Capstone receives microturbine orders from Horizon Power Systems

Capstone Turbine Corporation, a clean technology manufacturer of microturbine energy systems, announced that it has received orders for 50 Capstone C65 microturbines for oil and gas production in the U.S.

Horizon Power Systems, Capstone' s exclusive oil and gas distributor for the Eagle Ford, Permian, San Juan and Wattenberg shale plays, secured the orders. The orders will bring the total fleet to more than 550 microturbines in operation in Horizon' s area of responsibility, and will serve various stages of oil and gas production, including powering central processing stations, well-head operations and flare reduction.

Capstone manufactures low-emission, durable and highly efficient microturbines for around-the-clock production and optimized wellsite performance.

Providing useful resources, articles and writings on crude oil, other petroleum products, energy and gas. By O'Niel Petroserve Nigeria Ltd, online.

BP to form separate business to manage onshore assets in U.S. Lower 48

BP has announced its intention to establish a separate business to manage its onshore oil and gas assets in the U.S. Lower 48.

The U.S. Lower 48 onshore oil and gas business environment has unique characteristics. Responding to these, the new business will operate separately from the rest of BP and will be designed to adapt to the rapidly changing and hyper-competitive energy landscape in the region. This move is expected to help unlock the significant value associated with BP’s extensive resource position in the U.S. Lower 48 onshore, which BP currently oversees through its Houston-based North America Gas group.

“Over the last few years, we have fundamentally reshaped our North America Gas portfolio,” said BP Upstream Chief Executive Lamar McKay. BP has done so by divesting non-core assets and focusing development in leading U.S. unconventional plays like the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas. “Now it’s time to reshape the way we run the business—and we are very excited about this bold step forward,” he said.

BP will own the new U.S. Lower 48 onshore business. But the business will be led by a separate management team and be housed at a new location in Houston, apart from BP’s Westlake campus. It will have separate governance, processes and systems designed to address the unique competitive and operating environment in the U.S. Lower 48 onshore. BP is expected to begin disclosing separate financials for the new business in 2015.

These changes are chiefly intended to improve competitiveness of the U.S. Lower 48 onshore business through greater speed of innovation, faster decision-making and shorter cycle times from access through to production, together with more efficient cost management.

The changes to BP’s U.S. Lower 48 onshore business are consistent with the group’s strategy of delivering value over volume. BP also believes these moves will enhance efforts to develop industry-leading technology that will be a critical part of BP’s global strategy in unconventional oil and gas resources going forward.

“Participating in the U.S. Lower 48 onshore is key to our upstream strategy because we believe the region will remain at the forefront of innovation and drive global learning in unconventional resources,” McKay said.

The approach BP intends to pursue for its U.S. Lower 48 onshore business is specifically designed in response to the unique business environment in the region. Much of what BP does in other onshore regions around the world will continue to rely on the scale, capital, technology and project management capabilities that only a major international oil company can provide.

Providing useful resources, articles and writings on crude oil, other petroleum products, energy and gas. By O'Niel Petroserve Nigeria Ltd, online.

ANGF to build LNG production platform in Texas

Applied Natural Gas Fuels (ANGF) has completed the purchase of 31 acres of land in RailPort Business Park in Midlothian, Texas, to build a multi-liquefier LNG production platform.

The platform will consist of up to five liquefiers with a production capacity of 86,000 LNG gallons per day per liquefier and a total on-site storage of 1.5 million LNG gallons.

In addition to formally acquiring the land, the company has executed purchase orders for all long lead items such as storage tanks, production skids and the electric motor and compressor unit.

“Midlothian is a perfect location to build our plant,” said Cem Hacioglu, president and CEO of ANGF. “In addition to having all the required amenities to construct a state-of-the art facility, Midlothian’s strategically important location will allow us to tap into a wide range of customers in fast growing verticals,” added Hacioglu.

The Midlothian LNG plant, which is expected to be operational in early 2015, will focus on end users in the high-horsepower, trucking, E&P, rail, marine, remote power generation and mining markets that currently use diesel fuel and are interested in converting to a lower-cost, cleaner-burning alternative.

ANGF is currently in the process of doubling the production capacity at its Topock, Arizona, LNG plant by adding a second liquefier which is scheduled to come on line in July 2014. When completed, the Topock LNG plant will produce about 172,000 LNG gallons per day. Upon commissioning of all five liquefiers at the Midlothian LNG plant, ANGF' s total production capacity will reach over 600,000 LNG gallons per day.

Providing useful resources, articles and writings on crude oil, other petroleum products, energy and gas. By O'Niel Petroserve Nigeria Ltd, online.

Success for China’s first four shale gas well zipper frac

China' s first four shale gas well zipper fracturing went smoothly at the Changning H2 national demonstrative shale gas mining block in Sichuan earlier this month. It is currently the most advanced shale gas factory operation around the world. And its success theoretically doubles working efficiency and highlights the performance of the Chinese equipment.

A total of 32 of the most advanced frac spread for 4 horizontal wells completed the 56-stage fracturing operation, with a total of 31.7 million gal liquid and 12.1 million lbs of sand injected, many times that required for conventional shale gas fracturing.

To guarantee stability and safety, 32 sets of equipment were used. These included 13 JEREH units (2,500hp), 6 JEREH units (2,000hp), 8 HALLIBUTON units (2,000hp) and 5 S&S units (2,000hp) with a total output power of 7,000hhp.

Due to the high requirements for the equipment, two sand blenders break down at the early stage of operation and it is noticeable that JEREH sand blenders show reliable performance to ensure the smooth completion.

Providing useful resources, articles and writings on crude oil, other petroleum products, energy and gas. By O'Niel Petroserve Nigeria Ltd, online.

Petrofac rises to 3-month high on $1.2 billion BP deal

Petrofac Ltd. rose to the highest in three months in London trading after the oil-services provider won a $1.2 billion contract from BP Plc in Oman.

Petrofac advanced as much as 4 percent to 1,383 pence, the highest intraday price since Nov 15. It’s up 12 percent in 2014.

BP awarded the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the central processing facility of the Khazzan gas project, London-based Petrofac said today in a statement.

“This contract is very much Petrofac’s bread-and-butter, an onshore gas processing plant in the Middle East,” Investec Bank Plc said in a note.

Separately, Ophir Energy Plc today said it signed a non-binding agreement with Petrofac to help develop a gas project off Equatorial Guinea.

Providing useful resources, articles and writings on crude oil, other petroleum products, energy and gas. By O'Niel Petroserve Nigeria Ltd, online.