Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on a visit to the town of Igarka in Krasnoyarsk Territory, boasted that the region will eventually provide more than 115 million tons/year of “additional oil and condensate” on reaching its estimated capacity.

The US Minerals Management Service informally agreed with its counterpart in India on Aug. 21 to exchange offshore oil, gas, and mineral resource management and development information.

Denver independent Venoco Inc. sees 2010 as the year it begins to exploit California’s Miocene Monterey shale in earnest and believes more than 10 billion bbl of original oil in place exist on its onshore acreage.

Acting through the Export-Import bank, the US agreed to increase financial support by $8 billion to $10 billion for development of subsalt oil reserves off Brazil.

Recent drilling results have strengthened earlier estimates of 10 bcf of ultimate gas recovery from individual horizontal wells in the Horn River basin shales of Northeast British Columbia, said Apache Corp.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. has drilled six wells in an apparent giant gas-condensate field in California’s San Joaquin basin that has an estimated 150-250 million boe recoverable.

Global upstream mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals nearly doubled in the second quarter, up from a 10-year low in the first quarter, spurred by a resurgence in oil prices and a thaw in equity and credit markets, according to IHS Herold Inc., an IHS company.

A subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been told that growing demand for oil and gas is one of the main drivers of increasing “friction and tension” over maritime boundaries in waters of East and Southeast Asia.

Gujarat State Petroleum Corp. and GeoGlobal Resources Inc., Calgary, are starting development of Tarapur 1 oil field in western India’s Cambay basin.

A federal jury in Manhattan convicted a US investor on July 10 of trying to bribe senior government officials in Azerbaijan in a scheme to privatize the country’s national oil company in a rigged auction, the US Department of Justice said.