other savings since the oil price collapsed.

EnQuest said it had signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Delek and that, in addition to the provisional terms outlined on Monday, talks were continuing over an “additional contingent consideration” for the stake.

For Delek, controlled by Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva, the deal would help diversify its assets beyond Israel, where it co-owns the with Noble Energy of the US.

ONGC/OIL would raise a gross bill based on the prevailing international oil price but its actual realisation was less than that after accounting for the subsidy discount.

The order implies that ONGC and Oil India are faced with an additional royalty burden of more than $1 billion, senior ministry sources said.

Aggrieved investors in Brazil’s have suffered over the past two years as an investigation into the state-run oil company has showed how corrupt former directors spent company funds on everything from art collections to Range Rover Evoques.

But the most recent allegations in the , in which prosecutors allege former directors conspired with politicians and contractors to defraud the company, take this one step further.

Prosecutors claim Paulo Ferreira, a former treasurer of Brazil’s erstwhile ruling Workers’ party, took money originally destined for a research and development centre for Petrobras’s ultra-deepwater oilfields and used it to pay a samba queen a monthly stipend.

“At the request of Paulo Ferreira, there were made diverse payments to the non-governmental organisation Sociedade Recreativa e Beneficente Estado Maior da Restinga, a samba school, and people linked to it, such as Viviane Rodrigues da Silva, the battery queen,” said a court document outlining Mr Ferreira’s arrest. He was not available for comment.

The steady stream of corruption allegations is proving an irritant for Petrobras, not just with criminal investigators in Brazil but with institutional investors in New York.

In a class-action lawsuit led by the UK’s Universities Superannuation Scheme and backed by a range of the biggest global pension funds, investors have sued the company in the US district court in Manhattan for allegedly misrepresenting its financial accounts by hiding widespread fraud.

Now lawyers for the plaintiffs are seeking to speed up that lawsuit by filing a motion for a partial summary judgment with US district court judge Jed Rakoff, ahead of an eight-week trial scheduled to start on September 19.

“Petrobras raised tens of billions of dollars from investors during the class period under the pretence that it would be used to improve the company, but instead knowingly doled out the money to insiders and politicians,” says the motion.

It says the facts overwhelmingly suggest there was a violation of securities law and the trial should focus not on disputing whether there was fraud but on how much Petrobras should be required to pay investors in compensation.

“The only issue to go to trial would be the level of damages,” says Jeremy Lieberman, attorney for the plaintiffs at Pomerantz, a law firm.

Petrobras and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, the company’s lawyers, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. , Petrobras’s new chief executive, said last month the company was a victim of fraud, estimated to have cost it about $2.5bn in losses directly related to corruption.

Analysts highlight how any damages ruling against Petrobras would add to its already enormous debt load. Some in the market say the investor lawsuit could result in the third-largest payout in a securities fraud case after Enron and WorldCom.

Concern over Petrobras’s financial profile is driven by its coming due — $26.5bn out of total gross debt of $126bn — between April this year and the end of 2017. The company has the largest debt load in the energy industry.

“They have to sell a lot of assets or have market access to avert a default,” says Nymia Almeida of Moody’s Investors Service.

She adds that while the investor lawsuit was factored into Moody’s B3 junk rating for the company, which implies some level of government support for Petrobras should it run into greater financial difficulty, the details of any payout would be important. This includes how long Petrobras would have to find the money.

Other analysts say while Petrobras is producing enough cash to meet its debt interest payments and pay for capital expenditure on its deepwater oilfields, it could struggle to reduce its borrowings.

At more than six times earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation, Petrobras’s gross debt is high and would be reduced only through asset sales, says Lucas Aristizabal of Fitch, which has a BB rating on Petrobras’s borrowings.

The secret will be to maintain liquidity, with cash and marketable securities currently at $22.6bn, while the company tries to run an to sell $15bn of assets by the end of this year, he adds. So far, only about $2bn has been sold or committed to disposal.

“That is the only way they will be able to pay down debt,” says Mr Aristizabal.

He adds the appointment of Mr Parente, a former head of the Brazilian operations of , the trading house, who is seen as market friendly, could be good for Petrobras.

“If the new CEO comes with a private sector mentality and is not operating [the] company to favour any political agenda, that would be positive for the company,” says Mr Aristizabal.

In the meantime, with the Petrobras investigations continuing, investors will be left wondering what new surprises they might uncover about what past directors were doing with the company’s money.

When Edafa, a former militant from Nigeria’s restive oil-rich Delta, joined a government-funded programme to train as a welder in Malaysia, he dreamt of setting up his own business. But after three years of joblessness and frustration, he is now using his skills to blow up oil pipelines.

The 28-year-old has returned to his previous life, carrying out attacks for the Niger Delta Avengers, the latest group to lead an insurgency that is creating havoc for .

The rise of the Avengers since the start of the year reflects the anger that is coursing through towns and impoverished villages across the swampy Delta as President Muhammadu Buhari’s grapples with Nigeria’s in decades.

