Four consecutive weeks of smaller-than-expected injections of natural gas into US storage triggered a 12% price jump for the front-month contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange in mid-July in what some hoped might be the first sign that well shut-ins and reduced drilling may be decreasing supply.
Contradictions of energy policy emerge so spontaneously these days in the US that it's rare to have the chance to warn of one before it has fully developed and begun gorging itself on the national welfare.
Far from learning any lessons from their ill-conceived foray into biofuels through the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), Congress and the Obama administration appear destined to compound their mistakes in the huge climate bill now making its way through Congress.
The US government should be ready to engage local and state governments overseas in addition to national officials as it tries to secure foreign oil and gas supplies, a US senate committee was told on July 16.
California's legislature might vote soon to authorize the first new oil activity off Santa Barbara in 40 years as a way to help resolve the state's budget crisis.
A subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee was told that growing demand for oil and gas is one of the main drivers of increasing "friction and tension" over maritime boundaries in waters of East and Southeast Asia.
The European Biodiesel Board (EBB), representing the major biofuels producing industry in the European Union, praised the European Council for approving what it called "definitive antidumping and countervailing measures against unfair US biodiesel exports."
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has readjusted the borders of Sudan's oil-rich Abyei region, effectively awarding control of key oil facilities in the area to the Khartoum-based northern government.
Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd. (Gasco) has awarded more than $9 billion in lump-sum turnkey contracts for engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning of its integrated gas development project at Ruwais and Habshan.
Testing of LNG regasification packages for floating installations is taking place this summer in advance of commissioning off Brazil, Boston, and Dubai.
The Indonesian government, seeking international investment to boost the country's falling output of oil, has released 24 new oil and gas blocks for exploration and production contracts.
Ghana has formally approved the first development phase of giant Jubilee oil field, which will tap 300 million bbl and is to begin producing in the second half of 2010.
Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has let a $350 million engineering, procurement, and construction contract to Petrofac Ltd. for the Kauther gas-condensate field depletion-compression project.
A well recently drilled off Mexico, Bolontiku 43, provides an example of numerous drilling problems encountered when drilling tectonically active zones that included extensive faulting, salt zones, clay and shale problems, loss circulations, and high-pressure zones over or underlain by low-pressure zones.