OPEC, for some quiet moments..

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Beware, oil bulls: Just as U.S. oil production sinks low enough to drain supplies, demand is about to fall off a cliff. American gasoline consumption typically ebbs in August and September as vacationers return home, and refiners use that dip to shut for seasonal maintenance. Over the past five years, refiners’ thirst for oil has dropped an average of 1.2 MMbpd from July to October.

Oil bulls beware: Demand is about to fall sharply

The USGS has assisted the government of India in the discovery of large, highly enriched accumulations of natural gas hydrate in the Bay of Bengal. This is the first discovery of its kind in the Indian Ocean that has the potential to be producible. Natural gas hydrates are a naturally occurring, ice-like combination of natural gas and water found in the world’s oceans and polar regions. The amount of gas within the world’s gas hydrate accumulations is estimated to greatly exceed the volume of all known conventional gas resources.

Large deposits of potentially producible gas hydrate found in Indian Ocean

LNG’s surge is running out of gas. Liquefied natural gas in Asia, which was in such over-supply that prices in Japan fell to a decade-low in April, has risen by almost half in the past three months as production outages stifled supply, demand rose in places like China and India and a cold snap in Europe increased the need for heating fuel. The resurgence likely won’t continue, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Chevron Corp. restarted LNG production at its Gorgon plant in Australia July 22 after halting it twice this year because of malfunctions. New projects coming online in the second half of the year are expected to add supply and once again overwhelm global demand.

LNG’s surge from decade-low seen fizzling as supply ramps up

China National Petroleum Corp. said its Changqing oil field, the country’s biggest crude and gas producer, rebounded from losses earlier this year to post a first-half profit amid reduced spending. Oil and gas equivalent output from the field reached 26.5 million tons in the first six months of the year, on its way to meeting the 50-million-ton annual output target, CNPC said in a statement on its website on Tuesday. It said the oil field had losses in January and February, without giving details.

China’s biggest oil field posts 1st-half profit on cost cuts