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TOKYO - Three Japanese energy companies jointly said Wednesday they have confirmed natural gas and condensate reserves in exploration blocks offshore in Vietnam. Idemitsu Kosan Co., JX Holdings Inc. and Inpex Corp. have drilled three wells in two blocks located 300 kilometers southeast of Ho Chi Minh, they said in a statement. The three companies will further explore the blocks to gauge the size of the reserves and conduct test drilling on other prospective structures in the blocks, the statement said.

Royal Dutch Shell is making the final preparations to sail its state-of-the-art Olympus platform into the Gulf of Mexico, and showed it off to a group of journalists Wednesday. (Check back throughout the afternoon for more photos from inside Olympus.) The Olympus, designed to operate in water depths of 3,000 to 8,000 feet, will be Shell’s sixth tension leg platform in the Gulf. The platform is docked at the Ingleside shipyard near Corpus Christi and will leave in about a month to work at the Mars B project, comprising the platform and a six-well subsea development 130 miles south of...

Royal Dutch/Shell will build the world's deepest offshore oil and gas facility, pushing the boundaries of industry technology to search three kilometres (1.9 miles) underwater in the Gulf of Mexico. The project go-ahead demonstrates Shell's confidence in pricey offshore projects despite a recent downturn in oil prices. Last month, BP decided to delay development of its biggest new Gulf of Mexico project, Mad Dog Phase 2, citing tough market conditions and fast-rising costs. Shell's 100 percent-owned Stones field was discovered in 2005 some 200 miles southwest of New Orleans and encompasses eight lease blocks in the Gulf of Mexico's Lower...

Oil and gas companies will face a tougher regulatory regime in the United States as the U.S. government introduces new rules over the next two years to improve industry safety following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident, according to the findings of a recent survey by GL Noble Denton. The independent industry technical provider's new report "Reinventing Regulation: The impact of U.S. reform on the oil and gas industry" includes data gathered from over 100 senior oil and gas professionals and in-depth interviews with 10 industry executives, analysts and academics. Eighty-five percent of survey respondents told GL Noble Denton they expected...

Chevron struck oil in a well drilled more than 6 miles deep in a new field off the coast of Louisiana, the company said Monday. Operating in 6,000 feet of water, Chevron drilled through a thick underground salt layer to find oil at a depth of 31,866 feet below sea level. The well found 400 feet of net oil pay. Feet of net pay is a measurement used by oil companies to gauge the vertical thickness of the hydrocarbon-bearing area found in an exploration well. The so-called Coronado prospect is located more than 190 miles south of Louisiana and is...

The hull of Royal Dutch Shell’s latest offshore platform, which traveled from South Korea, arrived Saturday from at a Texas port where it will be assembled before it sails to its final location in the Gulf of Mexico. The new offshore platform, the Olympus, traveled more than 18,000 miles in two months to Ingleside, Texas, where its topside will be assembled over the next two months. Shell designed the Olympus as a tension leg platform, which provides a large enough deck to process oil on deck. The Olympus will be Shell’s sixth tension leg platform and its largest to date....

The Obama administration ordered a broad review of Shell’s Arctic drilling program on Tuesday, following a series of mishaps that culminated with the grounding of the company’s Kulluk rig on New Year’s Eve. The move calls into question whether Shell Oil Co. will be allowed to continue its hunt for crude under the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska, after spending $5 billion and more than six years on the quest. In announcing the probe, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar stressed that the Obama administration “is fully committed to exploring for potential in energy resources in frontier areas, such as...

A massive campaign to free a grounded Arctic drilling rig that employed more than a dozen ships and some 730 people cleared a big hurdle Monday, as salvagers pulled the vessel to safe harbor in Alaska. Salvage teams anchored the Kulluk rig in Kodiak Island’s Kiliuda Bay after arriving there at 10 a.m. Alaska Standard Time, 1 p.m. Monday in Houston. But for Shell, which owns the 266-foot conical drilling unit and planned to use it to continue a $5 billion quest for Arctic oil this summer, the work is just beginning. Salvage specialists will conduct a detailed inspection of...

Even if Shell is able to free its grounded Kulluk drilling rig from a rocky Alaskan island shore, it may be too damaged to resume hunting Arctic oil this summer. The 29-year-old conical drilling unit is uniquely designed to weather floating ice, and replacements aren’t readily available. Even if Shell Oil Co. could find an Arctic-ready rig, it almost certainly would not secure air pollution permits for a different vessel in time to resume drilling wells this July. “These are very specialized rigs,” noted Dave Pursell, managing director of the Houston-based energy investment bank Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. “If...

