Black Sea Oil & Gas and its partners have completed a 2-well offshore exploration drilling program on the XV Midia block in the Romanian Black Sea. The wells did not delivery the anticipated gas discoveries, but one of the wells confirmed the potential of the Dacian play. Source: News

The Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium—comprised of YAATRA Africa, Lionworks Group, Baker Hughes’ Italian subsidiary Nuovo Pignone International, and Saipem—has let a contract to Saipem to deliver front-end engineering design for a grassroots 60,000-b/d refinery in Kabaale, in western Uganda’s Hoima district. Source: News

Shanxi Jincheng Anthracite Mining Group subsidiary Hubei Sanning Chemical Industry let a contract to Honeywell UOP to provide licensing for its proprietary Polybed pressure-swing adsorption technology to supply high-quality hydrogen at Hubei Sanning’s monoethylene glycol plant near the Yangtze River at Zhijiang, in China’s Hubei Province. Source: News

Crude oil prices gained more than $1/bbl Aug. 2 to recoup the previous day’s losses on both the New York and London futures markets in a week marked by price volatility. Source: News

Pete Jones has joined Neptune Energy Group Holdings Ltd. as UK managing director, based in Aberdeen. He most recently has been managing director of Taqa Europe. Source: News

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is considering expansion of production at its Horizon bitumen mine in Alberta by 75,000-95,000 b/d of synthetic crude oil (SCO) in the near and long term. Source: News