-Chevron will increase asset sales by 50% to $15 billion and halt new investments for the next two years amid the oil price plunge, Bloomberg reports. The company will continue to sell off exploration and production assets through 2017 and its capital spending will decrease as large projects wind down. Chevron CEO John Watson said production is still expected to grow 20% by the end of 2017.
-Meanwhile, Watson said Chevron has received “quite a bit of interest” from prospective buyers for its refinery in Kapolei, Hawaii. The company said last month it expects to sell the refinery by the third quarter of this year.
-Pemex is moving forward with the first phase of an ultralow-sulfur fuels project at its Lazaro Cardenas refinery near Minatitlan, Mexico, the Oil & Gas Journal reports. Pemex will start up 24,000 barrels per day of ultralow-sulfur fuel production at the refinery in April. The startup follows 14 months of construction and installation of a catalytic hydrodesulfurization plant.
-The remaining fires caused by a crude oil train derailment in Ontario on Saturday have been extinguished, UPI reports. The Canadian National Railway train derailed about two miles from the village of Gogama. A bridge was damaged and five of the cars crashed into a nearby river. Local officials said there is no threat to drinking water supplies, but water and air quality monitoring are ongoing. It was the fourth crude oil train incident in less than a month and the second to occur near Gogama in that time frame. Both derailments near Gogama involved trains carrying synthetic crude to Valero’s Quebec City refinery.
-EQT Corp. agreed to sell its Northern West Virginia Marcellus Gathering System to EQT Midstream Partners for $1.05 billion. The system was built to gather natural gas production in the wet and dry gas regions of the Marcellus Shale. It includes approximately 70 miles of natural gas gathering pipeline and nine compressor units. It also includes a 30-mile high-pressure wet gas header pipeline that moves gas to the MarkWest Mobley processing facility.
