US onshore oil and gas leasing activity fell markedly on federally administered lands during US President Barack Obama’s presidency in several key respects, US Bureau of Land Management statistics indicate. Source: News

Fugro and TGS are acquiring multibeam echo sounder and subbottom profile data over the Gulf of Mexico to identify hydrocarbon seep features on the seafloor and through the water column. Source: News

State-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC) subsidiary Petrochemical Industries Co. KSC (PIC) has let a contract to Amec Foster Wheeler PLC for the integration project between PIC’s proposed grassroots Olefins III-Aromatics II complex and Kuwait National Petroleum Co.’s (KNPC) 615,000-b/d Al-Zour refinery complex now under construction in southern Kuwait. Source: News

Lilis Energy Inc., San Antonio, has completed its first two operated Delaware basin horizontal wells, the Bison 1H and the Grizzly 1H, in Winkler County, Tex., and spudded a third operated horizontal well. Source: News

Total E&P Indonesie will maintain oil and gas work on the Mahakam Block offshore Indonesia until a unit of state-run Pertamina becomes operator on Jan. 1, 2018. Source: News

The Trump administration’s Fiscal 2018 Budget Blueprint would increase or preserve discretionary expenditures for programs connected with fossil energy amid an overall 11.7% year-to-year reduction at the US Department of the Interior. It also would eliminate spending for advanced energy research at the US Department of Energy amid a 5.6% cut overall, and slash Environmental […]

The Trinidad and Tobago government has not approved a plan by DeNovo Energy to sell 90 MMscfd of natural gas directly to the world’s second-largest methanol firm Methanol Holdings Trinidad Ltd. (MHTL). Government officials tell OGJ that under the production-sharing contract for Block 1(a), DeNovo has to get approval from the Ministry of Energy and […]

The second jacket for the Shah Deniz Stage 2 platforms departed the Heydar Aliyev Baku Deepwater Jackets Factory (BDJF) in Azerbaijan on Mar. 15 and is on its way to the Shah Deniz contract area in the Caspian Sea. Source: News

Shandong Yuhuang Shengshi Chemical Inc. Ltd. (SYSC), a subsidiary of Shandong Yuhuang Chemical Co. Ltd. (SYCC), has let a contract to LyondellBasell Industries NV to deliver polyethylene process technology for a grassroots unit to be built at SYSC’s petrochemical complex in Heze City, Shandong Province, China. Source: News

Crude oil price rose Mar. 15 on markets in New York and London on reports of the first drop in US oil supplies in 10 weeks and on reports that Saudi Arabia’s February production was higher than its January production. Source: News