“President Buhari forgets us in the Niger Delta, and we are the source of Nigeria’s income,” Edafa, who did not want his full name used, says in his home town of Ughelli, where there is rarely electricity and women cook over firewood and draw water from wells. “We want him to hear our cry.”

Attacks by the militants — who say destroying oil wells and the pipelines snaking through their communities is the only way to be heard — reduced oil production by about 700,000 barrels a day to 1.5m b/d in May. As a result, Nigeria slipped from its position as Africa’s top oil producer.

Repairs have pushed output back up by at least 200,000 b/d. But the blow to production has been disastrous for Mr Buhari, a former army general who last year.

The cash-strapped federal government has yet to secure funds to plug a $11bn deficit in this year’s budget, while many state governments have not paid salaries for months.

And the poverty that blights the Delta — despite its oil riches — is partly to blame for Edafa’s and others’ return to militancy. Each time he participates in an Avengers’ “operation” he earns 20,000 naira ($70).

The Delta has a long history of rebellion against the oil industry. Edafa’s eight-month training programme in Malaysia came only after he laid down his gun as part of a government amnesty deal in 2009 with other militant groups.

He wanted to open his own welding shop, support his family and provide jobs to the droves of idle young men in Ughelli, which sits atop one of the country’s most productive gasfields.

Instead, he joined the ranks of the unemployed.

He blames corrupt former officials whom he alleges stole start-up funds he and other retired militants were promised. He does not see a brighter future under the new government, which he perceives to be biased against his southern region as it is led by Mr Buhari, a northerner.

“It’s very easy when people feel disillusioned, disconnected and unattended to for them to return back to the ways they know in order to survive,” says JonJon Oyeinfe, a local activist.

Many of the Avengers’ demands — including greater control of the oil wealth and the development of basic infrastructure — reflect those of previous insurgencies. But frustrations have been exacerbated because of the way Mr Buhari is seen to have dealt with the Delta.

In the early days of his presidency, he was deemed to be ignoring the region. When the attacks on infrastructure began, he vowed to “crush the criminals” behind them.

His belligerent statements chimed with threats by successive governments that promised to defeat the militants. But none succeeded, partly because the insurgents have far better knowledge of the region than the military.

Mr Buhari has yet to visit the Delta since taking office. Such a visit would be a symbolic gesture, which one local chief called “low-hanging fruit”.

But some businessmen in the region add that local politicians also bear responsibility for people’s anger. They point to former state governors such as James Ibori, who is in prison in the UK for fraud and money laundering, for failing to use the billions of dollars of oil revenues allocated to their budgets for development.

The energy sector has long been a source of corruption and patronage at all levels of government.

“Young men are resorting to violence to force the government to have a listening ear to their plight,” says Jude Isiayei, a local pastor.

The amnesty that ended the last insurgency was mainly implemented under the watch of Goodluck Jonathan, Mr Buhari’s predecessor who is from the region, and brought a semblance of stability to the Delta for five years. But it was also seen by many Nigerians as being a “bribe for peace”. Mr Jonathan is criticised by some traditional leaders for not doing more to develop the area.

Amnesty stipends have been one of the few steady sources of income for Deltans in recent years. Mr Buhari had pledged to cease the programme by the end of 2015, although it has since been extended until 2018. But former militants say they have not received their stipends for months.

Low oil prices have meant another cash-generator — oil theft of various sorts — has become less profitable. Years of has also eroded traditional livelihoods such as fishing and farming. The result is that young Deltans have few options, which risks creating more recruits for the militants.

Sheriff Mulade, a local leader, says: “The only employment the government has been able to create for the youth of the Delta is militancy.”

China’s “One Belt, One Road” project aims to make central Asia more connected to the world, yet even before the initiative was formally announced China had helped to redraw the energy map of the region. It had built an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan, a gas pipeline that allowed Turkmenistan to break its dependence on dealings with Russia and another pipeline that has increased the flow of Russian oil to China.

Chinese companies have funded and built roads, bridges and tunnels across the region. A ribbon of fresh projects, such as the Khorgos “dry port” on the Kazakh-Chinese border and a railway link connecting Kazakhstan with Iran, is helping increase trade across central Asia.

The map below shows how the transport and energy projects link across the region.

Bora, who was Executive Director at Oil and Natural Gas Corporation before this appointment, is the first full-time Chairman of OIL in more than a year.

has raised the stakes in the race for Papua New Guinea’s oil and gas assets with a “superior proposal” for that has trumped an offer from Australia’s .

US-listed InterOil said on Monday that Exxon had offered $45 per share paid in Exxon stock, valuing the company at $2.2bn. The offer is slightly less than InterOil’s closing share price of $47.61 on Friday, but Exxon is offering an additional $7.07 in cash per share based on the estimated size of PNG’s Elk-Antelope gasfield.

While the offer at a minimum matches the $2.2bn bid lodged in May by ASX-listed Oil Search, Exxon’s bid is likely to have extra appeal for InterOil shareholders because it is offering US-listed shares and its additional payment is in cash, rather than Oil Search’s offer of a tradable security.

