Canadian Company Strikes Oil in Argentina’s Neuquen Basin

Tired of poor refining margins, Imperial Oil Ltd. has been soliciting buyers for its Dartmouth refinery in Nova Scotia since last May, and the announcement of new eastern pipelines has not led to a change of heart at the company — at least for now. The company has been saying that it has received multiple offers since last October and now expects to make a decision later this year.

John Dalt submits:There is a land rush going on in Texas. This isn’t chuck wagons and kids on ponies. It is oil men with briefcases stuffed with cash.

TransCanada Corp. has asked for firm commitments from shippers as it plans to convert a portion of the Mainline natural gas pipeline into an oil artery. The project will require 1,400-kilometre of additional construction and could carry as much as 850,000 barrels per day of oil from Western Canada to Eastern Canada. The project has the potential to reach Irving Oil’s  refinery in Saint John, N.B., and provide another way  for landlocked Alberta oil to reach new markets.

Enbridge Inc , Canada’s second-largest pipeline company, reported an 8% fall in quarterly profit as it was hurt by an after-tax charge of $105-million related to certain offshore assets. The company and Energy Transfer on Friday said they will work together to provide crude oil pipeline access to the eastern Gulf Coast refinery market from Patoka, Illinois, a crude storage and blending hub.

Since 2005, the "total oil supply" for the United States as reported by the Energy Information Administration increased by 2.2 million barrels per day. Of this, 1.3 mb/d, or 60%, has come from natural gas liquids and biofuels, which really shouldn't be added to conventional crude production for purposes of calculating the available supply.

As U.S. oil production ramps up, net oil imports have fallen in 2012 through April to a 20-year low of 42.4%.

Canadian oil and gas explorer and producer Gran Tierra Energy Inc. confirmed an oil discovery at the Chaza block in the Putumayo Basin in Colombia, and said it expects long-term testing and early production in the first quarter of 2011