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HOUSTON, Jan. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Talos Energy Inc. (“Talos” or the “Company”) (NYSE: TALO) today announced that the Katmai West #2 well located in the Ewing Bank area of the U.S Gulf of Mexico successfully encountered commercial quantities of oil and natural gas.

Key Highlights

• The Katmai West #2 well was drilled significantly under budget and ahead of schedule to a true vertical depth of approximately 27,000 feet.
• Encountered the primary target sand full-to-base with over 400 feet of gross hydrocarbon pay and excellent rock properties in line with pre-drill expectations.
• Expected deliverability from the well is in line with pre-drill estimates of approximately 15 – 20 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (“MBoe/d”) gross.
• The strong performance from Katmai West #1 well, and the successful appraisal from Katmai West #2 well, have nearly doubled the Proved EUR (estimated ultimate recovery) of Katmai West field to approximately 50 million barrels of oil equivalent (“MMBoe”) gross, which further affirms the company’s expected total resource potential of approximately 100 MMBoe gross.
• First production is expected in the late second quarter 2025.

The drillship West Vela began drilling the Katmai West #2 well in late October 2024. Talos plans to case and suspend the well by late January 2025 while the Company finalizes completion plans to be executed in the second quarter 2025. Production is expected to start later that same quarter. The well will be connected to the existing subsea infrastructure that flows to the Tarantula facility, which has been expanded to increase capacity to 35 MBoe/d. Talos anticipates the Katmai wells will be rate-constrained under the upgraded capacity, allowing for extended flat-to-low decline production from the facility. Talos, as operator, holds a 50% working interest, with entities managed by Ridgewood Energy Corporation holding the other 50% in Katmai West field. Talos is the 100% owner and operator of the Tarantula facility.

Talos’s Interim Co-President, Executive Vice President and Head of Operations John Spath stated, “We are proud of our team for achieving these successful drilling results. Delivering this high-impact deepwater well, approximately 35% under budget and more than a month ahead of schedule, demonstrates our ability to efficiently execute complex projects while maintaining top safety and environmental standards. We remain optimistic about the greater Katmai area, as these results align with our pre-drill expectations about its gross resource potential. We look forward to having this well on production and believe it positions us for strong value creation as we move forward into 2025.”

ABOUT TALOS ENERGY

Talos Energy (NYSE: TALO) is a technically driven, innovative, independent energy company focused on maximizing long-term value through its Upstream Exploration & Production business in the United States Gulf of Mexico and offshore Mexico. We leverage decades of technical and offshore operational expertise to acquire, explore, and produce assets in key geological trends while maintaining a focus on safe and efficient operations, environmental responsibility, and community impact. For more information, visit www.talosenergy.com.

INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACT

Clay Jeansonne
[email protected]

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT ABOUT FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This communication may contain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of historical fact included in this communication, regarding our strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. When used in this communication, the words “will,” “could,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “estimate,” “expect,” “project,” “forecast,” “may,” “objective,” “plan” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such identifying words. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions about future events and are based on currently available information as to the outcome and timing of future events.

We caution you that these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. These risks include, but are not limited to, the successful development of and production from the prospects described herein; the uncertainty inherent in estimating reserves, resource potential and reservoir performance; the outcome of exploration and drilling efforts; environmental risks; drilling, geologic and other operating risks; the profitability and results of wells described herein; timely completion of development projects; technical or operating factors; the uncertainty inherent in projecting future rates of production and cash flows; our access to capital to finance such opportunities; implementing a successful drilling program and the other risks discussed in “Risk Factors” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023 and “Risk Factors” in our subsequent Quarterly Reports on Forms 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).

Should one or more of the risks or uncertainties described herein occur, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, our actual results and plans could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements, expressed or implied, included in this communication are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. This cautionary statement should also be considered in connection with any subsequent written or oral forward-looking statements that we or persons acting on our behalf may issue. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, we disclaim any duty to update any forward-looking statements, all of which are expressly qualified by the statements in this section, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this communication.

PRODUCTION ESTIMATES

Estimates for our future production volumes are based on assumptions of capital expenditure levels and the assumption that market demand and prices for oil and gas will continue at levels that allow for economic production of these products. The production, transportation, marketing and storage of oil and gas are subject to disruption due to transportation, processing and storage availability, mechanical failure, human error, hurricanes and numerous other factors. Our estimates are based on certain other assumptions, such as well performance, which may vary significantly from those assumed. Therefore, we can give no assurance that our future production volumes will be as estimated.

