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Interantional news for oil and gas professionals

The US Department of the Interior released its proposed final 2012-17 US Outer Continental Shelf leasing program that it said makes areas with the most likely recoverable oil and gas resources—including tracts off Alaska's Arctic coast—available over the next 5 years.

Emphasizing that reviews are still under way, US Sec. of the Interior Ken Salazar said Shell Offshore Inc. appears likely to receive permits to begin drilling its Beaufort and Chukchi Sea leases offshore Alaska this summer.

It's becoming increasingly urgent for the US to join the Law of the Sea treaty, witnesses from the American Petroleum Institute and other business organizations told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 28.

Technology will continue to improve US energy production and use, but its contribution should not be overestimated, panelists at a conference on the US Energy Information Administration's final 2012 Annual Energy Outlook agreed.

Hydraulic fracturing, properly managed and regulated, can be conducted in the UK without threatening groundwater or creating risks of serious earthquakes, according to a joint study by two British research groups.

A once-doomed 330,000-b/d refinery in Philadelphia will remain in service and receive an upgrade helped financially by the government of Pennsylvania.

A federal appeals court upheld the US Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in a decision that rejected challenges to the agency's finding that they endanger human health and the environment.

San Leon Energy PLC expressed encouragement and is shooting a 3D seismic survey around the Siciny-2 well in Poland's Carboniferous basin after having evaluated the quality of five prospective zones for unconventional shale and tight gas accumulations in the well.

Adam Sieminski, as usual, didn't mince words. Days after becoming the US Energy Information Administration's new administrator, he said that these dynamic times have created new challenges for the federal energy data compiling and forecasting agency to address.