-Large, bipartisan majorities of U.S. voters support increased oil and gas production, including more offshore drilling, according to a new poll released by the American Petroleum Institute. Sixty-eight percent of those polled said they would vote for a candidate who supports offshore drilling and increased production overall. Only 28% said the federal government does enough to encourage domestic oil and gas development.
-Freeport-McMoRan said today it would sell as much as $5 billion in onshore assets in the U.S. as it shifts its investment focus to the Gulf of Mexico, Bloomberg reports. The company in May sold $3.1 billion in Texas shale assets to Encana Corp. and struck a deal to buy stakes in Gulf projects from Apache Corp. for $1.4 billion.
-Western Refining and local firefighters extinguished a fire that broke out at the company’s El Paso, Texas, refinery early this morning. Via the El Paso Times, the fire started in a boiler. No injuries were reported.
-Meanwhile, Mexican oil company Pemex halted work at its Ciudad Madero refinery in the state of Tamaulipas while it fought a storage tank fire. Via Reuters, no injuries were reported and the installations had not been damaged.
-Industry representatives criticized the Department of Energy’s recently proposed plan to prioritize LNG export permits for more commercially advanced projects and eliminate conditional approvals. Via FuelFix, some companies hoping to secure LNG export permits say the conditional approvals send a strong signal to markets and potential investors that their projects have a good chance of moving forward.
