Renewable Revolution

Staff Writers March 17, 2016

OPEC production fell by 90,000 barrels per day in February but still managed to stay well above 30 million barrels per day.

According to Platts, OPEC production slipped to 32.34 million bpd last month despite higher volumes from Iran.

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, maintained output at 10.2 million barrels per day.

Although Saudi Arabia held talks with Russia in January to discuss a potential output freeze any deal would be dependent on other OPEC and non-OPEC producers agreeing on a plan.

Iran’s plan to ramp up production now that Western crude sanctions have been lifted is also expected to complicate any production freeze deal.

Iran boosted output by 210,000 bpd to 3.12 million bpd in February and several of Iran’s former customers, including France’s Total and Russia’s Lukoil, are expected to purchase crude from the oil rich country.

“Now, one of the biggest questions for OPEC – and Saudi Arabia – is how many additional barrels will be flowing onto the market at a time of continuing oversupply,” Platts senior correspondent Margaret McQuaile said.

The rise in Iranian output was offset by a sharp production drop in Iraq, OPEC’s second largest producer.

Iraq accounted for the biggest production decline in February with output falling 200,000 bpd sequentially to 4.13 million bpd last month.

Iraq’s steep production decline was primarily tied to the closure of a key pipeline in the middle of February after attacks on the Turkish section of the line.

Oil from operations in the northern province of Kirkuk had been flowing at about 610,000 bpd before the pipeline outage.

Two industry officials told Platts that flows through the line restarted last Friday but they did not confirm pumping rates.

Production also dipped in Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates and Libya, but inched up in Angola and Kuwait.

Nigerian production dipped 80,000 bpd month-over-month to 1.77 million bpd as attacks on oil installations in the Niger Delta region escalated.

UAE production in February dipped by 50,000 bpd from January to 2.85 million bpd due to field maintenance while production in Libya ticked down by 10,000 bpd to 360,000 bpd.

A United Nations -brokered deal between Libya’s two rival governments that created a national unity government in January has so far failed to “create any semblance of political stability in the country,” Platts said.

Angola boosted its output by 30,000 bpd in February thanks to an export program that increased loading of crude grades such as CLOV and Saturno.

Angola’s state-owned Sonangol warned earlier this year that it expects 2016 to be rocky but it hopes to boost production despite low prices.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/platts-opec-production-fell-90000-bpd-feburary/

Nicolas Torres March 17, 2016

LINN Energy warned on Tuesday that it may face the risk of bankruptcy if it fails to strike a deal with its lenders.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Houston-based company said it is currently in default under its LINN credit facility and its second lien indenture.

The company also said it has “significant indebtedness” under its May 2019 senior notes, November 2019 senior notes, April 2020 senior notes, Berry November 2020 senior notes, December 2020 senior secured second lien notes, February 2021 senior notes, September 2021 senior notes and Berry September 2022 senior notes as well as its credit facilities.

As of February 29, the company had an aggregate amount of $9.3 billion outstanding under its notes and credit facilities, with an additional borrowing capacity of less than $1 million.

Total borrowings under its LINN credit facility, including outstanding letters of credit, were $3.6 billion with no remaining availability.

Total borrowings under the company’s Berry credit facility were about $899 million as of February 29 with less than $1 million available.

The company deferred interest payments totaling about $60 million that were due March 15, including $30 million on LINNs 7.75 percent senior notes due February 2021, $12 million on LINN’s 6.50 percent senior notes due September 2021 and $18 million on Berry’s senior notes due September 2022.

The missed payments will result in LINN being in default under those senior notes.
LINN said that, as a result of its debts, it is using a “significant portion” of its cash flow to make interest and principal payments, reducing cash available to finance its operations and limiting its flexibility to respond to industry changes.

“If we are unable to repay or refinance our existing and future debt as it becomes due, whether at maturity or as a result of acceleration, we may be unable to continue as a going concern,” LINN said.

Based on current estimates and expectations for commodity prices in 2016, LINN said it does not expect to remain in compliance with all of the restrictive covenants in its credit facilities throughout 2016 unless those requirements are waived or amended.

The company added that, because its credit facilities are effectively fully drawn, any reduction in its borrowing base would require mandatory payments that would make its existing indebtedness exceed the new borrowing base.

LINN will “attempt to take appropriate mitigating actions” to refinance its debts prior to maturity or to extend maturity dates but said there is “no assurance” that those actions “will be sufficient.”

