Orleans

In discussing its 2006 Gulf of Mexico exploration activities on Thursday, New Orleans-based McMoRan Exploration Co. announced successful production tests at the Liberty Canal and King of the Hill discovery wells, updated the status of two additional exploration prospects in progress and outlined development activities, including the establishment of initial production from the Long Point No. 1 and No. 2 wells.

Stone Energy Corp. said Friday its board of directors will consider an unsolicited $1.43 billion cash-and-stock proposal from New Orleans-based Energy Partners Ltd., which would dislodge an all-stock offer in April by Plains Exploration and Production Co.

Minerals Management Service Director Johnnie Burton will be in New Orleans on March 15 to host the Central Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 198.Burton will open the sale at 9 a.m. (CST) in the Napoleon Ballroom with brief remarks.Immediately following the bid reading, she will hold a media availability to discuss the results of the sale. Lease Sale 198 encompasses 4,040 unleased blocks covering approximately 21.3 million acres in the Central GOM Outer Continental Shelf Planning Area offshore Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The blocks are located from three to more than 210 miles offshore, in water depths of four to more than 3,400 meters. MMS estimates the lease sale could result in the production of 276 to 654 million barrels of oil and 1.59 to 3.30 Tcf of natural gas. The lease sale will be broadcast at www.oosa.com.

Dominion Exploration and Production said it started gas production from the Rigel and Seventeen Hands deepwater fields, located about 120 miles southeast of New Orleans in Mississippi Canyon Blocks 296 and 299, respectively, and expects production to reach 160 MMcf/d by the end of the month.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Monday overturned a lower court’s decision to sentence a former Dynegy Corp. accountant to just over 24 years in prison.

In the wake of the devastation left by the levee breaks in New Orleans, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced Tuesday that it would accelerate work on a 6.2-mile, $30 million natural gas transmission pipeline project in the flood-prone Sacramento Delta area east of San Francisco Bay. The PG&E utility now hopes to have the pipeline link to its major underground storage field completed next fall.

New Orleans-based McMoRan Exploration Co. said this week that it has gauged more Gulf of Mexico deep shelf natural gas condensate discoveries and plans to soon ramp up production.

Several experts who spoke at GasMart in New Orleans last week agreed with the conclusion of a recent study by the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) that found that hedge funds have been unfairly blamed for being the cause of recent gas price spikes.

The Mad Dog development in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico about 200 miles south of New Orleans has started producing and is expected to ramp up to about 100,000 bbl/d of oil and 60 MMcf/d of natural gas by the end of the year, said owners BP (60.5% and operator), Unocal (15.6%) and BHP Billiton (23.9%).