Ugandan police blocked opposition leader Kizza Besigye from leaving his home and arrested former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi as they prepared to start their presidential election campaigns, their parties said.
Besigye, who lost three previous elections to President Yoweri Museveni, was detained after attempting to leave his home to attend a rally to campaign as a candidate for the Forum for Democratic Change, his driver Asuman Semakula said by phone.
Besigye, 59, is competing against party President Mugisha Muntu to run in the 2016 poll.
LGO has made further progress on its Cedros Peninsula interests in Trinidad after striking a further deal with Beach Oilfield Limited.
The company had previously agreed to acquire all of BOLT’s interests in oil and gas leases, with rights to deep targets below 7,000 feet.
LGO said its title to 100% owned Cedros leases have now been accepted by the Ministry of Energy and Energy Affairs.
Mexican state-owned energy giant Pemex will not be participating in round one of the country’s historic energy opening.
The move was revealed by Mexican energy minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell.
The initial tenders are part of an opening which is aimed at helping to bring more private investment into the country’s oil and gas sector.
By By Jessica Resnick-Ault, Dmitry Zhdannikov and Terry Wade
In early May, with its legal options dwindling and investors impatient, BP saw a chance to negotiate what became a $18.7 billion settlement that ended five years of litigation over the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
An unexpected opportunity to secure a global deal that would wipe the slate clean of hundreds of claims and untold billions of dollar in penalties opened up when Chief Executive Bob Dudley met with Patrick Juneau, the lifelong Louisiana litigator who BP had panned for handing out "absurd" sums of money as part of a class settlement in 2012.
The British giant was ready to bury the hatchet after years of acrimony over payouts, which had ballooned to more than $10 billion. It had bigger problems: unresolved claims by the federal government, five Gulf of Mexico states and hundreds of local municipalities stemming from Macondo well blowout.
Russia's Gazprom has cancelled a contract with Italian oil services group Saipem to build the first line of a gas pipeline beneath the Black Sea, the Russian state gas company said in a statement on Wednesday.
Gazprom said it will start talks with other potential contractors to build the first line of the Turkish Stream pipeline, which would run beneath the Black Sea to Turkey. The project would consist of four lines, each capable of carrying 15.75 billion cubic metres of gas per year.
Saipem said last month it was asked by Gazprom to start work on a pipeline under the Black Sea, which should avoid Ukraine as a transit country for roughly half of Russian gas shipped to Europe.
A small Chinese energy firm has signed a deal with a state-controlled Russian oil company to invest in an East Siberian oilfield project.
CEFC China Energy signed the deal with Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Russia's top natural gas producer, on July 6, according to a statement on the Shanghai-based company's website.
The private chemicals and fuel company said it is investing in three blocks holding 1.9 billion barrels of oil in the Baikal project, 90 kilometres away from the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline that supplies China with Russian oil.
Romanian prosecutors seized assets of Russian oil firm Lukoil worth up to 2 billion euros ($2.22 billion) in an investigation on suspicion of money laundering, a local court was quoted as saying on Wednesday by state agency Agerpres.
In October of last year Romanian prosecutors, police and customs inspectors raided the offices of Lukoil near the city of Ploiesti in an investigation into alleged tax evasion and money laundering concerning an estimated 230 million euros.
As a result, Lukoil briefly shut down its local refinery.
Ithaca Energy has sold its Norwegian exploration business for $60million.
MOL Plc bought Ithaca Petroleum Norge for an initial $60million price tag. However, depending on how successful the discoveries drilled on Ithaca Norge's existing licence portfolio between 2015 and 2017 are, MOL could pay future “bonus payments” of up to $30million to Ithaca.
Premier Oil has cut its operating costs by 30% as a challenging marketplace sees its turnover slide.
The firm reported total revenues for the first half of the year topped out at $580million – down from last year’s $885million.
The dip triggered Premier to cut its operating costs by 30% - down to $150million.
The company credited the sale of the “high cost Scott area in the UK” for the part of the savings.
Mexico’s Alfa SAB and partner Harbour Energy Ltd. dropped their plans to buy Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. after the driller’s largest shareholder spurned a takeover offer once valued at as much as $1.7billion.
Oil giant BP has licensed new software that will link thousands of its oil wells across the globe in an effort to increase standardisation and cut costs.
The firm will use systems designed by industrial giant GE to connect its wells to an “industrial internet” giving BP field engineers real-time access to data across all wells.
The project will initially be deployed across 650 of BP’s wells, expanding to 4,000 over the next several years.
Russia's top oil producer Rosneft has made a significant step in its efforts to expand its global reach by signing a preliminary deal with Essar Group about acquiring up to 49 percent of the Vadinar oil refinery in India.
Rosneft, the world's top listed oil producer, has long sought to increase its exposure to the global markets but its efforts have been hampered by Western sanctions over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis.
State-controlled Rosneft said on Wednesday that it has also finalised a deal to supply 10 million tonnes of oil a year (200,000 barrels per day) to the refinery over 10 years.
A tax expert said North Sea workers are unlikely to be affected to changes implemented to “non-dom” statuses in the UK.
The Chancellor George Osborne has revealed the first Conservative budget in almost two decades to MPs with a pledge to press ahead with tax reforms for the industry.
He told politicians non-dom status would be abolished for people born in the UK to parents domiciled here.
Brazil gave the green light to oil major Royal Dutch Shell to buy smaller rival BG, advancing the $70 billion merger, the largest of the past decade, closer to completion in early 2016.
Shell is set to become the largest foreign operator offshore Brazil after it buys BG, so the clearance from the country was a crucial step to complete the merger on time.
Brazil's competition authority CADE said on Wednesday it had given preliminary approval to the transaction "without restrictions." BG said that if no appeals were lodged or referrals made in the next 15 days, CADE’s clearance would become final. A spokesman for Shell confirmed the approval and the 15-day appeals period.
France could get the equivalent of 10 years of gas consumption by exploiting the methane trapped in the former coal mines of its deprived eastern regions, a French company running a rare domestic exploration programme said on Wednesday.
France, which slammed the door on developing shale gas due to environmental concerns and blocked many exploration permits, has discretely supported efforts by Française de l'Energie, based in the Lorraine region, to exploit so-called coalbed methane.
"France is completely dependent on imports, so it's rather interested in seeing we can produce a gas which is clean and near existing infrastructure," said Julien Moulin, head of the company formerly known as European Gas.
Brazil has a “For Sale” sign in its front yard.
Saddled with debt and an economic downturn, companies from builders to miners are opening their doors to bargain hunters. The government, aiming to win back investors and stave off a ratings downgrade, may back as much as 20 billion reais ($6.3 billion) in IPOs by state-run companies this year. Together, that’s set to help Brazil regain some of the momentum seen in the public offering and M&A markets late last decade, when Brazil was a darling of international investors.
Chancellor George Osborne has reinforced the Government’s pledge in March to move ahead with tax reforms for the North Sea oil and gas industry.
The Government was previously urged by industry leaders to help support production and investment in the UKCS.
Speaking before parliament in the House of Commons, the Chancellor said previous promises – including a reduction in the supplementary tax charge from 30% to 20% would continue.
Iraq’s self-ruling Kurds are threatening to bypass the country’s central government and sell oil produced in the neighboring Kirkuk region in a dispute over revenue from crude sales by OPEC’s second-largest producer.