“ExxonMobil has submitted an offer to acquire InterOil Corporation, which we believe represents a superior proposal,” the US oil major said in a statement.

InterOil said in a separate statement on Monday that its board deemed Exxon’s a “superior proposal” and that OilSearch has until July 21 to decide whether to improve its offer. That coincides with the date on which the Australian company is due to provide its second-quarter update.

Exxon’s move could fuel competition among oil majors, with Oil Search’s bid by France’s Total. Deutsche Bank analysts have noted that Exxon and Total “both have appetite for co-operation to realise synergies for both projects”.

The US company had long been seen as a likely bidder because of the potential for combining InterOil’s planned Papua LNG project with its own nearby PNG LNG, which started operations last year and in which Oil Search is its biggest partner. The two projects could share some facilities, holding down the cost of developing Papua LNG.

For Exxon, with a market capitalisation of about $395bn, a $2.2bn bid is a relatively small deal.

Since oil prices began falling two years ago, pulling LNG prices down with them, there has been speculation Exxon would use its financial strength to acquire assets at close to the bottom of the cycle.

However, Rex Tillerson, its chief executive, has argued that oil and gas companies have been generally overvalued, making acquisitions unattractive.

Oil Search and InterOil are partners in the potentially lucrative Elk-Antelope gasfield, which Oil Search and Total plan to develop into the Papua LNG venture.

The French company said in May it would pay Oil Search $1.2bn upon completion of the InterOil acquisition in exchange for a 48 per cent stake in the Papua LNG project they are developing together, assuming the PNG government exercises its right to a 22.5 per cent stake in the development.

Oil Search will receive a $60m break fee if the deal with InterOil does not go ahead. Its shares climbed 3.9 per cent in Sydney on Monday to A$7.25, their highest level since March.

Andrew Lappan, an investment adviser at Shaw and Partners in Sydney, said: “The way the Oil Search share price has reacted today suggests the market is happy its bid for InterOil looks unlikely to succeed.”

For the US to sell gas to the energy-rich Middle East might seem like sending coal to Newcastle, but it has started to happen as the American shale revolution upends the global flows of resources.

Two cargoes of US liquefied natural gas from ’s Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana have been delivered to Kuwait and Dubai in recent months to meet the rapidly growing demand for energy.

This reversal of the well-established flows of hydrocarbons from the Middle East to the US reflects the boom in American gas production caused by the development of previously uncommercial shale reserves, and the soaring demand for energy in economies from the Gulf to north Africa.

“We’re in a time of huge change in LNG shipping routes,” said Ted Michael of Genscape, a market data provider. “The old order is being overturned, and we haven’t seen the dust settle yet.”

The Sabine Pass plant shipped its first cargo in February, and has already sent LNG to seven countries: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, India and Portugal, as well as Dubai and Kuwait.

Many Middle Eastern countries have large gas resources, but have not had the investment they need to bring their reserves into production. Countries with fast-growing economies and populations have been forced to took to gas imports for power generation and industrial uses.

Their rising demand for gas coincides with a reaching world markets as new LNG export projects in Australia and the US come into production.

Those additional supplies are depressing prices, making LNG a more attractive fuel for power generation, and low-cost floating regasification plants have made it easier for countries to become importers.

Kuwait’s LNG imports tripled from 1m tonnes in 2012 to 3.04m tonnes last year, according to the Middle East Economic Survey. Egypt and Jordan became LNG importers for the first time last year.

Qatar is the world’s largest LNG exporter, but over the next few years it is set to be toppled by Australia and rivalled by the US.

The International Energy Agency has forecast that by 2040 gas demand in the Middle East will almost double, so the region could become an increasingly important market for US LNG.

Jason Bordoff of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy said: “In the Middle East there is huge interest in increasing gas supplies, and the US is one of the world’s cheapest sources of gas.”

Although the US is now sending gas to the Gulf, it is still importing oil from the region. US imports of crude from the Gulf averaged 1.6m barrels per day so far this year, compared with 2.4m b/d in 2003-04.

The LNG exports from the US are reopening an energy trade route to the Middle East that was last active in the 1890s.

Daniel Yergin, the energy historian, said: “The US was the dominant supplier of oil to the Middle East until the rise of Russian exports at the end of the 19th century. Those imports from Russia were then in turn replaced by the Middle East’s own oil production in the 20th century.”

UGBORODO, Nigeria — Militants are roaming -soaked creeks in the south, blowing up pipelines and decimating the nation’s oil production. Islamist extremists have . Deadly land battles are shaking the nation’s center. And a decades-old separatist movement at the heart of a devastating civil war is brewing again.

On their own, any one of these would be a national emergency. But here in , they are all happening at the same time, tearing at the country from almost every angle.

“Nigeria is the only country we have,” President Muhammadu Buhari implored in a recent speech. “We have to stay here and salvage it together.”

Mr. Buhari took office a year ago, in the north and to rebuild the nation’s economy. But he has been knocked off course by a series of crises across the country, forcing him to toggle between emergencies.

