Mexico

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday said it will invest $5.6 million in more than a dozen research projects to increase understanding of the potential of methane hydrates as an energy source.

Workers returning to offshore oil and gas facilities across the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Friday were finding little or no damage as a result of Hurricane Isaac, according to several major GOM producers.

Workers returning to offshore oil and gas facilities across the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Friday were finding little or no damage as a result of Hurricane Isaac, according to several major GOM producers.

Crestwood Midstream Partners Monday said it has completed the acquisition of gathering and processing assets from subsidiaries of Devon Energy Corp. for $87.1 million, which is $2.9 million less than the originally reported acquisition price (see Shale Daily, July 25).

Tropical Storm Isaac altered its course on Friday and could move closer to the central Gulf of Mexico (GOM) by Monday and Tuesday than previously expected — and have grown to hurricane status by then — prompting some companies to suspend drilling operations and evacuate workers from some platforms.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should not be held in contempt for imposing a second moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 after a judge in Louisiana overturned the department’s initial ban, a Justice Department attorney argued Wednesday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. agreed Wednesday to pay Devon Corp. $1.4 billion for a 30% stake in 650,000 net acres in the Permian Basin’s Cline and Midland-Wolfcamp shales.

Led by massive projects in the deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and Australian liquefied natural gas (LNG), Chevron Corp. is maintaining a production target of 3.3 million boe/d by the end of 2017, executives said Friday. The gains will come even though 2Q2012 worldwide output fell 2.6% year/year to 2.62 million boe/d, Chevron Vice Chairman George Kirkland said during a quarterly earnings conference call.

U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigators examining the April 2010 Macondo well blowout and Deepwater Horizon platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) have concluded in a preliminary report that BP plc, Transocean Ltd. and other operators, along with trade associations and U.S. regulators, “largely judged the safety of offshore facilities by focusing on personal injury and fatality data (such as dropped objects and slips, trips and falls), that overshadowed the use of leading indicators more focused on managing the potential for catastrophic accidents.”