The company has engaged financial and legal advisers to assist in analyzing various strategic alternatives to address its liquidity and capital structure, including strategic and refinancing alternatives through a private restructuring.

“However, a filing under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code may be unavoidable,”

LINN said.

LINN said it is currently in discussions with various stakeholders and is pursuing or considering a number of actions.

However, the company added that it can not assure that sufficient liquidity can be obtained from one or more of those actions or that those actions can be completed before certain obligations must be met.

LINN reported a fourth quarter 2015 net loss of $2.5 billion, or $7.05 per unit, on Tuesday and a full year 2015 net loss of $4.8 billion, or $13.87 per unit.
“We are continuing to work with our advisors to review a full range of strategic alternatives to reduce the company’s overall debt. In addition, we have been in discussions with certain lenders in an effort to reach a mutually agreeable resolution and remain focused on right sizing the balance sheet in order to position the company for long-term success,” LINN chairman, president and CEO Mark E. Ellis said.

Shares of LINN Energy were trading at $0.80 per share around noon on Wednesday.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/linn-energy-flags-bankrcupty/

Agelbert NOTE: Even with the used car salesman type creative accounting the oil industry corporate crooks and liars routinely engage in (see: Companies haven’t fudged their numbers this much since the financial crisis), they leak a little of the truth out to those that can read between the lines (i.e. It's a LOT WORSE than they are admitting below).



Nicolas Torres March 24, 2016

Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard warned on Monday that falling upstream spends may cut the company’s first quarter revenues by 15 percent.

During a presentation at the Scotia Howard Weil 2016 Energy Conference Kibsgaard said Schlumberger now expects first quarter 2016 revenues to drop more than 15 percent sequentially to about $6.5 billion.

Kibsgaard added that the current outlook suggests “a further weakening in the second quarter.”

“So far, we have successfully  managed the challenging commercial landscape of this downturn….However  , the third phase of E&P spending reductions that we are currently experiencing will have a significant impact on our earnings per share in the current and coming quarters given the magnitude and erratic nature of the activity disruptions,” Kibsgaard said.

Crude prices have rallied back from near 13 year lows in recent weeks as OPEC production holds steady and non-OPEC production continues to fall.

The International Energy Agency recently suggested that oil prices may have bottomed out but added that the recent price bump “should not… be taken as a definitive sign that the worst is necessarily over.” 

The IEA now expects global demand to grow by about 1.2 million bpd in 2016  while non-OPEC production is expected to fall by 750,000 bpd to 57 million bpd, up from the agency’s estimate of a 600,000 bpd decline in February.

Kibsgaard said that despite the bright spots  , Schlumberger is maintaining its view “that there will be a noticeable lag between higher oil prices and higher E&P investments given the fragile financial state of our customer base.”

Kibsgaard added that the lag between changes in crude prices and upstream spends “means that there will be no meaningful improvement in our activity until 2017.”

“We firmly believe in a medium-for-longer oil price environment where there is an urgent need for the industry to move to a contracting model with significantly more collaboration and commercial alignment between operators and leading service companies,” Kibsgaard said.

Houston-based Schlumberger said in January that it will cut another 10,000 jobs after reporting a 39 percent year-on-year revenue decline in the fourth quarter.
The company’s fourth quarter revenues fell to $7.74 billion while pre-tax operating income declined 54 percent year-over-year to $1.28 billion.

Income from continuing operations, excluding charges and credits, sank to $819 million in the fourth quarter from $1.941 billion during the same period in 2014. 

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/schlumberger-warns-1q-revenue-may-fall-15-percent/

Nicolas Torres March 30, 2016


BP confirmed on Tuesday that it will layoff hundreds of employees at its Houston office.

In a letter to the Texas Workforce Commission seen by Rigzone, the company said it will layoff 500 workers from its Houston office starting in June.

The layoffs are part of a broader plan to cut 4,000 jobs from the company’s upstream unit in 2016.

Further details about the cuts have not been disclosed yet.

BP said in February that it also expects to cut up to 3,000 staff and contractor positions from its downstream segment by the end of 2017.

“We’re making good progress    in managing and lowering our costs and capital spending, while maintaining safe and reliable operations and continuing disciplined investment into the future of our portfolio,” BP group chief executive Bob Dudley said in February.