RESERVE INFORMATION

Estimates of recoverable hydrocarbon volumes and related measures, including estimates of total resource potential, as presented herein are based on internal data prepared by the Company’s management team in reliance on several assumptions. Reserve engineering is a process of estimating underground accumulations of oil, natural gas and NGLs that cannot be measured in an exact way. The accuracy of any reserve estimate depends on the quality of available data, the interpretation of such data and price and cost assumptions made by reserve engineers. In addition, the results of drilling, testing and production activities may justify revisions upward or downward of estimates that were made previously. If significant, such revisions would change the schedule of any further production and development drilling. Accordingly, reserve estimates may differ significantly from the quantities of oil, natural gas and NGLs that are ultimately recovered. In addition, we use the term expected “total recoverable resource” in this release, which is not a measure of “reserves” prepared in accordance with SEC guidelines or permitted to be included in SEC filings. These resource estimates are inherently more uncertain than estimates of reserves prepared in accordance with SEC guidelines.

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SOURCE Talos Energy

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• US shale producers are focused on capital discipline and shareholder returns, limiting the impact of Trump’s pro-oil policies.
• Increased Permian rig activity is unlikely to significantly boost oil production due to inventory depletion and efficiency concerns.
• The US is already on track to meet Bessent’s 3-3-3 hydrocarbon production target without policy changes, driven by NGLs and gas.

Although corporate executives in the shale industry may be encouraged by the supportive rhetoric of President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration, a potential crude oil oversupply and a stagnation in well productivity mean they are less likely to boost drilling budgets. Operators are likely to cut back on Lower 48 drilling if prices stay below $70 per barrel. Industry heavyweights such as Chevron and Diamondback have guided for more modest budgets and slower-to-flat production growth next year. For now, ‘Shale 4.0’ priorities, which emphasize capital discipline to prioritize shareholder payouts and inventory consolidation are expected to outweigh ‘Trump 2.0’ policy considerations in US producers’ boardrooms. Rystad Energy finds that in a scenario where Permian rigs rise by 60 more per month higher compared to current projections and reach post-Covid-19 highs, we could see a production upside of 343,000 barrels of oil per day by the second half of 2026, relative to our current forecast. However, this growth would come at the expense of a spike in capital spending of more than $11 billion, while Permian reinvestment rates are also expected to edge higher by nine percentage points.

There is some hope that an unabashedly pro-oil and gas administration could break the current investor paradigm and encourage a new era of exploration and growth. However, the overriding issue is that without the consistent productivity improvements that allowed for investors to effectively subsidize the shale boom during the 2010s, investors and lenders will be unlikely to await longer-term payback while capital efficiency degrades.

Figure 1 looks at Rystad Energy’s current annual forecast for oil, natural gas liquids (NGLs) and gas in the entire US from 2024-2028. Scott Bessent, tapped by President-elect Trump to serve as his Treasury Secretary, floated an increase of output by “3 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd)” as part of a broader “3-3-3” economic plan. There has been some ambiguity around the reporting of Bessent’s plan and whether it refers to only the growth of oil or across all hydrocarbons. Rystad Energy notes that, if this is in reference to all hydrocarbon production, the US is already on track to surpass this metric in 2027 based on current market fundamentals and company strategies, barring any policy changes. In our base case outlook, total output will grow in the US by 3.3 million boepd from full-year 2024 averages to full-year 2027. However, an important caveat here is that the 6:1 volumetric-equivalent between oil and dry gas means that gas volumes, which already have a more optimistic medium-term price outlook than oil, average higher current output in oil-equivalent terms than oil and are on track to grow by 1.72 million boepd through 2027. NGLs have the highest compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) among hydrocarbons, of 3.2% between 2024-2027, bringing an additional 625,000 boepd.

To evaluate any realistic growth in just oil volumes in the medium term, Figure 2 looks at an excess rig scenario in which rig activity in the Permian increased 60 above our current outlook through 2025. While this is highly unrealistic in the current price environment and corporate strategy paradigm, it is meant as a purely theoretical exercise to see what level of growth would be possible. Moreover, we have seen that operators exhibit little upwards price sensitivity in the $70-$90 per barrel range, and any increases in activity could come at the expense of other parts of a company’s portfolio. Even so, in the scenario where upward price movement comes on the back of external demand factors such as the occurrence of macroeconomic or geopolitical shocks, or if executives were willing to ramp up activity and pursue Trump’s desire for more drilling, we explore what output would look like.

