Oil and gas companies have long worried about where they’ll find the geologists and engineers they’ll need in the future, but there’s another group of professionals whom they apparently also need to recruit-lawyers.
The February contract for benchmark US light, sweet crudes broke through former market support at $55/bbl to close at $54.02/bbl, down $1.62 for the day, after trading at $53.44-55.81/bbl Jan. 10 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The European Commission, which aims to devise a “European strategy for sustainable, competitive, and secure energy,” published a green paper in March 2006 to that effect, suggesting that “Europe has not yet developed fully competitive energy markets.
The European Commission has proposed enforcing full ownership unbundling of gas and electricity infrastructure via new legislation as one of its measures to help facilitate an internal energy market in Europe.
The European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) will not offer financial support for the controversial Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Russia following the change in majority control of Sakhalin Energy Investment Co. (SEIC), the company behind the $20 billion proposal.
Despite declining volumes in the last 2 years, US LNG imports should experience another wave of growth in the next 2 years, the US Energy Information Administration predicts.
US House Democrats introduced legislation on Jan. 12 to repeal a pair of oil and gas tax incentives and put pressure on holders of Gulf of Mexico deepwater leases issued in 1998 and 1999 without price thresholds to renegotiate terms.
>Orders for production floaters spiked in second-half 2006, according to International Maritime Associates Inc.’s 4-month update of worldwide floating production systems.
Habitat replacement areas used by Gulfstream Natural Gas System LLC on the Gulf of Mexico seafloor have provided habitat for both the recruitment of sessile epifauna-epifora and use by a substantial demersal and commercially important fish community.
