Made

The Permian Basin in West Texas is the main engine driving Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy) to record oil/gas production levels as its overseas operations continue to struggle in the Middle East/North Africa and Colombia, CEO Stephen Chazen said Thursday.

In the wake of last week’s decision by the Argentine government to nationalize YPF SA, Moody’s Investors Service has placed Spain’s Repsol and Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline LLC (M&N) under review for possible downgrades.

ConocoPhillips will say goodbye to the ranks of Big Oil and move to the top of the North America’s pure-play explorers list at the end of this month, with a U.S. focus on liquids-rich opportunities, the incoming CEO said Monday.

Although at times it has operated bidirectionally, TransCanada has made its Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) pipeline from western Canada to California a two-way line with the establishment of an agreement with El Paso’s Ruby Pipeline, which interconnects with GTN in southeast Oregon, a Houston-based spokesperson confirmed Friday.

The House Natural Resources Committee has been investigating changes made to a report that suggested the post-Macondo well blowout moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico was supported by a panel of engineering experts, when in fact it wasn’t.

Although some farming and environmental representatives have raised red flags, water used by the oil/gas industry in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is not going to cause shortages for the agriculture and local municipalities in the state, a state water district official told NGI’s Shale Daily Monday.

Last month was the warmest March on record in the contiguous United States, and relatively warm temperatures across the country made January through March 2012 the warmest first quarter since records were first kept in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).

If it’s difficult to remember the last time Devon Energy Corp. made a big acquisition in North America, most energy know-it-alls would be forgiven. The Oklahoma City-based super independent, then living high off the hog from its Barnett Shale winnings, in early 2003 paid $5.3 billion to buy Houston’s Ocean Energy Inc. (see NGI, March 3, 2003).

High hopes for budding overseas exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) dominate an ambitious economic growth forecast made last week by British Columbia Premier Christy Clark. Of C$25 billion (U.S. dollar at par) in investment anticipated by Clark within 10 years, her Liberal government is relying on LNG for C$18 billion or 72% of the total.