The public may have grown complacent about oil and gas issues after 2015’s crude and product price plunge. Trade associations in Washington plan to be anything but in 2016. Source: News

Creative pragmatism challenges environmental dogma in Alberta. With two important decisions important to oil sands development, a government less than a year in office has eased fear it will yield to pressure from climate extremists. Source: News

SOCO International PLC has commenced drilling of its Baobab Marine-1 (BABM-1) wildcat on the Mer Profonde Sud Block in the Lower Congo basin offshore Congo (Brazzaville). The well is targeting early Miocene channel complexes on the RR Prospect, which are mappable in the seismic data and delineated by stratal discontinuities and variations in seismic amplitudes, […]

In what has become an annual tradition for this editor, this column will highlight the top 10 news stories, based on the number of impressions, posted to Oil & Gas Journal’s Twitter feed for calendar year 2015. Source: News

PBF Energy Inc., Parsippany, NJ, has brought forward planned maintenance work at its 190,000-b/sd Delaware City, Del., refinery after severe winter storm in late January halted processing operations at the plant. Source: News

The Trinidad and Tobago government is threatening to market its share of its natural gas and not leave it up to the partners of Atlantic LNG (ALNG). Source: News

Utah’s state government sued the US Departments of the Interior and Agriculture for adopting a new greater sage grouse management plan on Sept. 18, 2015, which allegedly overthrew the state’s own 2013 conservation plan for the bird. Source: News

LyondellBasell, Houston, has completed the sale of its wholly owned subsidiary Petroken Petroquimica Ensenada SA (Petroken), which operates a 180,000-tonne/year polypropylene plant in the port city of Ensenada, 50 km southeast of Buenos Aires. Source: News

SOCAR Polymer LLC, a subsidiary of state-owned State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), has let an engineering, construction, and procurement (EPC) contract to Maire Tecnimont SPA, Milan, for a grassroots polyethylene plant to be built in the Sumgait Chemical Industrial Park (SCIP), about 30 km north of Baku. Source: News

Flint Hills Resources LLC (FHR), Wichita, Kan., plans to invest $750 million to execute projects that would further improve both energy efficiency as well as clean fuels production at its 339,000-b/d Pine Bend refinery at Rosemount, Minn. Source: News