Regular Features
- OGJ Newsletter
  - OGJ Newsletter
- Letters
  - The case for hydrogen
    This is a response to the letter from Thomas Wyman entitled “Hydrogen and thermodynamics.”
- Journally Speaking
  - National, local, and back
    US President Barack H. Obama’s affect on the country’s oil and gas pipeline industry is still in the earliest stages of being defined.
- Services/Suppliers
  - Services/Suppliers
- Equip/Software/Lit
  - E q u i p m e n t / S o f t w a r e / L i t e r a t u r e
- Advertisers Index
- Editor's Perspective
  - Relief from tax law complexity would help US economy
    The new Treasury secretary’s tax embarrassment highlights a lever that he and Congress profitably might pull to repair a broken economy.
- Market Journal
  - Crude prices may be bottoming
    As February opened, crude prices appeared to be “in the early stages of a bottoming process” amid growing speculation that production cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries might finally be catching up to the demand destruction from the international financial crisis.
General Interest
- Editorial: Deepwater investment
  Oil and gas producers should expect a political fight after a US appeals court ruled in their favor about royalties from deepwater leases.
- Global perspectives required for risk, opportunity analyses
  The world has always held risks for upstream oil and gas companies, and it certainly shows no signs of becoming less risky in the near future.
- Salazar launches MMS ethics reform program
  US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar launched an ethics reform program Jan. 29 to examine conduct of a group of US Minerals Management Service employees, look at restructuring the agency’s oil and gas royalty program, and review DOI’s ethics regulations and policies.
- Watching Government: Arctic offshore gets busier
  Equipment for responding to arctic maritime accidents could prove inadequate as polar sea ice declines, energy demand grows, and vessel traffic increases, according to a report released Jan. 29 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of New Hampshire.
- Murkowski: Interim Point Thomson ruling good for Alaska gas line
  Alaska Natural Resources Commissioner Thomas E. Irwin’s interim conditional decision to let leaseholders drill on two expired tracts this winter is good news for the Alaska natural gas pipeline project, US Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alas.) said on Jan. 28.
- API: Windfall profits tax could harm US economic growth
  New taxes on the oil and gas industry could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, slow down economic growth, and make the US more dependent on foreign energy sources, according to a new study released on Feb. 3.
- NAPE: Geoscience gains hiking oil, gas recovery
  Stiff gas-on-gas competition and a shakeout are approaching in the North American unconventional gas business, attendees were told Feb. 4 at an introductory session to the North American Prospect Expo in Houston.
- Brazilian president endorses Petrobras’s investment
  Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, endorsing statements by officials of state-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras), said his country will fully implement projects laid out in the firm’s 2009-13 business plan.
- Algeria eyes Peruvian natural gas development
  Algeria’s state-owned Sonatrach, eyeing the pending development of Peru’s natural gas reserves and transport system, said it will join state-owned oil company Petroperu in hydrocarbon exploration and production activities.
- Pirates seize another tanker off Yemen
  Pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden, shrugging off recent military and political developments aimed at curbing their activities, hijacked the MV Longchamp, a German tanker bound from Europe to the Far East with a cargo of LPG.
- Watching The World: A job for Global Hawk
  The oil and gas industry is concerned about maritime affairs, especially piracy in the Gulf of Aden.
Exploration & Development
- Equation aids early estimation of gas field production potential
  Natural gas is the world’s fastest growing fossil energy source, contributing 287 bcfd or roughly 50 million b/d of oil equivalent oil.
Drilling & Production
- Kosmos, Tullow drill deepwater Cretaceous sands off Ghana
  Smaller independent oil companies are successfully drilling deep prospects off western Ghana, finding light sweet crude and natural gas in Cretaceous sandstones that may extend from Benin westward to Sierra Leone.
- Oil Shale—Conclusion: Technology may control adverse environmental effects
  Technology may help control the potential adverse environmental effects of oil shale development in accordance with current and future US environmental policy.
Processing
- Gasoline-distillate price gap calls for refining investments
  Robust worldwide demand growth for middle distillates has resulted in a disproportionate price increase compared to gasoline.
Transportation
- Special Report: Current pipeline expansion slows; future plans contract
  Planned pipeline construction to be completed in 2009 rose more slowly than in 2008, increasing by more than 13% from the previous year, driven by large natural gas transportation projects in both the US and Asia-Pacific but constrained by a drop in planned crude mileage.