After granting several individual exceptions, the US Minerals Management Service is establishing standard operating procedures for managed-pressure drilling (MPD) in the Gulf of Mexico.
While ethanol claims a burgeoning share of the US fuel market, courtesy of taxpayers, a once-common name for gasoline-alcohol blends remains in relative disuse.
The oil and gas industry has entered a new era characterized by diversity of energy supply, market uncertainty, and changing roles for oil companies, said speakers at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston Apr. 30-May 3.
Venezuela President Hugo Chavez’s government took over that country’s last remaining privately run oil fields on May 1, intensifying a decisive struggle with the oil industry over one of the world’s most lucrative deposits.
US oil and gas drilling reached a 21-year peak during 2007’s first 3 months and was nearly twice the level of first-quarter drilling activity during the 1990s, the American Petroleum Institute said on Apr. 26.
The ink was barely dry on a report by the International Maritime Bureau about pirate attacks on oil ships and installations around the globe when some bad guys decided to put the findings in neon lights with an attack on a Chevron Corp. floating production, storage, and offloading vessel off Nigeria.
Land drilling bolstered US gas production in 2006, a warmer than normal year characterized by lower imports from Canada, reduced LNG imports from fewer countries, and above average storage levels, said the US Energy Information Administration.
Categorical exclusions (CEs) from environmental documentation authorized under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 are not compromising federal lands in the US West, land-use officials told a hearing by two House Resources Committee subcommittees on Apr. 26.
NUS Interior Sec. Dirk Kempthorne announced a preliminary final 5-year Outer Continental Shelf leasing plan on Apr. 30 that DOI says could produce 10 million bbl of oil, 45 tcf of gas, and $170 billion in revenues if fully implemented.
In 2006, Russia’s CJSC Elvary Neftegaz, a joint venture between OAO Rosneft and BP Exploration Operating Co. Ltd., drilled the top hole sections of two wells off Sakhalin Island using a riserless mud-recovery system from a semisubmersible rig.