Beyond , the source of more than 70 percent of the government’s revenue, Nigerian officials have been tormented by a new band of militants claiming to be on a quest to free the oil-producing south from oppression. They call themselves .

Despite their name, which sounds as if it might be out of a comic book, the militants have roamed the waters of the south for six months, blowing up crude oil and gas pipelines and shattering years of relative peace in the region.

As a result, Nigeria’s oil production in the second quarter this year dropped 25 percent from the same period a year earlier — enough to contribute to a slight increase in global oil prices, according to an analysis by , a consulting firm in London.

Partly because of the Avengers and their sabotage, Nigeria has fallen behind Angola as Africa’s top oil producer.

The attacks have been so costly that Mr. Buhari sent troops that had been fighting in the north against Boko Haram — the extremist group that and forced more than two million people to flee their homes — to battle the Avengers in the south instead.

Mr. Buhari then reconfigured those efforts after complaints that marauding soldiers had roughed up people and property while looking for militants in the south, creating even more resentment among the impoverished people who live there.

Militants have struck in the south in the past, kidnapping or killing oil workers and police officers to demand a greater share of the nation’s oil wealth. But the Avengers seem bent on crippling Nigeria’s economy while it is particularly fragile, striking at the core of Mr. Buhari’s plans for the nation.

The Avengers have sent oil, power and gas workers fleeing, torturing the multinational companies that burrow for oil underneath the waters. because almost everything that has to do with oil in Nigeria right now has been tangled up by the militants.

On the main highway in the southern port city of Warri recently, a long row of fuel tankers sat on the side of the road, idle. A bent-back windshield wiper served as a makeshift clothesline. A mini tube of toothpaste rested on the dashboard of one truck. The truckers were stranded, waiting to fill up.

They had been there a month.

“We are not asking for much, but to free the people of the Niger Delta from environmental pollution, slavery and oppression,” the Avengers , explaining their attacks. “We want a country that will turn the creeks of the Niger Delta to a tourism heaven, a country that will achieve its full potentials, a country that will make health care system accessible by everyone. With Niger Delta still under the country Nigeria we can’t make it possible.”

Mr. Buhari’s government has said it is open to negotiating with the group. But it is already stretched thin.

On the opposite side of the country, Boko Haram is still raging. Mr. Buhari has started against the group that has made progress, but it has yet to stamp out the violence.

Another longtime battle is flaring in the middle of the country, between farmers and nomadic Fulani herdsmen looking for grazing pastures. Hundreds have been killed in battles as herdsmen roam into new territory to look for vegetation for their cattle. Officials have blamed climate change and the nation’s rapidly growing population for the scarcity of pastureland.

And with their demands for economic equality for the south, the Avengers have been trying to stoke the aspirations of separatists elsewhere in the nation.

More than four decades ago, at least one million people were killed during the Nigerian civil war, when separatists led an uprising that created an independent republic of Biafra in the southeast. It lasted three years, until 1970.

Now, a Biafran separatist movement is simmering again, with the police and protesters clashing regularly since October, when a prominent activist was arrested and jailed. Some have accused the Nigerian security forces of seeking out and killing protesters.

The Avengers are fanning the separatist sentiments, invoking the Biafran movement and calling for a “Brexit”-style referendum to split the nation along several fault lines.

The south has long been a reservoir of anger and resistance, a place where countless billions in oil revenue are extracted for the benefit of distant politicians and companies abroad. Yet drinking water and electricity can be scarce, and the swamps people live around are regularly polluted with , casting an oily sheen on the creeks and coating the roots of dense mangroves in black goo.

Many people in the predominantly Christian south say they believe that Mr. Buhari, a Muslim from the north, is neglecting them for political or sectarian reasons, even though conditions were also grim under his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian southerner.

“You always say you fought for the unity of this country during the civil war,” the Avengers taunted Mr. Buhari on their website. “You haven’t been to the Niger Delta, how can you know what the people are facing.”

In his recent speech, Mr. Buhari recalled the horrors of the civil war, when he served in the military fighting Biafrans. “The president has a vision of one united Nigeria and is prepared to do everything to keep it as one,” he said.

This spring, Mr. Buhari announced that he would personally introduce a $1 billion cleanup program of the oil-polluted Niger Delta area. It was to be Mr. Buhari’s first visit to the region since taking office, but with the Avengers’ movement raging, the president abruptly canceled his trip. Residents of Delta State felt slighted.

“Years have passed with neglect, deprivation, environmental deprivation, poverty, no electricity, no roads, no hospital, no schools, but we are living in the country of Nigeria,” said Blessing Gbalibi, a fuel-truck driver raised in the creek communities. “Over there in Abuja,” he added, referring to the capital, “they are taking our resources.”

Yet many Niger Delta residents like Mr. Gbalibi oppose the Avengers because their acts of sabotage have degraded the already-poor quality of life in the region. Spills from explosions have further polluted farmland and fishing holes. Mr. Gbalibi and his fuel truck were among those stuck on the side of the highway for a month because the Avengers had disrupted fuel distribution.

