News

 Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) has been awarded a contract by Eni to provide a range of integrated energy services toward the redevelopment of the Zubair field in southern Iraq, Halliburton reported in a news release.

 Russia's gas giant Gazprom's first quarter IFRS net profits tripled to 324.9 billion rubles year-on-year, the company said on Thursday.

First quarter net profit at Sakhalin Energy, a Sakhalin-2 project operator, amounted to 18.9 billion rubles ($630 million) to IFRS after a loss of 6.1 billion rubles in the same period last year, Gazprom, Russia's gas giant and a 50 percent shareholder of Sakhalin Energy, said on Thursday.

Rosneft CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov said Wednesday that he has no plans to leave the country’s largest oil producer.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin opened a new oil and gas institute at the Siberia Federal University while travelling through Siberia and the Far East. Speaking to faculty and students, Putin said the new institute would prepare specialists to work in the nation's rapidly-developing oil and gas sector.

LUKOIL does not plan to use its entire option to buy its shares (11.61 percent) from ConocoPhillips, LUKOIL Vice-President Leonid Fedun said according to RBK.

The Obama administration on Tuesday ordered federal offshore-oil regulators to recuse themselves from official actions involving companies that employ their family members or close friends. It also placed new restrictions on regulators' oversight of companies they once worked for.

 Urals crude traded at a premium to the Dated Brent benchmark for the first time ever as reduced supplies of alternative grades boosted demand.

LUKoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, said profit in the second quarter fell 16 percent from the same period last year as taxes and costs climbed more than crude prices.

The chief executive of LUKoil, Russia's No. 2 oil company, said Tuesday that the government was ready to introduce tax breaks for oil extracted from its Korchagin fields in the Caspian Sea from Jan. 1.

 Russian companies will supply about 70 percent of the required oil at market prices for a joint refinery project involving China's CNPC and Russia's Rosneft, China's Energy Minister Zhang Guobao said on Tuesday.

The Russian government will welcome BP CEO Tony Hayward to any new post in the Russian-British TNK-BP joint venture, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said on Wednesday.

 Turkey has fully switched to gas from Azerbaijan and Russia due to a halt in gas supplies from Iran, Turkish media reports.

 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will visit Kiev on September 14-15 to discuss possible gas supplies from Kazakhstan to Ukraine with his counterpart Viktor Yanukovych, the Kazakh ambassador to Ukraine said on Monday.

Russia's largest private oil company LUKoil increased its first half profit to US GAAP by 24 percent to $4.002 billion, the company said on Tuesday, in line with analysts' expectations in a RIA Novosti poll.

 BP PLC plans to move ahead with replacing the blowout preventer that sits atop the well that unleashed the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, despite failing in attempts to remove pieces of drill pipe stuck inside the device, the federal oil-spill response chief said Friday.

OJSC Varyoganneftegaz (incorporated into TNK-BP) is performing well construction works ahead of its business plan since the beginning of 2010, having drilled 67 wells in this period against the planned 57 wells.

Ukrainian household gas prices may fall to Russian levels after a merger between Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said Friday.

The National Iranian Petrochemical Company (NIPC) and a Chinese consortium are about to finalize a deal whereby China will invest some $1 billion in petrochemical projects in Iran, the Mehr news agency reported on Saturday.

Russia's second largest oil producer LUKoil may not use an option to buy its 11.6 percent stake back from U.S. oil major ConocoPhillips, LUKoil quoted President Vagit Alekperov as saying on Monday.

Transocean failed to meet “recertification” maintenance deadlines for the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer (BOP), the key instrument that failed in the Macondo well explosion, a company employee testified on Wednesday.

India overtook Japan in demand for oil among Asian nations in the second quarter of 2010, reflecting its rapid economic growth, according to Platts, a provider of information on energy and metals.

Russia significantly increased its gas production in the first half of 2010, but the country was unable to retake lost market shares in Europe.

 The first high-tonnage tanker to take the Northern Sea Route from Europe to Asia has arrived Pevek on the Chukotka Peninsula one day earlier than expected.

Billionaire energy investor T. Boone Pickens expects oil—currently priced over $71—to reach $85 by the end of the year.

Hollywood actor Jason Statham has starred in a commercial for the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, the company's press service said on Wednesday.

On august 30, the Azerbaijan state oil and gas company (SOCAR) will meet with officials from the World Bank and executives from Azneft to discuss SOCAR's plans to reduce associated petroleum gas (APG) flaring, 1news.az reports.

Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon, said Monday it had addressed 90 per cent of recommendations made in a BP audit about systems and equipment in need of upgrade or enhancement on the rig a month before it exploded and sunk in the Gulf of Mexico.

South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering said Tuesday it had signed a 1.8 billion dollar deal to build a floating oil production and storage platform for French energy giant Total.