Table of Contents

International news for oil and gas professionals

Sally Jewell, US President Barack Obama's nominee for Interior secretary, told a US Senate committee she would try to bring differing sides together to find common ground that satisfies both resource development and conservation needs.

Venezuela's national oil company was so badly damaged during Hugo Chavez's regime that it will need to be replaced, a founding board member of Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) declared.

While US oil and gas production has climbed to its highest level in 2 decades, all of the growth since 2007 has occurred outside federally controlled areas where production actually declined, a recent report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found.

Gina McCarthy would not be formally nominated as the next US Environmental Protection Agency administrator for 3 more days.

A resource assessment of the southeastern Barents Sea offshore Norway and the area surrounding Jan Mayen Island northeast of Iceland indicates a 15% increase in estimated undiscovered resources on the Norwegian Continental Shelf to 390 million standard cu m of oil equivalent, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said.

US Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) introduced legislation designed to address regulatory impacts from federal Endangered Species Act closed-door litigation settlements between the US Fish and Wildlife Service and environmental organizations.

A ConocoPhillips Co. unit has taken a farmout from a subsidiary of Canacol Energy Ltd., Calgary, to explore and potentially develop shale oil and conventional light oil on Canacol's Santa Isabel E&P in Colombia's Middle Magdalena basin.

The government of New South Wales plans to establish 2-km exclusion zones around towns in the state with populations above 1,000 or more people to keep coal seam gas exploration and production activity away from residential areas.