Oil and gas operators acknowledge the need to restore or create wildlife and plant habitat to counterbalance what has been lost to drilling and development.
Finally, the worldwide biofuels frenzy has encountered quasi-official doubt. Even better, the doubt emerged in a forum dedicated to sustainable development.
The front-month crude contract closed above $80/bbl for the first time in the history of the New York Mercantile Exchange Sept. 13 upon news that Hurricane Humberto had disrupted power to three refineries in Port Arthur, Tex.
The use of geophysical methods has spread from the fringes of exploration to the heart of reservoir management during a quarter-century of technological expansion that the incoming president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists expects to continue.
Shale gas plays in four US Midcontinent basins provided most of the impetus as estimated US natural gas resources grew dramatically from the end of 2004 to the end of 2006, the Potential Gas Committee said in its latest biennial report.
Crude oil supplies are expected to remain tight despite the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ decision Sept. 11 to increase authorized production by 500,000 b/d starting Nov. 1, two US government forecasters said.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi plans to visit Kazakhstan next month in an effort to resolve a disagreement over delays and cost increases in developing the giant Kashagan oil field.
Burlington Resources Oil & Gas Co. has agreed to pay the federal government more than $97.5 million, plus interest, to settle several natural gas royalty issues on federal and American Indian lands, said the US Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service, which filed a district court complaint against Burlington under the False Claims Act (FCA).
The Gorgon LNG project off Western Australia, with facilities on Barrow Island, has moved a step closer to implementation, having received preliminary environmental approval for two trains of 5 million tonnes/year each.
Gaz de France and Suez, following approval of their boards and shareholders, reported Sept. 3 a merger of equals set to become the largest gas transmission and distribution network operator in Europe, the number two storage and LNG terminal operator in Europe, and one of the three top utilities worldwide.
Increasingly complex matrices of potential stray-current corrosion sources have made mitigation of potential problems both more difficult and more important.
The dizzying pace of technology advancement in the oil and natural gas industry’s ability to process, interpret, and image subsurface data shows no sign of letting up.