BP booked a fourth quarter replacement cost loss of $2.23 billion compared to a loss of $969 million a year ago.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the federal court in New Orleans to approve a proposed $20 billion settlement tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident.

The settlement will resolve  the government’s civil claims under the Clean Water Act and natural resources damage claims under the Oil Pollution Act.


http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/bp-laying-off-500-houston-workers/

Staff Writers March 29, 2016

The U.S. rig count hit a new record low this week after shedding 12 rigs.
According to Baker Hughes, the number of oil and gas rigs operating in the United States fell to 464 as of March 24, a significant decline from the 1,048 rigs operating a year ago.

The drops pushed the rig count to its lowest level since Baker Hughes began tracking data in 1949 and marks the second time in three weeks that the rig count has sunk to a historic low.

The oil rig count dropped by 15 rigs to 372 to last week, down from 813 a year ago, while the gas rig count ticked up to 92 after gaining three rigs.

The number of vertical rigs dropped to 53 rigs after shedding five rigs and the horizontal rig count fell by 10 to 359 rigs.

The directional drill count climbed by three rigs to 52 rigs last week.
Texas once again posted the largest rig count drop of all the major producing states after losing eight rigs last week.

Oklahoma lost three rigs last week while Alaska shed two rigs.

Rig counts in Arkansas, California, Colorado, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming held steady from last week.

Louisiana gained two rigs and New Mexico added one rig.

The Permian Basin in Texas lost five rigs last week while the Eagle Ford Basin, also located in Texas, lost four rigs.

The Cana Woodford Basin lost three rigs and the Ardmore Woodford Basin and Marcellus Basin lost one rig each.

The Barnett Basin added two rigs last week.

The Gulf of Mexico climbed by one to 27 rigs.

The Canadian rig count fell to 55, down from 120 rigs a year ago, after losing 13 gas rigs and dropping one oil rig.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/03/u-s-rig-count-hits-new-time-low/


Agelbert OBSERVATION: However, other Fossil Fuel Industry IDIOTS just cannot stop TRASHING THE PLANET.    

The next FIVE news items today serve as evidence of how INSANE the ocean oil rig business has become.   

Nicolas Torres April 4, 2016

Murphy Oil said Friday that it will cut jobs across its operations as part of a cost saving effort.

The Arkansas-based company told Bloomberg that it plans to cut an unspecified number of jobs at all of its locations as it seeks to trim costs.

“Head count has been lowered across all functions in every location to match our lower capital spend,” Murphy Oil spokesperson said Kelly Whitley told Bloomberg.

The company said in its 2015 annual report that it expects to reduce its capital spend by more than 70 percent worldwide in 2016.

Murphy Oil told the CBC on Friday that it was still in the process of reducing its headcount.

The company had 1,258 employees as of the end of December.

Murphy Oil has operations in the United States, Canada, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Namibia and Australia.

Last year, Murphy Oil withdrew from blocks in Indonesia, Cameroon and Suriname, according to the company’s annual report.

The company said in its 2016 proxy statement that it froze the 2015 base salary of its CEO Roger Jenkins at 2014 levels    , citing low oil prices and market conditions.

Jenkins is slated to earn a base salary of $1.3 million in 2016 and a total direction compensation of about $7.1 million, down from $12.1 million in 2015, the CBC said.   

Murphy booked a 2015 net loss of $2.27 billion, or a loss of $13.03 per share, down from a net income of $905.6 million in 2014.

The company reported a $2.25 billion net loss from continuing operations compared to a net income of $1.025 billion in 2014.

Murphy said its 2015 net loss was primarily caused by impairments on properties in the Gulf of Mexico, Western Canada and Malaysia, lower energy prices and sales volumes and costs related to exiting deepwater rig contracts in the Gulf of Mexico.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/04/murphy-oil-cutting-jobs-every-location/

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Shocking-Photo-Nearly-30-Oil-Tankers-in-Traffic-Jam-Off-Iraqi-Coast.html

Shocking Photo: Nearly 30 Oil Tankers in Traffic Jam Off Iraqi Coast
By Charles Kennedy
Posted on Thu, 07 April 2016 16:48 | 1

Oil tankers are caught in a traffic jam near the Iraqi port of Basra, causing delays in loading. According to Reuters, around 30 very large crude carriers (VLCCs) are sitting in the Persian Gulf, and the backlog could cost ship owners more than $75,000 per day. Some could be waiting for weeks to reach the port.