About a decade ago, another band of militants, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, prowled the creeks, blowing up pipelines. The federal government reined it in by setting up an amnesty program that offers cash and job training, some of it overseas, for more than 30,000 militants and residents, according to Paul Boroh, a retired brigadier general and the special adviser to Mr. Buhari for the program.

But oil revenue finances the program, and the fall in oil prices prompted the president to consider ending the amnesty program at the end of last year. Mr. Boroh said he had lobbied to keep the plan for now, but to phase it out over the next two years.

The Avengers movement sprang up around the time the president was considering an end to the program, prompting many Niger Delta residents to wonder if the shadowy group is made of former militants hoping to keep up amnesty payments.

The amnesty program is far from universally loved in the creeks. Many residents say payments are routinely siphoned by corrupt community leaders. Others say the job training they received was virtually useless. Oil companies prefer to hire foreigners, they complain, or they hire locals only on a short-term basis — and then nothing.

The program sent Mike Gomero, a former militant, to learn the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at a two-week session in South Africa. He is no longer blowing up pipelines. But he still does not have a job.

“The amnesty program is not a solution,” said Williams Welemu, a former member of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. “It’s palliative.”

Communities like Ugborodo, so deep in the winding creeks that it is at least two hours from the mainland by speedboat, are dotted with homes that are little more than tiny zinc huts on islands that are sinking into the sea. They are filled with unemployed residents trained as geologists, pipe fitters and marine engineers.

One of them, Collins Bemigho, stood along a dirty swamp, orange flares from a giant Chevron terminal glowing in the distance behind him. He complained about a lack of indoor plumbing, of good health care or a secondary school, and then pointed to a thick pipe jutting from the water.

“If I wanted to bust a pipeline, I could do that right here,” Mr. Bemigho said. “We’re not rewarded for being well behaved.”

RIL has merged its 361 ‘company owned-company operated’ fuel retail pumps with its organised retail business, which thus far included its digital, fashion and lifestyle businesses.

RIL has merged its 361 ‘company owned-company operated’ fuel retail pumps with its organised retail business, which thus far included its digital, fashion and lifestyle businesses.

A worker at an oil field near Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, which has been hard hit by the crude slump © Bloomberg

Months after the triumphed in overturning an , a group of independent producers wants to take policy one step further and curtail crude imports.

The has begun campaigning for quotas on all foreign suppliers excluding Canada and Mexico. Its founders, Texas and New Mexico oilmen, said Saudi Arabia is trying to crush their industry and it’s time to fight back.

“It’s not fair and it’s not free when a country is trying to drive individual producers in the United States out of business,” said Tom Cambridge, an oil producer in Amarillo, Texas. “What we would like to do is limit imports.”

The push comes two years after crude first dropped below $100 a barrel. In late 2014 and other Opec members resolved to keep taps open despite falling prices, hastening bankruptcy for dozens of US producers.

Since then the Middle East’s share of world oil supplies has risen to 35 per cent, the highest since the 1970s, according to the International Energy Agency. The number of US oil drilling rigs has dropped 78 per cent to 357, according to Baker Hughes.

The US recently imported 8.1m barrels per day of crude oil, 11.2 per cent above last year. US refineries processed 16.6m b/d of crude, roughly unchanged from 2015.

US oil companies to abolish a 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports in December. But leaders of , named for northern Texas’s Panhandle region, said that was not enough.

“Did lifting the export ban achieve the objectives, which were new or expanded jobs? No,” said Daniel Fine, adviser to the initiative. “This is another tool to support US domestic producers to put people back to work, to end the bust conditions.”

The group wants the next US president in 2017 to declare a ban on imports of the type of light crude abundant in US shale formations, then phase in quotas on heavier oil. Almost half the crude processed by US refineries is imported.

Mr Fine cited precedent in a by US president Dwight Eisenhower that put a lid on oil imports for national security reasons. President Richard Nixon the restrictions in 1973 as the US veered towards an energy crisis.

The oil industry has given the Panhandle group a mixed reception.

In a letter to Mr Cambridge, the Texas Oil & Gas Association and four other trade groups opposed a quota because it “violates our principles of promoting free trade and would certainly lead to unidentified and unmanageable unintended consequences”.

But Alex Mills, president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, which represents more than 3,000 independent producers, said: “limiting oil imports is good energy policy and good economic policy and good national security policy,” adding his group was still learning about the initiative.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America said it had not taken a position on a fee or tax on crude imports, but backed a “free market system” as the best way to support the industry.

Initial output is likely to be one million standard cubic meters per day of gas. A peak production of 3.5 mmscmd is envisaged from the two Sohagpur blocks in the state.

The impact of falling oil prices in Alaska, which has seemed for many residents like a distant worry until now, is about to land. The turning point came on Friday, when the State House of Representatives, meeting at the Capitol in Juneau in the fifth special session since last summer, failed to override a line-item veto of the budget by Gov. Bill Walker.