Exxon Mobil Corp. is leading a $14 billion project to produce oil off of Canada’s northeast coast, the company announced Friday. Exxon Mobil expects the project to recover more than 700 million barrels of oil from a field in water about 300 feet deep off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Production at the Hebron field is set to start in early 2017 and will be capable of churning out 150,000 barrels of oil per day, according to an Exxon Mobil announcement. The project is among several massive efforts being pursued by Exxon Mobil, the world’s second largest publicly traded...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Justice Department reached a $1.4 billion settlement Thursday with Transocean Ltd., the owner of the drilling rig that sank after an explosion killed 11 workers and spawned the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The proposed settlement resolves the department's civil and criminal probes of Transocean's role in the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster. It requires the Switzerland-based company to pay $1 billion in civil penalties and $400 million in criminal penalties and plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water Act, according to a court filing. . .

The grounding of Shell’s Kulluk drilling rig amid a fierce storm in the Gulf of Alaska raised the specter of a fuel spill in the region and provided fresh fodder to drilling foes who insist Arctic oil exploration is too risky to allow. The episode also cast doubt on whether Shell Oil Co. will be able to resume its hunt for Arctic oil this year. The 29-year-old Kulluk conical drilling unit was unmanned when it plowed into rocks on the southeast side of Sitkalidak Island Monday night in Alaska, and there were no major injuries. But Coast Guard and Shell...

Royal Dutch Shell’s Kulluk drilling rig, re-secured to two vessels with towlines early Monday, grounded around 9 p.m. in rocky water off the southern coast of Kodiak Island during a pounding Gulf of Alaska winter storm, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. A command team that includes Shell briefed reporters on the disaster with the Kulluk late Monday night. It broke loose from a Shell-contracted ship, the Aiviq, around 4:40 p.m. Monday. Then around 8:15 p.m., with the grounding imminent, the second tow boat, a borrowed tug named the Alert, was directed to lose its tow line to avoid danger...

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wants answers from the US taxpayer supported Export-Import bank about a $2 billion loan to Brazil for offshore drilling. Vitter’s home state is suffering under a moratorium imposed by President Barack Obama. Vitter said Louisianians “are frustrated” and he wants to know “why permitting domestically is nearly stalled…” Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had questions about ExIM—nine years ago when he asked Congress to reject the reauthorization of ExIm for “economic, constitutional and moral reasons.” Vitter sent a letter to Fred Hochberg, Ex-Im president, on March 17. Vitter asked Hochberg to identify all US companies that have...

emand for high quality offshore water survival training and offshore/onshore major emergency management training in the Gulf of Mexico region is already outpacing supply, an official with Raytheon Training Services told Rigzone in a recent interview. And the situation will only become more severe given the impending retirement cliff and projected industry growth. Tracy Cox, director of performance consulting with Raytheon Training Services, expects demand for offshore worker training to continue increasing, given the fact that recent studies forecast U.S. oil production to continue growing and a movement towards making the United States less dependent on foreign oil sources. Raytheon...

Google avoided about $2 billion in global income taxes last year by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into a Bermuda shell company, Bloomberg reported. That level is almost double the total from three years ago, Bloomberg said, citing a Nov. 21 regulatory filing by a Google subsidiary in the Netherlands. And it allowed Google to cut its overall tax rate almost in half. Google's action -- moving about 80 percent of its total pretax profit from 2011 to tax-free Bermuda -- isn't illegal. On the contrary, many companies have taken similar steps in recent years to avoid paying steep taxes....

The Israeli Navy is prepared to neutralize threats targeting Israel's Tamar natural gas rig, the IDF Website reported Saturday. The Navy will protect the reception facility – a vital infrastructural facility to pump gas from the rig – which is currently being built. The IDF's defensive model has been tested in three scenarios: routine, escalation, and emergency. "The wisdom in the development of this kind of model is that it provides an excellent response for all three scenarios," senior naval commander Rear Adm. Yaron Levi recently explained at a conference on protecting Israel's economic waters held at the Institute for...

Oil giant BP has agreed to pay the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history, totaling billions of dollars, for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a person familiar with the deal said Thursday. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the deal, also said two BP PLC employees face manslaughter charges over the death of 11 people in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that triggered the massive spill. The person said BP will plead guilty to obstruction for lying to Congress about...

TAHITI PLATFORM, Gulf of Mexico – Deep-water drillers are pushing the boundaries of modern technology to help revive the Gulf of Mexico as one of the world’s most prolific oil producers. In offshore frontiers hit by the 2010 oil spill and drilling moratorium, pioneers are adapting water injection, an old technique for boosting oil recovery, to challenging new environments in the deepest drilling regions of the Gulf. By flushing massive loads of high-pressure water through miles of ocean and earth, they’re stimulating the deepest reservoirs and bringing up more oil. The technique has been used for decades on land to...

Power East Coast via wind? Doable with 144,000 offshore turbines, study saysBy Miguel Llanos, NBC News 10 hours ago Placing wind turbines off the East Coast could meet the entire demand for electricity from Florida to Maine, according to engineering experts at Stanford University. It would require 144,000 offshore turbines standing 270 feet tall — not one of which exists since proposals have stalled due to controversy and costs. But the analysis shows it's doable and where the best locations are, says study co-author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering. The team is not advocating for...