Check out this shocking satellite photo of the tanker traffic jam just off the coast of Iraq.

(Click to enlarge)

The culprit is high oil production in Iraq. The port at Basra is struggling to load up all the oil tankers fast enough, forcing some to sit and wait. Iraq exported about 3.26 million barrels per day (mb/d) in March from its southern coast, which is up from just 2.5 mb/d in 2010.

Related: Advantage U.S. In The Global Petroleum Showdown?

And the line of tankers appears to be growing. The gridlock is forcing up the cost of renting an oil tanker. That, combined with the shrinking capacity of available storage in China is pushing up tanker rates in Asia as well. Shipping data shows that VLCC rates have doubled from $37,250 per day to $74,700 per day.
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As of now, Reuters calculates that there are 27 VLCCs sitting in the Gulf near Basra, holding about 43 million barrels of oil, double the typical backlog. Some have been waiting for weeks. The current waiting time is 18 to 19 days, which is two to three times the normal wait of 5 to 10 days.

Related: $120 Oil As Soon As 2018?

Reuters contacted a captain of one oil tanker, who said that he wasn’t sure when he would be able to load up at the port. "We've been given no details," he said, declining to be identified.

Meanwhile, onshore, Iraq is struggling with a bit of rising instability in the country’s south, which is far from the battlefields with ISIS and has been one of the few refuges of stability. However, militias have a growing presence there, raising concerns for the international oil companies operating in Basra.

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

The price of oil in 2004 was a scam. It had everything to do with the end of regulation of the commodities exchange and the increase in speculation by banks. Supply and demand had NOTHING to do with it.

The wet dream of these fossil fuel **** and their pals in Wall Street is to get floating storage packed to the gills at low prices and then jack up the oil price with speculation to over $100 a barrel. 

Of course it will be sold, as the fine fellow in the article above attempts to do, as a "supply and demand" thing. 

There are many problems with that theory.   

But the MAIN problem with it is the assumption that the oil pigs will still have their subsidy swag in place in 2018. I don't think so. 

Without "subsidies", they MUST raise prices to make money. But they CAN'T raise prices when a (clean) competing energy supply is growing exponentially.

So, unless they can come up with a nice big WAR, that floating storage will have to be fire sale sold.     

There are other problems that are giving the refineries conniption fits right now. The cracking towers can be modified somewhat to change the product proportions, but the adjustments are relatively minor. You WILL get X percentage of VOCs, diesel, lubricants, heavy oils and greases from one barrel of crude.

The quality of the crude aside for a moment (it's getting worse, not better), the FACT that demand for  transportation fuels, heating oil and air conditioning costs are all being ATTACKED by EV use and more efficient HVAC (including beam chiller technology that does NOT require energy hogging compressors for cooling), disrupts the refinery product balance. THis is VERY BAD NEWS for the Fossil Fuel Industry.    

This is a pain in the cracking tower for refineries. Old Rockefeller solved that "problem" by getting cars to run on the waste product called gasoline. The "problem" is returning with a vengeance. 

The refineries cannot just repurpose the whole barrel of crude into methane, ethanol, fertilizers, plastics, pesticides and textiles because they can't sell the proper percentage of gasoline and diesel for the corresponding heavy oils and lubricant product. That means an ADDED cost to dispose of the VOCs and gasoline.   

The Predators 'R' US crowd at Wall Street do not get that   .  They think they can jack up the price of any commodity with speculation. It ain't gonna happen this time. 


The LOSS of MOST of the gasoline and commercial home heating oil market, in addition to the LOSS of utility demand for  fossil fuels due to NEW Renewable Energy infrastructure, load balancing software and MUCH greater storage capacity from parked EVs and dedicated home and commercial battery systems hither and yon, spells DOOM for ANY $120 a barrel Wall Street wet dreams.


Tesla, rivals, software may kill petrol car as soon as 2025 
By Giles Parkinson on 5 April 2016

The response to our article on Monday “Tesla Motor’s Elon Musk just killed the petrol car” was as fascinating as it was overwhelming. It is on track to be the most read story on our web-site to date.   

The response was fascinating because it came from a mixture of those prepared to imagine the future, and read the signs of change, and those focused on short-term issues – be it meeting production schedules, reducing battery costs, or the immediate future of the Tesla share price.

