-Saudi Aramco said the first units at its new 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Jizan, Saudi Arabia, will be ready for start-up in 2017. Via Reuters, the refinery is part of a $20 billion plan to establish an industrial city Jizan. The plan also includes a 4,000-megawatt power plant, a port and a refinery terminal.
-The United Steelworkers union on Wednesday clarified in a statement it is seeking day-to-day maintenance work — not new construction, turnaround or shutdown work or specialty work — in its negotiations with oil companies. Via FuelFix, the union also said it does not seek to prohibit the subcontracting of the aforementioned work to contractors whose employees are represented by building trades unions. The statement, issued jointly with North America’s Building Trades Unions, aimed to settle a dispute between the two groups over negative comments made by the United Steelworkers about contract labor.
-An environmentalist group in Colorado has scrapped its plan to get a statewide ban on fracking on the state ballot, the Associated Press reports. The Coloradans Against Fracking will instead try to persuade Gov. John Hickenlooper to impose a ban himself. Hickenlooper has said the state does not have sufficient evidence to support a ban.
-Meanwhile, environmentalist groups in California are petitioning Gov. Jerry Brown to ban fracking. Via The Hill, the groups are using a recent report that oil and gas drillers injected wastewater into protected waters as ammunition. Brown has 30 days to respond to the petition under state law.
-The number of active rigs in North Dakota has declined from 190 to 121 over the past year, according to the state’s Department of Mineral Resources. Via Reuters, the rig count is below the threshold of 130 needed to sustain current state production of just over 1.2 million barrels per day. The rigs that remain active are concentrated primarily in the state’s most productive areas.
