WTI $103.58 +86c, Brent $109.97 +16c, Diff $6.39 -70c, NG $4.56 -6c

Oil price

It was all down to the inventory stats from the EIA last night and although they flummoxed Wall Street’s finest they were dead in line with the API numbers the night before. Crude stocks rose 1.7m barrels (f/c 500/-) overall but fell 1.53m barrels at Cushing but the interesting figure was again the gasoline stock report. Now I have always said not to judge on one week’s figures but there was a draw in gasoline stocks of 1.8m barrels which means good demand albeit over Memorial weekend and only one week, lets see what happens in the next week or two.

I have been following like most people the debate about whether the US should allow the export of crude oil and lift the ban, to me it is a no-brainer as the current gridlock can only cause long term grief. Support for my views overnight come from IHS run by my old friend Dan Yergin who says that the export ban is ‘redundant’ and that lifting it could lead to the export of 1m b/d of crude oil, create 1m jobs and bring gasoline prices down, what’s not to like. Unfortunately I wont get to see the report as buying stuff from CERA was always an expensive little game!

Petroceltic

It has been one of those bad mornings for Brian, Tom and the team at Petroceltic. Not content with announcing one dry hole they have made it three as Kurdistan, Romania and Egypt produce dust or water. The Shakrok-1 well in Kurdistan was to be fair already looking disappointing with early results leaked from the site, in Romania the Muridara-1 well was dry and in Egypt Dikrinis-1 was found to be water-bearing. With the next Kurdistan well on the Dinarta licence, Shireen-1 about to spud and with  gross unrisked prospective resources of 706 mmbbls hope remains high. I am not going to add any comments on Petroceltic as I have a meeting with Brian next week where I hope to catch up on lots of recent happenings and where they are going for the future.

President Energy

The announcement from President yesterday slipped through without appropriate comment, my apologies. The shares have come back rather too much as the indigestion from what was a pretty big placing and little action with the drill bit took their toll. Yesterday they announced not only the confirmation that the Pirity concession was  tucked up at 59% but that they will drill three exploration wells here in 2014. The first should spud within a fortnight so I expect much more interest in President in the future, also it is worth noting that Peter Levene bought some more stock below this level.

Sundry

The goings on at Centrica are going to affect all of us somehow. The senior management at the firm have either already gone AWOL or are about to as Chris Weston is of to Aggreko, Nick Luff prefers Reed and big Sam just wants out. This leaves many bases empty in the most difficult management roles in the industry so why, oh why, is Iain Conn thinking of leaving his cushy uber well paid  position at BP to go to it? Obv its the top job but will someone tell him what he’s getting himself into? Also in the excitement having hired Weston, Aggreko have overlooked the supremely excellent Angus Cockburn who will now leave and a dollar to a wet donut he will be at Serco before you can say profit warning…

IGas announce that the due diligence on Dart has been completed satisfactorily and that subject to regulatory approvals all is going according to plan.

Funny to see the gossip about a Weir/IMI merger which would create a heavyweight Ashes battle between Keith Cochrane and former Weir chief Mark Selway…

UK onshore wells at Wressle and Burton on the Wolds have been in the news this week as various participants announce that they are expecting drill bit action in the next month or so. Companies involved here are Egdon, Europa, Union Jack, Celtique, Terrain and Corfe Energy.

Erratum…….Its been a bad week for errors, I promise to improve! As pointed out by James Elston who has clearly not got enough to do(!) it’s Falcon Oil & Gas not Energy which rather dates me and Caza are producing at a combined rate of 1.602 boe/d which is even higher than I put in.

And finally…

No doubt about the sporting event of the weekend, indeed the Froch v Groves fight may well turn out to be one of the biggest ever all British fights for many years. Too difficult to call from here but worth checking out.

Tonight there is a pre-World Cup friendly between England and Peru, I never like friendlies and this will be no exception! In club football it seems that the HubCap Stealers have paid Southampton £4m for Ricky Lambert.

Muzza wins in Paris but regretfully Heather did not, finding the 4th seed a bit too much of a hurdle.

Steve Ballmer shells out $2bn to buy the LA Clippers after the recent to-dos forced the owner to sell, not a bad pay-day though…

In cricket Andrew ‘PedaloGate’  Flintoff comes out of retirement to play T20 for Lancashire again and English Kev delays his return for Surrey so as not to inflict too much pain on Middlesex tonight.

Talking of cricket I am off to Lords tomorrow as a guest of the delightful John Martin, head of the oil and gas practise at Standard Chartered which will be great fun and the weather is set to improve too!

Enjoy the weekend!