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By Julian Lee, Serene Cheong and Alex Longley (Bloomberg) —

The most aggressive Western sanctions imposed on Russia’s oil sector since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine threaten to disrupt global supply as buyers — led by China and India — scour the Middle East for alternative suppliers. Some estimates suggest the measures could halve Russian oil exports and their introduction has driven up Brent futures by as much as $5 a barrel in recent days.

On Jan. 10 the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 161 tankers and traders involved in about 2,000 shipments since the invasion began. It also acted against Moscow-based ship insurers and two companies — Surgutneftgas and Gazpromneft — which in the first 10 months of last year accounted for almost 30% of Russia’s oil exports.

Some vessels have already come to a standstill while others are turning away from the Russian ports they were supposed to collect cargoes from, according to vessel tracking data from Bloomberg News. These erratic movements over the past week are an indication of the impact of the latest round of sanctions, said Edward Fishman, senior research scholar at Columbia University and author of an upcoming book on the use of sanctions as a form of economic warfare.

“It’s even likelier that there will be a sustained market disruption,” Fishman added. “We could see a meaningful drop in Russian exports.”

Oil traders are now asking how meaningful the fall might be?

The 161 tankers affected by the Jan. 10 measures could transport about 1.4 million barrels a day of oil according to an estimate from the London-based EA Gibson Shipbrokers Ltd. That equates to almost half of Russia’s seaborne crude exports, vessel tracking by Bloomberg shows. Macquarie Group estimates the impact could be even greater with as many as 2.15 million barrels a day of oil exports potentially lost, driving up prices. The Macquarie figure’s almost three times bigger than the global supply surplus predicted by the International Energy Agency for this year.

Additionally, oil grades that require specialist vessels are at risk of a near shutdown if Moscow can’t find workarounds, Bloomberg tracking of the sanctioned ships’ prior movements shows.

Russia has previously confounded expectations of disruption to its supply. There were widespread predictions that its flows would plunge shortly after the invasion of Ukraine as traditional buyers stepped back. Instead, flows largely held up and despite some fluctuations have done so ever since, partly due to the limited nature of the earlier rounds of sanctions which have been criticized by some.

To carry on trading Moscow has employed a collection of so-called shadow-fleet tankers: aging vessels that often operate without known owners and insurers, flying the flags of countries deemed less-safe by the shipping industry. But the Jan. 10 measures almost doubled the number of vessels sanctioned by either the US, European Union or UK increasing it from 143 to 265.

China and India — which have bought 81% of Russia’s seaborne crude exports since the invasion of Ukraine — have always been careful to avoid breaching US sanctions up to now.

Lars Barstad, the chief executive officer of Frontline Management AS, operator of one of the world’s largest supertanker fleets, said Russia will be confronted with a months-long logistical challenge.

“This is a major disruption,” he said. “Temporarily, they will have a logistical issue, especially as China and India appear to be adhering to US OFAC listings.”

China and India go Shopping for Oil

Buyers in both Asian nations have been asking producers in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to provide more oil, according to officials in those countries. But finding additional barrels would be difficult given that these countries have made commitments to OPEC+ — in which Moscow is a leading force — to keep supply restrained.

In a sign of a more-urgent need for barrels, China’s state owned refiners and larger independents have been frantically seeking out crude and selected so-called prompt barrels for more-immediate loading, according to traders. It’s been a similar picture for India’s state-owned plants, a critical source of buying of seaborne Russian cargoes, they said.

Sanctioned tankers were still delivering to ports in both China and India this week but New Delhi has warned that any designated vessels will only be allowed to deliver cargoes if they were loaded before Jan. 10 and discharged no later than March 12. After that, the ships will be off limits.

Some vessels heading to collect fresh loads are starting to abandon their voyages. At least five of the 77 ocean-going crude carriers — excluding the shuttle tankers tied to specific projects — sanctioned by OFAC have abandoned the journeys they were on at the time. The Atlas, Heng Tai and Venture were all heading to the Baltic when they made U-turns off the western coast of Europe and headed toward the Mediterranean.

In the Pacific, the Himalayan and the Salty Wolf both stopped journeys to the Russian port of Kozmino on Jan. 12. The Himalayan moved to waters off China’s Shandong province where it anchored. The Salty Wolf was last seen on Wednesday heading toward Singapore.

