Eni SPA has been awarded a production sharing contract on 662 sq km adjacent to Kitan oil field in the Timor Sea in the Joint Petroleum Development area administered by Australia and Timor-Leste.

A joint venture of Centrica PLC and Qatar Petroleum International (QPI) has agreed to acquire the conventional part of Suncor Energy’s natural gas business in western Canada for $1 billion (Can.).

Cairn Energy PLC has secured a long-term contract for the Transocean Cajun Express semisubmersible for a multicountry West African exploratory drilling campaign to begin in the second half of 2013.

A Tullow Oil PLC group has tested oil from the lowermost pay zone at the Ngamia-1 discovery well in the Lokichar basin in Kenya and encouraging hydrocarbon indications at an exploratory well in southern Ethiopia.

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.

One of Apache Corp.’s Australian subsidiaries has drilled an apparent gas discovery at the Olympus-1 exploratory well in the northern Carnarvon basin offshore Western Australia.

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

Salamander Energy PLC has suspended its North Kendang-1 exploratory well as a potential wet gas discovery on the South East Sangatta PSC in the North Kutei basin offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Genel Energy PLC has gauged a high-flowing oil and gas discovery from which it plans to begin production within little more than a year in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

A Wintershall Norge AS group will drill a second appraisal well on the southern end of Skarfjell oil field in the northeastern North Sea offshore Norway after an appraisal well in the field’s northern reaches confirmed earlier estimated resource range of 60-160 million bbl of oil.

WesternGeco has begun acquiring a multiclient broadband 3D seismic survey in the western Barents Sea offshore Norway.

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.