This year the oil market will see a few surprises. Commodity price volatility will continue, but it will moderate, and prices will move lower.

Each recent year has brought global LNG capacities to levels only dreamed of 10 years ago.

Worldwide exploration and development, stimulated by high prices of oil and natural gas, should have a positive but challenging year in 2008.

Ethanol will fail this year to fulfill promises made on its behalf about lowering US dependence on imported oil.

What should make 2008 an interesting year for writing about the oil and gas industry is the developing news about “energy security” in the US and its relationship to the presidential election.

Chakib Khelil, Algeria’s energy minister and the current president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, spoke to OGJ about his plans to position Sonatrach as a major international player and to restore the credibility of OPEC in a rapidly changing and complex energy environment.

US oil and gas producing states will lose nearly $43 million of their shares of revenues from federal oil and gas production within their borders under a provision of the Department of Interior’s fiscal 2008 budget.

The US Department of the Interior and Colorado state officials have begun discussing the Roan Plateau’s future and will continue talks over coming weeks, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said on Dec. 20.

This year promises to be an exciting and challenging year in Washington, DC, for the oil and gas business.

The US Bureau of Land Management published a draft programmatic environmental impact statement on Dec. 21 to guide future management of 1.9 million acres in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming for potential commercial oil shale development.

An independent panel completed its review of the US Department of Interior’s mineral royalty collection program on Dec. 18 and forwarded its findings and recommendations to the department’s royalty policy committee.

California has filed a lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency. The anticipated action comes after the EPA last month denied California a waiver that the state requested under the US Clean Air Act.

Ecuador has reached an agreement with human rights organizations and regional leaders and has lifted the state of emergency it decreed on Nov. 29 in the province of Orellana.

Whatever the new year may hold for most of us in the oil and gas industry, it will likely resemble nothing close to what’s in store for jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev.

The Lowermost Cretaceous Fahliyan formation is an important carbonate reservoir in the Persian Gulf and the onshore oil fields of Southwest Iran.

Supermajor Shell is spending record sums, said Peter J. Sharpe, allocating more than $20 billion/year in capital for new projects and more than $2 billion/year for exploration.

A cost-effective waterflooding plan allowed Khalda Petroleum Co. (an international joint-venture company) to improve oil recovery from the Tut field in Egypt’s western desert.

An investigation of 28 crude samples from Russia, FSU countries, the Middle East, North Africa, and Bulgaria showed that the crude true boiling point (TBP), or ASTM D-86 distillation, density, and sulfur content, along with the Riazi’s property distribution model and known correlations, can determine the physical and chemical properties of each 1% narrow cut of the crude.

Here are yearly values for the Nelson-Farrar refinery inflation cost index since 1926.

DNV released a new revision of Submarine Pipeline Standard—DNV OS F101, effective Nov. 13, 2007, harmonizing the existing standard with ISO, increasing its focus on integrity management, and improving the document’s structure.