That means the $1.3 billion in spending cuts imposed last month by Mr. Walker, a political independent, will almost certainly take effect on top of cuts that lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature had already agreed on.

And those effects will ripple far and wide across the state, from and the University of Alaska, which will see steep declines in state aid; to individual households, in the form of reduced state oil investment dividend checks; to the state court system, which began closing at noon on Fridays to save money. Tiny airports that connect the state’s vast rural areas may have to close.

Leaders in both parties said that positions were too entrenched and bitter to even bring up an override attempt to the floor, where it would have required a three-fourths supermajority to succeed, or to consider any of the taxes that Mr. Walker proposed to keep programs from being cut. Although the State Senate plans to continue meetings next week, the legal deadline for trying to roll back Mr. Walker’s dramatic red-pen restructuring passed on Friday with the close of business.

“Staying here for another 30 days is not going to resolve the revenue issues before us,” said Mike Chenault, the House Speaker, a Republican.

Taxes paid by oil and gas companies, from the fields at Prudhoe Bay to Cook Inlet near Anchorage, make up about 90 percent of the state’s general fund revenues in Alaska, which has no statewide sales tax or income tax. But with the down by more than 50 percent from its high a few years ago, and production in longer-term decline, those tax collections have dried up, exposing a deep dependence, and vulnerability.

Anger is swirling, too. A petition drive has begun, seeking a ballot vote to recall Mr. Walker, a former Republican who was in 2014. Lawmakers in both parties could face voter anger in November, if only for being ineffectual in doing anything about the governor’s cuts.

“I think it is likely that someone will file a lawsuit — highly likely,” said Senator Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat who said he thought Mr. Walker’s actions in unilaterally reducing dividend payments were illegal. “I’ve been getting calls from people who want to file a lawsuit, want to be a part of a lawsuit, people who have been around for a long long time, very well known politically in Alaska.”

In , he also slashed tax credits that oil companies can get for exploration, which many Republicans objected to, saying it could hamper incentives to bring in new energy fields. But he also made some Democrats wince, in cutting education spending and the dividend fund paid to residents, which budget analysts at the University of Alaska said would hit poorer residents hardest because a state check is a bigger part of their income. Residents will still get a dividend from investment income earned by the state’s $54 billion , but Mr. Walker ordered it capped at $1,000 per person, down from just over .

In Alaska — where many things, from food to energy, are expensive — the dividend has become entwined into the economic system. Police departments and social services agencies, for example, routinely garnish the dividend checks of people who owe fines or delinquent child support payments; they have begun calculating the costs of what cannot be collected or distributed.

Mr. Walker, who proposed a raft of new taxes to keep state programs afloat, including the reintroduction of an income tax, repealed in 1980 after the oil boom hit, said in his veto message that inaction by the Legislature had become a threat to Alaska’s future, requiring a response from the executive branch.

He also said that the Legislature’s plan to rely on borrowing from a savings fund to keep programs afloat — and the refusal by a majority of lawmakers to consider any significant increase in taxes paid by residents — meant that problems will grow worse.

“My team and I introduced a balanced plan in December that fairly distributed the burden across all demographics. Not a single measure of that plan was passed by the Legislature, nor was another plan even introduced,” Mr. Walker said. On Thursday, at a news conference before the Legislature’s adjournment, his exasperation was clear. “How bad does it have to get before we actually do something?” he asked.

Budget pressures have pushed Alaska to make structural changes that people in both parties say will ultimately be good for the state. An overhaul of the system, for example, that was signed into law by Mr. Walker on Monday and supported by lawmakers in both parties, aims to reduce the prison population by 13 percent over the next eight years partly by reducing penalties for nonviolent offenses like drug possession, saving the state $380 million.

Some of those savings will be reinvested into drug treatment services, re-entry support for offenders returning home from prison, violence prevention programming and crime victims’ services.

Mr. Walker, a former energy lawyer and mayor of Valdez in southern Alaska, has said that his unaffiliated political status has given him greater latitude to push for changes like justice reform and fiscal overhaul. But as his allies have pointed out, Mr. Walker has constructed his administration in a way that could now divide or confound the governor’s enemies. A former Republican candidate for the United States Senate, Joe Miller, is leading the to kick Mr. Walker out. But if Mr. Miller’s efforts are successful, they would propel a Democrat, Lt. Gov. Byron I. Mallott, into office.

Assam will get crude oil royalty at pre-discounted price similar to Gujarat with effect from February 1, 2014. Petroleum ministry writes to Assam government.

The turmoil in has implications for global oil markets, because of the country’s strategic position on energy trade routes from the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia to European markets.

About 2.9m barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products, roughly 3 per cent of world supplies, were carried on tankers through the Turkish straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean in 2013, according to US government statistics.

Turkey also has two important oil pipelines, one from Azerbaijan and another from Iraq, which both end at the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. They have a combined capacity of 2.7m b/d, but actual flows have been less than that, in part because of on the pipelines and in part because of declining production from Azerbaijan. One Kurdish government official said the Turkey-Kurdistan border was still open and that there was so far no impact on crude oil flows.

