US Eyes 100-strong Mideast Sea Drone Fleet
The United States Navy and security partners will patrol Middle East waters with 100 unmanned vessels next year to improve deterrence against attacks, like those presented by Iran, the U.S. Fifth Fleet commander said on Monday.The region is vital for global trade, especially oil supplies that flow out of the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz.There have been high-seas confrontations between U.S. and Iranian forces with attacks on oil tankers in Gulf waters in 2019. Sanctions-hit Iran denied accusations of responsibility.Last year the U.S. Navy established a new task force to integrate drone systems and
BP's New Core Flood Robot EOR Techniques
EOR technologies. It measures the effectiveness of water or gas injected into an oil-bearing rock sample to displace oil. This can be used to assess the potential for water flooding in an oil field. “The EOR technologies being developed by BP are vitally important to help increase global oil supplies,” said Ahmed Hashmi, BP’s head of upstream technology. “We believe this step-change in our core-flooding capability will hugely improve the speed and efficiency with which we can deploy new technologies to recover more oil from reservoirs.” BP has had a large-scale in-house
Opinion: Oil Market Risks Grow as Chaos Spreads
are question marks over the future of another following the death of a charismatic leader (Venezuela). Only Saudi Arabia and its close allies Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates appear stable and reliable crude suppliers. CONCENTRATION RISK But look beyond the headline interruptions and oil supplies have become a much more diverse place since the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s. They have had to be because of the uncertainty and interruptions in supplies from the traditional exporters. In that diversity lies greater security for oil consumers. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 accelerated
Vanishing Volatility Signals Oil Market Shift
locational and quality arbitrage. At a more global strategic level, the influence of traditional oil exporters around the Persian Gulf is declining as alternative supplies become more available, now and in future. Political risk and other sources of supply-side risk are diminishing as oil supplies become more geographically diversified. It is no coincidence that the oil market in 2014 is beginning to resemble the markets of the 1950s and 1960s, because that was the last time the United States, with its large, stable and non-monopolised oil industry, was the marginal producer
February 2024
