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Turkmenistan is an important natural gas and oil-producing former Soviet republic of Central Asia whose potential is significant but constrained by a lack of certainty in hydrocarbon export options.

Government and industry officials from the US and Russia called for production-sharing agreements (PSAs), a transparent and fair tax regime, and definitive minerals rights laws in Russia during a 2-day US-Russia energy summit in Houston last week.

A 7-year analysis of operating expenses among 100 exploration and production firms in nearly 3,000 fields indicates "companies are responding to strong influence of economic drivers that call for achieving operating excellence," said executives of Ziff Energy Group, Calgary, at the 17th World Petroleum Congress in Rio de Janeiro last month.

A 2-day workshop by offshore industry participants and government regulators in Houston late last month found "no identifiable roadblocks" barring use of floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessels in development and production of deepwater oil projects in the Gulf of Mexico.

Following related House action earlier this summer, the US Senate unanimously approved a measure that seeks to prohibit new drilling activity on 36 undeveloped federal oil and gas leases off the California coast (see related item, in OGJ Newsletter).

The way federal agencies use data to form new regulations and policies changed Oct. 1, thanks to a little-known piece of legislation called the Data Quality Act. Industry proponents of the measure say that once the law is fully implemented, federal regulations and information will be permanently improved.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said it will acquire Houston-based Howell Corp. in a cash deal valued at $265 million, which includes an estimated $65 million of Howell's bank debt once the deal closes. Anadarko is touting the acquisition as the "cornerstone" of a much larger effort to expand its oil production in Wyoming, which is where most of Howell's interests are located.

El Paso Corp. revealed that it would be shifting certain key members of its executive management team.

Curved-ray prestack Kirchhoff time migration is rapidly replacing other seismic time migration methods for focusing seismic images of subsurface structures.

Discussion of seismic technology with the new president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists doesn't go far before business topics intervene.

Preliminary results for varied temperature and pressure-loading conditions suggest that operators should analyze wells on an individual basis and apply forward-looking design techniques when selecting an annular sealant to meet the operational requirements.

A corrosion-related failure of a tube fitting on an offshore platform highlights a potential safety issue that could affect thousands of fittings currently in service worldwide.

The utilization rate of central gas processing fractionators in Alberta should improve from now until 2010. This rate of central fractionation capacity dipped in 2001, coinciding with start-up of the Alliance Pipeline.

Costs for the five equipment items which make up the Nelson-Farrar miscellaneous equipment cost index were mixed in the 2000-01 period. The miscellaneous equipment index average rose from 916.5 to 944.7 in 24 months.

Nelson-Farrar

As part of work to develop a set of functional specifications for the Angola LNG project, Angola's state oil company Sociedade Nacional de Combustiveis de Angola (Sonangol) and ChevronTexaco Corp. engaged Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd., Reading, UK, as part of a consortium to investigate the use of large electrical motors to drive the refrigeration (liquefaction) compressors for the onshore LNG plant.

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