Then there were those who simply didn’t want to know. The oil industry is one of them. It is making predictions, and seeking capital, as though the EV didn’t exist. The nuclear industry also wishes it wasn’t so. “This is bullish*t”, tweeted one of the most prominent nuclear advocates, still clinging to the old centralised energy model.

So we thought it would be useful to explain more about how it is that Musk  has killed the petrol car .

And for that we went back to Stanford University’s Tony Seba, the academic who predicts that fossil fuels, coal and oil in particular, will be redundant by 2030.


Seba tells RenewEconomy that the latest developments at Tesla, with the huge response to the sneak preview of its new Model 3, and the rollout over at General Motors of the Chevy Bolt, confirm his predictions. They may in fact accelerate them.

Seba’s message is not one that sits comfortably with incumbent industries, the auto and oil sectors in particular. He thinks that new internal combustion engine cars will not be on sale by 2025. Anywhere in the world. And there may not be many internal combustion engine buses, trucks, and tractors either.

This graph below is the key to the story. It comes from Seba’s Clean Disruption book released 18 months ago, and is a forecast of the declining cost of electric vehicles as battery storage costs plummet. The release of the Chevy Bolt and the Tesla Model 3, both at around $US35,000, put developments ahead of his curve.


It means that within a few years, high-performance EVs will cost less than the average car in the US. Within five years they will be competing with low-cost Buicks.

“For the past 100 years, the auto industry has told us that if you want high performance you have to pay big bucks,” Seba says. “So when you get a car with a better performance than a Porsche and a cheaper price than a Buick, that’s the end for both Porsche and Buick."   

But that’s not the only point. Seba argues that electric vehicles will cost 10 times less than internal combustion engines to charge. Electrons are easier to move than petrol and diesel. Solar powered charging stations will deliver refills at zero marginal cost.

Maintenance will also be significantly cheaper. An international combustion engine has more than 2,000 moving parts. An electric vehicle has less than 20 moving parts. It will have negligible maintenance costs. 

Seba explains more:

“The Internal Combustion Engine is 17-21 per cent efficient while the electric motor is 90-95 per cent efficient. The EV is 5 times more energy efficient than the ICE car.

“Combine that with the fact that it’s cheaper to transmit electrons (electricity) than atoms (gasoline or diesel) and you get that energy costs/mile are 10 times cheaper for EVs.

“This number of course changes according to local conditions (as you know electricity vs petrol costs vary widely depending on taxes, transmission costs, subsidies, industry protection, etc.), but I haven’t seen a market where energy cost per mile for EVs are less than 5 times cheaper than energy costs for ICE cars.”
Seba worked his predictions on a 200-mile range (320kms) EV costing $US30,000 by 2020, cheaper than the ICE alternative and with huge fuel and maintenance savings.

“Assuming both these cars (GM Bolt and Tesla Model 3) do in fact go to market 2017 and the industry catches up to them by 2018, it fits my forecast perfectly,” Seba says. 

“This means that 2020 would be the tipping point for the disruption, the point at which it would make no financial sense to purchase an ICE vehicle for the average vehicle buyer. Follow the EV cost curve and by 2025 all new vehicles will be electric.

“Interestingly, the median new ICE car in the US is now $US33,000 (compared to his forecast of $US31,000) and the EV cost curve may be accelerating beyond the 16 per cent per year curve that I predicted.

“So, in fact, the end of the ICE vehicle era may happen faster than my 2025 prediction. By the way, this is not just the end of the ICE car era. My prediction is that by 2025 all new vehicles will be electric: cars, SUVs, trucks, buses, tractors, anything that moves on the ground with wheels.

“When digital cameras disrupted film cameras, it didn’t just happen with low-end cameras,” Seba says. “It happened with all cameras. It’s the same dynamics with vehicles.”

These predictions do two things: they validate targets, such as those by India’s roads minister for all cars to be electric by 2030; and they make policies such as the Dutch ban on internal combustion engines from 2025 appear a little redundant. 

And here it is worth reinforcing a point we tried to make yesterday. These predictions do not lie in the success or otherwise of Tesla, or the ability of Musk to meet production targets. And they also do not assume that individual ownership of vehicles will be as paramount as it now is.

