Institute of the Americans will present a complimentary webinar discussing both the historical context for the current oil price market as well as the outlook for oil prices. The event will be Wednesday, Sept. 9, beginning at 10 a.m. PDT.

“After a dramatic drop in oil price in 2014, the global oil market has settled into a period of volatility,” the Institute said in a release. “According to the Inter-American Development Bank, the fall was preceded by an unprecedented era of high prices and stability. The resiliency of crude oil prices between 2011 and 2014, they argue, was largely due to action by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council producers. In addition to stabilizing prices, the Gulf States’ actions kept Saudi production competitive and increased its market share, ensuring greater control. ”

Ramón Espinasa, Lead Oil and Gas Specialist at the Energy Division of the IDB, and Carlos Sucre, Energy Consultant at the IDB, will be presenters.

Register for the webinar.

Industrial Safety & Hygiene News has posted a complimentary on-demand webinar on the challenging demands of maintaining safety in the oil and gas industry as it involves operators or lease owners, drillers and oil-field service companies.

“It is inherently difficult to manage,” ISHN says on its website. “As a result, implementing safety across all three functions is equally challenging. This webinar will address the activities that occur under each and how to seamlessly implement these practices to ensure worker safety.”

The presenter is Mark Hansen, a past president and a Fellow of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) and a subject matter expert on oil and gas industry safety.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

The oil price crashes of the 1970s led to a wave of nationalization and changes to petroleum legislation by oil-producing states. Contractual stabilization clauses could help international oil companies (IOCs) protect their interests should the same occur again, reports Pinsent Masons in its Out-Law.com blog.

“Stabilisation clauses can be an effective tool to improve an IOC’s negotiating position when dealing with a change in law affecting the terms of an upstream petroleum contract. It is important to have the right approach to negotiating stabilisation clauses to achieve a mutually beneficial position for the IOC and the host state,” write George Booth, Niazi Kabalan and Leo Shaw for the firm.

Read the article.

The term “Peak oil” is the theory that oil production has maxed out and that decline is therefore inevitable, writes Mona Dajani in a white paper published by Baker & McKenzie. “The oil market is in a state of confusion, though several developments may serve to halt the momentum depending on their respective outcomes,” she writes.

“The race between new technologies and new resources is a major challenge; it is getting harder to access and extract oil and we are becoming more reliant on technological advances to meet this challenge. It should be noted, however, that if U.S. oil production declines significantly this year and prices remain relatively low, there is a chance that the world has seen the all time high of oil production,” she writes.

Read the white paper.

Verdantix will present data from interviews with 300 heads of energy and facilities in 15 countries around the world in a complimentary webinar scheduled for Thursday, August 6 at noon Eastern time.

The event will provide senior managers responsible for business planning, strategy, marketing and sales in energy services and equipment suppliers with the hard data needed to align your 2016 plans with the realities of market demand, the company says on its website.

“The Verdantix global survey data also provides insight into country-specific and industry-specific trends across segments such as decentralized energy, energy performance contracts, energy storage and energy software. You will hear from Verdantix analysts about the hot segments to target in 2016 based on our analysis of corporate spending priorities.”

Register for the webinar.

Oil industry technology has improved over the last five years since the BP drilling platform explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, writes Mintek Mobile Data Solutions in a paper published on its website.

“Enhanced blow-out protectors, built by BP, are in place to prevent these measures from hopefully not happening at this magnitude, and, even internationally, new technology is being handled remotely to control the oil and gas networks. Also, oil rigs are being secured by energy sectors, but this still doesn’t protect them from cyber-attacks,” the paper says.

“In fact, ‘32% of attacks on critical national infrastructure were targeted on energy firms in 2014.’ This is due to hackers being able to get into the system and override it, however with Government involvement and better maintenance practices in place, we should be able to get our waters to a cleaner state and keep it that way for years to come.”

The paper lists five improvement made to prevent similar disasters in the future.

Read the article.

A Colorado oilman must pay $16.8 million to reimburse energy companies for legal fees they incurred defending his unsuccessful lawsuits against them, a federal judge in Wyoming has ordered, according to a report in The Casper Star-Tribune.

The defendant, Jack Grynberg, filed scores of lawsuits against natural gas and pipeline companies around the West in the late 1990s.

