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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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’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 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.
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.
Technology may help control the potential adverse environmental effects of oil shale development in accordance with current and future US environmental policy.
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.