The measures have also made tankers not targeted by OFAC wary: two unsanctioned vessels heading toward the Arctic port of Murmansk — where both storage ships and all the shuttle tankers that fill them have been designated — turned round close to the Norwegian city of Tromso shortly after the measures were announced. They are now heading for the Baltic.

The Trump Effect

Amid speculation that the incoming Trump administration could dilute the Russian measures, Scott Bessent, the nominee for Treasury secretary, said Jan. 16 that he supported dialing up the sanctions on the Russian oil industry to help bring an end to the Ukraine conflict.

“I will be a 100% on-board for taking sanctions up,” especially on Russian oil majors, he said at a senate hearing. “I believe that the sanctions were not fulsome enough.”

What will matter for oil supply is implementation and enforcement. If the measures force Russia to sell its oil at deep discounts, then the incentive to work around the sanctions will increase.

Adi Imsirovic, a veteran oil trader who has been critical of the effectiveness of Western sanctions on Russia, said the Jan. 10 measures showed that the outgoing administration had finally taken action to hurt the Kremlin.

“Biden allowed the Russians to work around the problem for two years,” said Imsirovic, who is now the director of Surrey Clean Energy. The impact of these “sanctions will depend on implementation, but they can be fairly effective.”

© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

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Hungarian PM has accused Kiev and Washington of jeopardizing energy security across Europe

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Austin, Oakland, New Orleans, San Francisco, Washington D.C., New York City, Detroit, Seattle, Portland, Tampa.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

We talk a lot about “home prices in the US” – rising or falling or whatever, as if the US were one monolithic market. But the US spans a vast number of housing markets that all dance to their own drummer, though they all share some underlying themes. The long-running Wolf Street series, The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles of America, currently charts 33 of the largest metropolitan areas with the highest home prices. Those metros are huge and diverse. Some cover parts of several states and comprise multiple counties.

So here are the largest cities – not metros – with the biggest price declines from their respective peaks in 2021, 2022, or 2023, for single-family houses and separately for condos and co-ops.

The double-digit decliners: For single-family houses, 4 of those cities have price declines between 15% and 19% from their respective peaks in mid-2022. For condos and co-ops, 6 of these cities have prices declines between 12% and 21%.

These prices here are seasonally adjusted and a three-month moving average to iron out the month-to-month squiggles. They’re part of the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) data, based on the Zillow Database of All Homes. These are not median prices.

The biggest cities with the biggest price declines of single-family houses.

The metrics include: price decline from their peak, change from prior month (MoM), change year-over-year (YoY), and increase since January 2000.

Despite this big fast drop, prices are only back where they’d first been during the price explosion in June 2021. Easy come, easy go here, but prices are downward sticky. They exploded by 38% in two years. And then, in two-and-a-half years, prices gave up only about half of that:

Prices are back where they’d first been in October 2020. Between June 2012 and the peak in May 2022, prices had tripled, which is nuts.

Prices are back where they’d first been in October 2020. Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out a portion of the city in August 2005, coincided with the beginning of the housing bust, and so we left this area blank.

Prices are now back to where they had first been in mid-2018. That was over six years ago:

Back to December 2020.

The biggest cities with the biggest price declines of condos and co-ops.

OK, this is moving pretty fast, not very downward sticky.

Back to 2016.

Back to April 2015. Condo prices had doubled in the four years between 2012 and 2016. But the sky is not the limit, not even in San Francisco. In the City of San Francisco, condo sales are the majority of the market.

In the process of revisiting 2018.

Got a little bit of excitement going on in here. Maybe the huge stock market rally, the surge in bond and leveraged loan deals, and all the other things that produce huge bonuses for Wall Street workers.

Back to November 2017.

Back to 2016.

Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer and iced-tea mug to find out how:

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Days before Trump takes office, Brayton Point loses $300 million offshore wind cable plant development project

THE ITALIAN COMPANY seeking to build a cable manufacturing plant at Brayton Point in Somerset, Massachusetts, pulled the plug on the $300 million project Friday, dealing a major blow to offshore wind development on the East Coast as well as the economic prospects of the small South Coast town.

The Prysmian Group spent nearly three years obtaining all the necessary state and local permits, including beating back a regulatory challenge brought by a handful of neighbors of Brayton Point. But ultimately the company decided to walk away from the project just days before Donald Trump, who has vowed to shut down the offshore wind industry in the United States, takes office.