“Grynberg claimed the companies had underreported energy production from federal lands by billions of dollars and claimed he was due a share of the funds as a whistleblower under the federal False Claims Act.” the newspaper reported. “He stood to collect up to 30 percent of any award, but said he intended to donate proceeds to charity if he was successful.”

Casper lawyer Tom Reese is liaison counsel for the energy companies.

Read the article.

The Texas Supreme Court recently issued a decision in a compression cost case impacting the natural gas production industry in the case of Kachina Pipeline Co., Inc. v. Michael D. Lillis, reports The National Law Review.

The ruling focused closely on the contract language finding that a natural gas transporter could not deduct compression costs and was not entitled to a five-year extension based on the terms of the agreement.

“The Texas Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals’ judgment reiterating several contract law principles, including (1) in construing a contract, the four corners rule applies and the contract must be examined as whole to ascertain the parties true intent and (2) extrinsic evidence can only be used if a contract is ambiguous.” the Law Review reported.

Read the article.

The Oil & Gas Journal will present its annual Midyear Forecast, a special report that uses first-half data to update projections that appeared in OGJ’s Annual Forecast and Review this past January.

The webinar will be on Friday, July 10, at 10 a.m. Central time.

Both reports project oil and gas markets through the end of the year worldwide, analyze demand product by product in the United States, and forecast drilling activity in the United States and Canada. The webcast also will discuss political developments important to the oil and gas industry.

Presenters will be OGJ Editor Bob Tippee and Senior Economics Editor Conglin Xu. They will summarize projections in key categories, note important changes from January’s forecasts, and examine reasons for the adjustments.

Register for the webinar.

Global Organization EY has posted a complimentary webinar that explores how companies can transform and prosper by focusing on enhancing financial, operational and portfolio resilience needed to weather an extended period of volatile energy prices.

Presenters are Andy Brogan, EY Global Oil & Gas Transactions Leader; Barry Munro, the leader for EY Oil & Gas industry initiatives in Canada and a senior vice president of EY Orenda Corporate Finance based in Calgary; and Axel Preiss, a Senior Partner in the Advisory practice and  the Global Oil & Gas Advisory Leader.

Moderator is Deborah Byers, Managing Partner of the EY Houston office and also a the U.S. Oil & Gas Leader.

Oracle has posted an on-demand webinar on the planning challenges facing the oil and gas industry, how driver-based strategic planning can help address these, and how implementing Oracle’s Primavera solutions can help.

“With the turbulent and volatile price of oil and gas, it is paramount in organizations’ boardrooms that not only is the annual capex and opex budget set according to future oil and gas prices but that the correct projects are selected,” Oracle says in a release. “Executives need to ensure that projects deliver against predetermined drivers (ROI, positive cash flow, profitability, production, environmental impact).”

The webinar covers:

• Objectively assess projects to deliver the best shareholder value
• Improve return on capital, profitability and financial reporting accuracy
• reduce risk/contingency across the capital projects portfolio

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Transocean Ltd. has agreed to a nearly $212 million settlement with Gulf Coast individuals and business owners over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, plaintiff’s lawyers said May 20, according to a report in TheTimes-Picayune.

Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which sank after the April 20, 2010 blowout at BP’s Macondo well. The disaster killed 11 workers and set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The newspaper quoted co-lead plaintiffs’ attorneys Stephen J. Herman and James P. Roy as saying, “We applaud Transocean for adding to the settlement funds established in the Halliburton settlement to help compensate people and businesses for their losses.”

Read the report.

Burleson LLP hosted a second webinar as part of its ongoing series titled, “Drilling Down on Strategic Alternatives in the Current Energy Crisis.” The complimentary event, “Part 2: Boards of Directors and Corporate Governance,” now is available on-demand.

The session features key insights from a panel of energy restructuring attorneys and capital and financial advisors.  Topics include the zone of insolvency; fiduciary duties of directors, officers, and controlling shareholders; strategies to limit liability; special committees; and the Delaware Standard of Review.

On the firm’s website, Rick Burleson, managing partner and moderator, says, “Overseeing a company’s exposure to risk can be a particularly big task for oil and gas boards of directors, given the current energy climate.”

Watch the recorded webinar.

BakerHostetler will present its Shale Symposium series to address issues related to shale and hydraulic fracturing in North America.

The symposium will be Thursday, June 4, 2015, from 5:30–8 p.m. CDT. Participants may register to attend in person or via webinar.

