Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. (TAQA) confirmed a hydrocarbon release was detected in one of the Cormorant Alpha platform legs in the northern UK North Sea, adding there was no hydrocarbon release into the sea or air.

Apache Corp. has completed an oil and gas-condensate discovery on the north flank of the Khalda Ridge producing complex in the Western Desert of Egypt, a country in which the company plans to drill 270 wells in 2013, including more than 60 exploratory wells.

The US drilling rig count dropped by 4 units during the week ended Mar. 1, with the total number of rotary rigs reaching 1,757, Baker Hughes Inc. reported. That compared with 1,989 rigs working in the comparable week last year.

Delphi Energy Corp. of Calgary reported encouraging results from its initial development of its Montney play at Bigstone where Delphi last year brought three horizontal Montney wells on stream and recently brought on stream a fourth horizontal well (OGJ Online, May 22, 2012).

Hess Corp. announced that it has completed drilling its seventh exploratory well, Pecan North-1, on deepwater Tano-Cape Three Points block offshore Ghana.

ConocoPhillips is planning to sell some of its interest in the Australia Pacific LNG project and in the Canadian oil sands in a strategy to devote more cash to US shale plays, ConocoPhilips Chief Executive Ryan Lance said during a Feb. 28 investor and analyst meeting.

Chevron Corp. has disclosed that it flow-tested the initial development well in St. Malo field in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico last year at an equipment-constrained rate of more than 13,000 b/d of oil.

A new study of the Barnett shale foresees reliable supply with slowly declining production through the year 2030, said the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at the University of Texas at Austin and financed by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a New York philanthropic grant-making institution.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced it will “pause” its exploration drilling activity for 2013 in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas to prepare equipment and plans for a resumption of activity at a later stage.

The government of Alberta and Swan Hills Synfuels have agreed to cancel an agreement under which the province was to have helped fund a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.

TerraWest Energy Corp., Vancouver, BC, has provided results of its 2012 exploratory drilling program on the Liuhuanggou coalbed methane production sharing contract area covering 255 sq miles adjacent to the city of Urumqi, capital of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, in the Junggar basin.