International news for oil and gas professionals
This reporter passed a career milestone earlier this month—I officially retired from Oil & Gas Journal on Aug. 3, primarily to avoid driving Houston highways during its notoriously frustrating rush hours.
While a US president overtly hostile to the oil and gas industry hit the road last week to blame economic problems on "partisan games," regulators in his administration remained in Washington, DC, to continue their stomping of American business.
Cuba's crude oil production saw an increase in 2010, rising to 52,623 b/d from the 47,517 b/d produced in 2009, according to a recent study of the Caribbean nation's oil and gas industry.
Extractive industries lead business groups as targets of antibribery enforcement actions over the past 34 years, according to a report by TRACE, a nonprofit membership organization.
Upstream and midstream assets associated with shale plays helped drive US oil and natural gas merger and acquisition activity during the second quarter, PWC US reported.
South Sudan—now slightly more than a month old—already is having problems over oil with North Sudan.
Statoil Petroleum AS said communication has been established between the Aldous and Avaldsnes oil discoveries, representing a single oil structure with potentially 0.5-1.2 billion bbl of recoverable oil equivalent.
US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton has assured Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird that Washington will decide by yearend whether to issue a permit for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline stretching from Canada to Texas.
Reports that the US Environmental Protection Agency requested more time to finalize proposed new ozone regulations signal that the Obama administration is beginning to recognize the proposals' potentially harmful economic consequences, oil and gas and other business associations suggested on Aug. 12.
A US district judge overturned two federal agencies' 2010 orders limiting the use of categorical exclusions (CXs) for environmental reviews on federally managed lands.
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement conditionally approved Shell Offshore Inc.'s revised exploration plan to drill up to four shallow-water wells in the Beaufort Sea beginning in July 2012. Shell acquired the leases in sales held in 2005 and 2007.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking public comments on six conservation plan alternative drafts for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), including one that would designate ANWR's Coastal Plain and two other areas as federally protected wilderness.
The board of Rockhopper Exploration PLC considers the company's Sea Lion oil discovery in the North Falklands basin in the South Atlantic to be commercial.
Sanctions by the US government and other international organizations, and difficulty conducting business with Iran have made several foreign firms withdraw from that country's oil, gas, and petrochemical arena, the Government Accountability Office said on Aug. 3.
Venoco Inc., second largest acreage holder behind Occidental Petroleum Corp. in the California Miocene Monterey shale oil drilling play, may run six to eight rigs and drill 50-75 wells in 2012 focusing on vertical drilling and optimized completion techniques.
Belarus' state-owned Belorusneft decided to withdraw from the $500 million project to develop Iran's Jofeir oil field due to new data suggesting that the field is less viable commercially than earlier thought, the company said.
While attention focuses on demand for oil in an economically shaky year, questions emerge about supply from outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. With varying precision, OPEC balances the market.