After a regulatory review process lasting more than three years, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently issued a final rule purporting to govern hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands. The rule represents the most high-profile component of the Obama Administration’s sweeping efforts to overhaul regulations governing virtually every aspect of domestic oil and gas production.

The presentation will explain the role of the hydraulic fracturing rule within the more expansive regulatory context and will consider the consequences that the outcome of legal and political challenges seeking to invalidate the rule could have on federal energy policy.

Register for the symposium.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a much-anticipated final rule modifying some of the scheduling practices used by interstate natural gas pipelines to better coordinate the scheduling of the wholesale natural gas and electricity markets (Order No. 809 or Final Rule), reports Reed Smith LLP is a new white paper.

“In the Final Rule, FERC retreated from certain changes it proposed in its April 1, 2014, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR), which initiated this proceeding,” wrote authors Amy S. Koch, Michael A. Yuffee, Todd L. Brecher. “Notably, FERC did not implement its proposal to change the start of the Gas Day to better align it with the electric operating day. Based on the response of the electric and natural gas industries to this proposal, FERC determined that the record did not establish that the benefits of such a change outweighed the costs. FERC noted that ISO-NE and PJM – two of the regions of most concern – have recently undertaken operational and market actions to address generator availability and performance, and that all of the ISOs and RTOs are considering changes to better align their markets with the Gas Day.”

Read the white paper.

Chesapeake Energy has agreed to a $25 million civil settlement with Michigan to settle claims by the state that the Oklahoma City-based producer conspired with another exploration-and-production company to fix bids in oil and gas lease sales in the state in 2010, according to a report in Platts.

The settlement resolves allegations that Chesapeake “had conspired with Calgary-based Encana Oil & Gas to avoid bidding wars against each other in Michigan public auctions for oil and gas leases that caused lease prices to plummet in October 2010,” Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a statement announcing the settlement.

Platts says the settlement also addresses complaints that Chesapeake defrauded hundreds of private citizens by fraudulently canceling their oil and gas leases in 2010.

Read the story.

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 21 ruled that state law antitrust claims brought against interstate pipeline companies by a group of manufacturers and other retail buyers of natural gas are not pre-empted by the Natural Gas Act, according to a report from Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo.

The court considered whether the Natural Gas Act pre-empts state law antitrust claims when the challenged conduct affects both federally regulated wholesale natural gas prices and non-federally regulated retail natural gas prices, explained author Dionne Lomax.

“According to the majority, the state law price-manipulation claims were not pre-empted because they were directed at practices affecting retail rates, which falls squarely on the states’ side of the dividing line,” she wrote. “Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Roberts strongly dissented.”

Read the report.

A recent settlement under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Extraction Enforcement Initiative provides insight into EPA’s approach under the Clean Air Act and highlights the type of “beyond compliance” requirements on which industry should focus, reports King & Spalding in a white paper.

“Given its patchwork of regulatory authority over operations in the oil and natural gas industry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted a national enforcement initiative to focus its efforts,” the paper says. “Through its Energy Extraction Enforcement Initiative, EPA has been steadily targeting the energy industry.”

Advanced air emissions monitoring tools that EPA pursues in its settlements may expose settling companies to future litigation based not on the compliance demonstration method of the applicable air rule, but rather on broader Next Generation technology, the authors write.

Read the white paper.

The Obama Administration’s first comprehensive survey and analysis of the nation’s basic energy infrastructure needs for the 21st century provide a critical analysis of vulnerabilities in the energy transmission, storage, and distribution systems in the United States, according to a white paper published by Morgan Lewis & Bockius.

The report includes specific recommendations for investments in energy infrastructure upgrades and new policies designed to promote responsible development of domestic energy sources and to facilitate more timely environmental review and permitting decisions, the paper says. “Priorities outlined in the report will likely shape legislative and administrative actions that could affect markets and shape commercial opportunities in the energy sector.”

Read the white paper.

Willbros, McCarthy Tétrault and Duff & Phelps will present a free webinar on April 28 to discuss the 2015 oil and gas outlook in the midstream and downstream markets.

The webinar will begin at 11 a.m. Eastern time.

Panelists will discuss North American and European M&A activity and industry trends.

Topics will include:

• Oil prices and geopolitics
• Commodity price impact on M&A activity
• Long-term outlook in midstream and downstream markets

Register for the webinar.