The US drilling rig count rose by 33 units during the week ended Apr. 12 to reach a total of 1,771 rotary rigs working, Baker Hughes Inc. reported. That compares with 1,950 rigs working in the comparable week last year.

Lukoil reports completion of two supporting blocks weighing a total of 5,000 tons to be towed out soon to Vladimir Filanovsky oil field in the northern Caspian Sea (OGJ Online, Oct. 8, 2012).

Magnum Hunter Resources Corp., Houston, has spudded the vertical pilot hole for the company’s first horizontal Utica shale well in Ohio.

Continued success of a drilling program mainly in the Marcellus shale has led Range Resources Corp., Fort Worth, to year-to-year production increases of 52% for oil and condensate, 22% for natural gas liquids, and 34% for natural gas in the quarter ended Mar. 31, 2013, the company said.

ConocoPhillips has cancelled plans to drill in the Chukchi Sea because of federal regulatory uncertainty, the company said Apr. 10.

Statoil has let a contract to Odfjell Drilling for platform drilling and related services at Mariner heavy oil field in UK waters 150 km east of the Shetland Islands.

Parex Resources Inc., Calgary, has found oil pay at a northern extension well of Las Maracas field on the Los Ocarros block 320 km northeast of Bogota and tested new oil pay at the La Casona-1 well on the El Eden block 210 km northeast of Bogota in Colombia’s Llanos basin.

Stone Energy Corp. has contracted a dynamically positioned deepwater drilling rig from Ensco PLC for its Cardona oil development program on Mississippi Canyon Block 29 in the Gulf of Mexico.

Technically recoverable US natural gas resources were a record 2,384 tcf at yearend 2012, 25% (486 tcf) more than the previous record-high assessment 2 years earlier, the Potential Gas Committee reported.

A Niobrara shale discovery well on production for 100 days in western Colorado’s Piceance basin has recovered more than 1 bcf of gas, the same volume as a typical well recovers from the Williams Fork formation in a 25-30-year life, said WPX Energy Inc., Tulsa.

The US drilling rig count decreased by 10 units during the week ended Apr. 5 to reach a total of 1,738 rotary rigs working, Baker Hughes Inc. reported. That compares with 1,979 rigs working in the comparable week last year.

The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement issued a new Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS) rule for offshore oil and gas activity that aims to improve SEMS requirements under the original workplace safety rule that became effective on Nov. 15, 2010.

Titan River Energy, a newly formed oil and gas company based in Fort Worth, announced a $100 million capital commitment from two private equity firms that Titan River will use to initially focus on drilling and developing oil-prone shale plays in Texas.