Operators have reported 28 horizontal completions in southern Ellis County, Okla., in the past 18 months in a low permeability play for oil and gas in the lower member of the Pennsylvanian Cleveland formation.

A group led by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has sanctioned development of the Lucius deepwater discovery in the Gulf of Mexico using a truss spar with a capacity of 80,000 b/d of oil and 450 MMcfd of gas starting in 2014.

Gulfsands Petroleum PLC has gauged light oil in the discovery of a satellite to Yousefieh field in Syria.

Syrian General Petroleum Co. has granted Gulfsands Petroleum PLC permission for commercial development of the Khurbet East Triassic Butmah formation in Syria 12 miles southwest of Souedieh oil field.

Horizontal drilling in the Austin chalk formation is leading to more oil and gas completions along the Cretaceous trend in central Louisiana.

Production is expected to begin in May 2014 from a cluster of oil and gas fields in the Mumbai High area offshore western India to be developed by state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp.

Deepwater wells off Mozambique have encountered an estimated 30 tcf to more than 50 tcf of natural gas in place, said Anadarko Petroleum Corp.

Noble Energy Inc. said it has identified 12 more prospects with more than 20 tcf of gross unrisked resource potential in the eastern Mediterranean that target sands equivalent to those it discovered at Tamar off Israel.

Repsol YPF said it has identified the existence of a recoverable 927 million bbl of oil equivalent, 80% oil, in Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous Vaca Muerta shale on about 3.5% of its 12,000 sq km holdings in the Neuquen basin in Argentina.

Israel’s reserves of natural gas, now under development in the country’s Mediterranean offshore, are poised to rise substantially in the near future, according to a senior government official.