Azerbaijan’s oil exports through Turkey averaged 720,000 b/d last year, while Iraq’s, from the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in the north of the country, reached a peak of about 600,000 b/d when not interrupted by attacks.

is also intended to be an increasingly important route for gas supplies to reach the EU.

In 2013 BP and partner companies agreed to build two pipelines to carry gas from Azerbaijan to Italy, creating what has been called the Southern Gas Corridor, with first gas deliveries to Europe on that route scheduled for late 2019. The route would carry 16bn cubic metres of gas per year from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field. The Turkish government and companies had also been in talks about taking gas from Israel’s giant Leviathan field.

Jason Bordoff of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy said Turkey was a “hugely important transport hub” for oil and gas flows.

“If there is disruption to supplies, that could have a material impact on the oil market,” he said.

The US has in recent years backed plans to increase gas supplies to the EU flowing through Turkey, and the use of the country’s pipelines as export routes for Iraqi oil.

Mr Bordoff said the turmoil in Turkey was a reminder of the importance for all energy consumers of having a wide range of suppliers.

“Expanding diversity of supply provides increased energy security for when unexpected events happen,” he said.

Movement of prices in the international oil market and exchange rate shall continue to be monitored closely and developing trends of the market will be reflected.

A round up of some of the week’s most significant corporate events and news stories.

Burberry unveils sweeping changes in the boardroom

Fashion likes springing surprises, and shareholders in Burberry were in for plenty of that this week, writes Scheherazade Daneshkhu in London.

The British luxury goods group thrust forward a look that was almost as bold as this year’s kaleidoscope of colours and materials.

After only two years in the job, Christopher Bailey is to give up his role as chief executive in favour of an outsider, Marco Gobbetti, head of Céline, the fashion house that is part of LVMH of France.

Mr Bailey will take on the new role of president and retain his longstanding remit as chief designer.

Two years into her job as finance director, Carol Fairweather will be stepping down in favour of Julie Brown, her counterpart at Smith & Nephew, the medical devices company. Ms Brown will also take on the mantle of chief operating officer after John Smith — who has also been in post for two years — said last month he would be .

The boardroom sweep comes after months of financial underperformance and unrest from investors, who took aim at Mr Bailey’s dual role.

In May the Financial Times reported that Burberry was considering appointing to support Mr Bailey.

The end result was more radical and, while the changes were applauded initially with a share price rise of 6 per cent, there remains the question of who is in charge.

“We are both the boss,” Mr Bailey said, emphasising that he would remain involved in business decisions as an “equal partner” with Mr Gobbetti.

This week Burberry reported falling like-for-like sales in all markets and cut its outlook for wholesale revenues in a first-quarter trading update, highlighting the challenges facing Mr Gobbetti.

Comparable sales had declined 3 per cent in the three months to June 30, with underlying revenues flat at £423m.

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Talent agency WME-IMG joins ultimate ‘cockfight’

Private equity dealmaking joined judo and Brazilian ju-jitsu as one of the mixed martial arts in the Ultimate Fighting Championship this week when WME-IMG, the talent agency, said it would . Its aim would be to turn its ferocious bouts into the next big global sport, writes Joseph Cotterill in London.

Brock Lesnar, top, fights Mark Hunt during their heavyweight mixed martial arts bout at UFC 200 on July 9 in Las Vegas © AP

Buyout groups Silver Lake and KKR backed the acquisition — which is one of the biggest sports deals ever — and will take minority stakes, illustrating how far UFC has come as a business in the two decades since US Senator John McCain declared the sport was “human cockfighting”.

UFC says that it runs the biggest pay-per-view sporting events, reaching more than 1.1bn households globally. One of its biggest sources of income in recent years has been a seven-year, $830m deal with Fox television to broadcast bouts, which it signed in 2011.

The WME-IMG deal’s punchy valuation — revenues last year were $600m — attests to the value being given to digital distribution of events in sports deals. UFC runs its own subscription service.

As UFC has grown, so has controversy about how much it pays novice fighters to risk injury in its fights and its demands on them to wear only approved sponsor gear, such as Reebok.

As a Silver Lake investment and the product of a 2014 merger of two agencies, WME-IMG is itself the creation of private equity and has increasingly turned to sports deals, buying the Professional Bull Riders league last year.

New US shale revealed as lowest-cost oil prospect

The oil price slump that began two years ago has been described as a way to drive higher-cost production out of the market, writes Ed Crooks in New York.

© Getty

That higher-cost output has often been assumed to be North American shale oil, and US crude production has indeed been falling since April 2015.

This week, however, the energy research company Wood Mackenzie published an analysis that challenged that .

Lifting costs from existing wells may indeed be higher in the US than in parts of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. When production from new is considered, however, the picture changes. US shale oil accounts for about 60 per cent of the new oil production worldwide that would be economically viable at a Brent crude price of $60 per barrel, says Wood Mackenzie. 