Musk, you see, is not alone, he is just blazing a trail. FoxConn, the makers of the Apple laptop, predicts it will be making EVs at a price of $US15,000. Ford, Seba notes, has announced plans to invest $US4.5 billion in electric vehicles, not necessarily to capture the lion’s share of the market in units sold, but to become a “mobility company”.

GM is also investing in the “mobility services” business, snapping up interests in companies investing in lifts and autonomous cars. Google and Apple are investing heavily in similar technologies.

Tesla also has a “master plan”, as we noted on Monday. This does not centre around selling units so much as miles or kilometres travelled. Morgan Stanley says Tesla’s future will rely not on EV deliveries, but the network of service and free charging that is “critical to delivering mobility service-based revenue in the future.”
Seba says a similar transition is happening in the electricity supply industry, where the plunging cost of solar and of battery storage is changing the rules of the game from a centralised to a distributed model, also based around a “zero marginal cost of production”, rather than the increasing marginal cost on which the fossil fuel industry relied.

There are three reasons for this change in focus in the auto industry, Seba says. Cars are moving from internal combustion engines to electric, they are being driven by computers rather than people, and they will be shared rather than owned.

“Change comes from the outside,” Seba says, referring to the photo, computer, media and telco industries. “ECs are computers on wheels. Companies offer free charging. We are moving to zero marginal cost.

“You can power hour house with your car. If every car in Norway is a full EV, they will be able to store one half of the daily electricity demand.”

And there is one other things that may change too. The use and need for car parks. If Seba is right, and car sharing dominates over individual ownership, then car fleets will be significantly smaller and car usage will switch from 10 per cent usage and 90 per cent parking, to 90 per cent usage and 10 per cent parking.
That’s a lot of car parks lying under-utilised. It may turns out that cheaper real estate is on the way too.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/tesla-rivals-software-may-kill-petrol-car-as-soon-as-2025-2025

EXCELLENT COMMENT:

Cooma Doug  

There are many powerful influences that emerge in such developments that are hidden by our life just rolling on.

1......insurance of autonomous EVs will be much less. Almost all serious accidents will have human control route cause.

2......noise reduction will change many aspects of life as we know it.

3.......traffic density management via mass co ordination and satellite technologies will hugely affect infrastructure design and requirements for the better.

4.......pollution reduction will be the elephant in the room with huge benefits.

5.......car interior design will change enabling different activities during travel that will benifit life in many ways.

6......The absurd level of danger and risk of death and injury on the road will soon begin to be seen for what it is today. Risk and safety management will be hugely empowered by the EV revolution and will rightly become a major influence in change.

We will look back at todays hazardous roads and be thinking wow....how did they ever allow such crazy things to persist.

     

Staff Writers April 8, 2016

Chevron said Thursday that it will cut just over 650 jobs as part of a previously announced layoff plan.
A Chevron spokesperson told Rigzone that the company will cut 665 positions in Houston as part of a broader plan to reduce its headcount by about 4,000 positions this year.

The spokesperson told Rigzone that affected employees will receive at least six weeks of transition pay along with severance benefits and career transition services.

Further details about the cuts have not been disclosed yet.

Chevron CEO John Watson first flagged the layoff plan in the company’s third quarter 2015 results.
Watson said in October that Chevron anticipated reducing its workforce by between 6,000 to 7,000 positions after further reducing its 2017 and 2018 spends.

In the company’s fourth quarter earnings call, Watson said Chevron expects to reduce its headcount by about 4,000 positions in 2016 and added that the company cut about 3,200 jobs last year.

Exports from Chevron’s Gorgon LNG project were halted earlier this week due to mechanical issues with the propane refrigerant circuit on Train 1 at the plant site.

Chevron said Wednesday that it now expects the project to be shut down for 30 to 60 days.

The Gorgon project is located in offshore Western Australia and has a total production capacity of about 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 20,000 barrels of condensate per day.

Chevron reported a loss of $588 million, or $0.31 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of 2015, down significantly from earnings of $3.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Full year 2015 earnings fell to $4.6 billion     , or $2.45 per diluted share, down from $19.2 billion, or $10.14 per diluted share, in 2014.

http://petroglobalnews.com/2016/04/chevron-cut-655-houston-jobs/

Agelbert NOTE: It's GOOD to see that Chevron is becoming toxic to it's stockholders, considering how REALLY TOXIC the actions of this Giant Profit Over Planet Polluter ARE.