Trump’s hardline stance on offshore wind is also reverberating in ongoing contract talks between Massachusetts utilities and two offshore wind developers – Avangrid and Ocean Winds. With Trump’s inauguration creating a great deal of uncertainty about the future of offshore wind, the two sides revealed this week that they need more time to reach a deal. Instead of releasing the contracts in February, the deadline has now been pushed back to May.

The deteriorating situation is raising questions about the state’s efforts to make offshore wind the centerpiece of a climate change policy that hinges on electrifying homes and vehicles using carbon-free power. Gov. Maura Healey went all in on offshore wind in a procurement that concluded in September, but that strategy is now in jeopardy as Trump threatens to shut the industry down and impose tariffs on imported products and materials.

Prysmian did not mention Trump in a statement confirming its decision to not exercise an option to purchase land at Brayton Point. The company chalked the decision up to its efforts to align capacity to produce subsea cable with demand for its product.

“As a result of the consideration, including the strong growth opportunities in the US and global cable markets, Prysmian has decided to not proceed with the purchase of the land in Somerset, and therefore will not proceed with the Brayton Point project,” the statement said. “We would like to share our appreciation for the support that we received from the state and local leaders as well as the residents of Somerset while we worked on this project.”

Somerset has been reeling financially ever since two power plants in the community shut down. The Prysmian plant offered the promise of more than 100 jobs and tax revenues that over time were expected to amount to between $8 million and $15 million a year, according to Jamison Souza, the chair of the Somerset Select Board.

“This brings us back to the drawing board. It’s a major blow,” Souza said. “We’re scraping. We’re down to bare bones.”

The St. Louis-based owner of Brayton Point bought the property in 2018 and subsequently imploded and tore down the massive coal-fired power plant there. The firm’s goal was to replace the coal plant with businesses associated with the emerging offshore wind industry, but that plan was put on hold when Trump’s first administration slowed approvals of wind farms to a snail’s pace.

With the vast property sitting empty, the company leased a portion of the space to a company shipping scrapped metal to Turkey. The noise and dust caused by the scrap metal operations angered neighbors of Brayton Point, and prompted a years-long battle to shut the facility down that ended when a state judge sided with the neighbors.

Prysmian signed a deal in 2022 to buy space at Brayton Point for its plant, a move that attracted the attention of President Biden, who came to Somerset to celebrate the community’s shift to renewable energy. “Brayton Point is on the frontier of clean energy in America,” Biden proclaimed.

Now, with Biden stepping down to make way for Trump, the town is going to be forced to start over again.

Source: CommonWealth Beacon

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One millionaire left the UK every 45 minutes in 2024 after the Labour Party’s tax overhaul, a report says

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Janet Yellen has told Congress that her department will pause retirement payments in a bid to avoid default

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The two nations, both under immense pressure, are together pushing to create a fairer world

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• The U.S. recently announced sanctions on Russian oil producers, along with vessels that have been shipping barrels of Russian crude.
• India will be hit the hardest by the sanctions, more so than China which has also been snapping up Moscow’s cheap oil, said analysts.
• The South Asian nation imports a significant 88% of its oil needs, with around 40% of that figure coming from Moscow.

India’s days of buying cheap Russian oil could be over.

Sweeping sanctions by the U.S. against Russia’s energy companies and operators of vessels that transport oil will complicate Indian efforts to keep importing cheap Russian crude and could push up inflation in Asia’s third-largest economy, analysts said.

“India will be more affected than China by sanctions, since India imports much greater amount of its oil from Russia than China,” he told CNBC.

Last Friday, the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions on two Russian oil producers, along with 183 vessels which are primarily oil tankers that have been shipping barrels of Russian crude. At present, tankers sanctioned by the U.S. are still permitted to offload crude oil until March 12.

The South Asian nation imported a significant 88% of its oil needs between April and November 2024, little changed from a year earlier, according to government data. Around 40% of those imports came from Russia, data from trade intelligence firm Kpler showed.

Out of the newly sanctioned 183 tankers, 75 of them have transported Russian oil to India in the past, according to data provided by Kpler. Just last year alone, the 183 sanctioned tankers transported around 687 million barrels of crude, of which 30% were shipped to India.

The new U.S. sanctions were deeper and broader than foreseen by markets, and the disruptions are expected to amplify, Spanier added.

India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.

No more cheap alternatives?

An Indian economy pain point

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