New wells in the “Scoop” and “Stack” formations of Oklahoma, and the Bone Spring and Wolfcamp sections of the Permian Basin in West Texas, can break even with Brent at about $35 to $39 per barrel.

With Brent now holding steady at a little under $50 — it was about $47 on Friday — it is no surprise that oil drilling activity in US shale has started to pick up in recent weeks. 

For companies that specialise in the types of project up at the top end of the cost curve, including offshore fields in the North Sea and off the west coast of Africa, the analysis is chastening. The costs of new projects will need to be cut significantly if they are to compete.

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Airbus and Boeing vie for orders at Farnborough

The aerobatics at this week’s Farnborough air show were impressive, even if the volume of passenger was not, writes Peggy Hollinger in Farnborough.

An Airbus A350 long-haul jet landing at the Farnborough air show © PA

From the surreal aerial hover by Britain’s newest stealth aircraft, the F-35, to the gravity defying steep climbs of Boeing and Airbus passenger jets, there was enough to excite most of those who trekked to the global aerospace industry’s trade fair.

The value of orders was some 42 per cent lower than that notched up at the Paris air show last year at $61.8bn, with orders and commitments for just 461 aircraft against 2015’s 752.

While the deal making may have been muted, the rivalry between and Boeing was as electric as ever.

Boeing deflected attention from its order thrashing by Airbus’s best-selling A320 single aisle jet by suggesting it was well on the way to launching new variants of its equivalent, the 737.

Boeing is also advancing plans for its first entirely new aircraft in a decade. The so-called middle of the market jet would bridge the gap between the 737 and the 787 twin aisle jet.

Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing chief executive, is not in a rush, however. The big question is whether such an aircraft would stimulate orders or simply cannibalise existing ones.

The lesson of launching a multibillion-dollar aircraft programme before the business case is made was starkly illustrated at the air show when Airbus revealed it would slash production of its slow-selling , essentially keeping the programme alive until new orders can be won.

Thomson Reuters’ $3.55bn sale fuelled by PE interest

Private equity interest in the growing demand for research and data in Asian economies helped drive Thomson Reuters’ of its intellectual property and science division this week, writes David Bond in London.

© Getty

Canadian buyout group Onex and Baring Private Equity Asia announced the all cash deal on Tuesday, acquiring brands such as MarkMonitor, Web of Science, Thomson CompuMark and Thomson Innovation.

The division has been for sale since last November.

The move confirmed the trend for private equity groups to target business-to-business publishers and data research companies.

“These types of businesses are good investments for private equity groups,” said Sarah Simon, an analyst at Berenberg. “They have very high margins and have very stable subscription revenues, which means you can borrow a lot more to finance the transaction.”

The purchase of Thomson’s IP and science business was also part of a wider push by private equity into China and Asia, where there has been a sharp rise in scientific research investment.

Jean Eric Salata, Baring Asia chief executive, said: “We believe the outlook for the business is underpinned by an increasing shift towards more knowledge-driven economies and a continued emphasis on research and development.”

Thomson Reuters said it expected to use about $1bn of the proceeds to repurchase shares, as part of a $1.5bn buyback programme. The rest is expected to be used to pay down debt and reinvest in the business.

This is the second reduction in rates this month. Petrol price was cut by 89 paise a litre and diesel by 49 paise on July 1.

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on July 7 that it was publishing a final drilling safety rule for oil and gas exploration on the Arctic outer continental shelf. The new regulations, which apply to drilling from drill ships, semi-submersible drilling rigs and jack-up rigs, cover the fed…

The group of Prudhoe Bay unit fields known as the Greater Point McIntyre Area remains in something of a holding pattern as operator BP Exploration Alaska LLC continues to process the results of a recent seismic survey conducted over the northern end of the unit.
The company completed the offshore po…

As the special session of the Alaska Legislature called by Gov. Bill Walker for July 11 headed toward what is expected to be an early adjournment by legislators, Senate Finance heard the governor’s oil tax credit bill.
In his transmittal letter for the bill, 5005 in both House and Senate, the gover…

Despite delays in some North Slope field projects ConocoPhillips says construction is on schedule for its company’s GMT-1, or Greater Moose’s Tooth, project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska beginning this winter.
‘Engineering for GMT1 is still in progress and procurement is a focus for purc…

Alaska reported a 3.22 percent increase in oil production for its fiscal year ending June 30, according to a new report from the Division of Oil and Gas. It may be difficult to sustain the increase, however.
Total production for the fiscal year, from July 1, 2015, to June 30, 2016, is now estimated…

Doyon Ltd. is requesting an Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission exemption to statutory spacing requirements for its Toghotthele No. 2 exploration well.
The exemption would allow the Alaska Native corporation to drill the well within 500 feet of a property line where land ownership changes, i…

House Rep. Mike Hawker’s longstanding fight against cancer is well known. So too is his acumen and constant engagement on oil and gas development and tax issues. Hawker, the current Legislative Budget and Audit Committee chair, says undergoing treatment may keep him away from the Capitol and the House…