Continuing a trend starting in 1983, the Nelson-Farrar refinery construction index rose quickly to 2,569.8 in September 2014 from 2,535.6 in January of the same year before weakening to 2,544.0 in December of 2015. Source: News

Governments can’t require the replacement of cheap energy by expensive energy without increasing the cost of energy. But they can waste a lot of money pretending otherwise. Source: News

A comprehensive study of operating conditions at commercial cokers of a China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) subsidiary and a pilot-scale delayed coker yielded recommendations for new operational parameters that the refinery has implemented to help mitigate shot-coke formation and, as a result, sharply boost profitability of its coking business. Source: News

Donald Trump, if elected president, would deploy the once-scorned “oil weapon” to pursue geopolitical goals. One of many problems with this strategy is that his central target learned, long ago, it doesn’t work. Source: News

The heterogeneity of oil and gas reservoirs across large resource plays, such as the Bakken, requires operators look at a combination of completion inputs to maximize rates and recoveries.  Source: News

Industry has advanced application of its improved oil recovery (IOR) techniques to unconventional reservoirs using horizontal drilling, but at least one petroleum engineer questions whether conventional reservoir management might be neglected in the process. Source: News

Northern Ireland’s Larne basin is sparsely explored, with only one oil and gas exploration well drilled in 1971 in the main fairway of the basin. New seismic technology and a recent gas show in a gas storage site test, however, are leading to new conventional exploration. Source: News

Mounting Middle East instability has further complicated Japan’s efforts to move ahead on an ambitious energy supply diversification strategy, speakers said at a Mar. 10 discussion at the Atlantic Council. Source: News

Scientific consensus on climate change, claims to which propel arguments for radical energy reform, lacks the heft commonly attributed to it. Source: News