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Development of the Johan Sverdrup oilfield in the North Sea may be delayed by a year and cost more than planned if Norway's parliament insists on having it be powered from shore, the Dagens Naeringsliv daily newspaper reported on Wednesday. The biggest North Sea field find in decades, it has reserves of up to 2.9 billion barrels of oil equivalent and is expected to start production in 2019 at an initial cost estimated at 100 billion to 120 billion crowns ($16.4 billion-$19.7 billion). Statoil has committed to power the first phase from shore, a move in line with the government's...

**SNIP** The new chair of the Senate Energy Committee, Sen. Mary Landrieu, praised the agreement. “BP has rightly been held responsible in a court of law and should continue to make whole the individuals and businesses that were impacted by the oil spill, but barring them from entering new contracts on top of that amounted to double jeopardy and set a terrible precedent that I hope will not be repeated,” said Landrieu, D-La. “The good news is that BP will now be able to participate in next week’s lease sale that will bring much-needed revenue to Louisiana and other oil-producing...

Royal Dutch Shell has started production from its Olympus platform in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico that could extend production at the Mars field through 2050, the company said Tuesday. The Olympus platform, located in water 3,000 feet deep about 130 miles south of New Orleans, will eventually add up to 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to production from the Mars field. It’s the first major project Shell has launched in the Gulf since the partial federal drilling moratorium that lasted three months in 2010 after the worst oil spill in U.S. history, when BP’s...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended protection for multinational companies from lawsuits in the United States over conduct that took place in other countries. The justices threw out a case in California that sought damages from Daimler AG for its alleged complicity in atrocities committed in Argentina’s 1976-to-1983 “Dirty War.” The company manufactures Mercedes-Benz automobiles and has a subsidiary, Mercedes-Benz USA, that does business in California and other states. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for a unanimous court, said those connections were too tenuous to mean the company could be sued in U.S. courts. Ginsburg said that under the...

BP and ConocoPhillips said Wednesday they have made a significant oil discovery at the jointly owned Gila prospect in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico. The Gila exploration well, about 300 miles southwest of New Orleans, is in nearly 5,000 feet of water and has total depth of more than 29,000 feet, pushing the boundaries of the latest offshore drilling technology with its high pressure and high temperature conditions. The reservoir is BP’s third in the Paleogene system, where the company made its Kaskida and Tiber discoveries in 2006 and 2009. The Keathley Canyon, the site of the Gila discovery, was...

DURHAM — North Carolina is among a group of coastal states pressing the Obama administration to end a two-decade moratorium and allow offshore exploration for oil and natural gas. Advocates here are hoping to get North Carolina included on the federal list of ocean waters to be set aside for future exploration. Gov. Pat McCrory was recently made vice chairman of the two-year-old Outer Continental Shelf Governors Coalition, giving the state a higher profile in offshore drilling. McCrory described his involvement at an energy conference Wednesday organized by the N.C. Chamber, the state's influential business lobbying organization. Offshore drilling in...

If companies were allowed to drill for oil and gas in Atlantic waters off the East Coast, the work would help create nearly 280,000 new jobs and contribute some $23.5 billion to the U.S. economy each year by 2035, according to a study unveiled Thursday by two industry trade groups. The report by Sugar Land, Texas-based Quest Offshore Inc. also projects that the activity could yield 1.3 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, based on current estimates of the amount of crude and natural gas lurking along the East Coast. Commissioned by the National Ocean Industries Association and the...

In previous navy purchases, Germany agreed to cover one third of the cost as a way of expressing its commitment to Israel’s security. Israel is seeking to buy advanced missile boats from Germany to protect drilling operations in its offshore natural gas fields. The government is hoping the deal can be concluded at a cost of about 1 billion euros. Israel previously bought six Dolphin submarines from Germany. The German government agreed to cover one third of the cost of those purchases, as a way of expressing its commitment to Israel’s security. Berlin hasn’t yet responded to the current request,...

<p>Royal Dutch Shell PLC says it has completed building the hull of the world's largest floating facility, which has been constructed to process natural gas off the coast of western Australia.</p> <p>Shell said Tuesday that the 488-meter (1,600 foot) hull of the structure, known as "Prelude," was floated out of the dry dock in Geoje, South Korea where it is being built.</p>

The face of the ill-fated launch of ObamaCare belongs to a Maryland woman who didn't earn a dime for her trouble and, despite being eligible, hasn't even tried to enroll in the president's signature health insurance program. In exclusive comments to ABC News, the smiling brunette identified only as “Adriana,” who previously adorned the Affordable Care Act’s website, said cruel comments online linking her to the website's well-chronicled problems amounted to cyberbullying. A married mom from Maryland, she became known as "Glitch Girl," and several spoofs photoshopped the expression on her face to go with satirical versions of the site.

MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russian authorities have filed hooliganism charges against at least five more Greenpeace activists detained last month during a protest at a state-owned oil rig in Arctic waters, the environmental organization said. Greenpeace said on its Twitter account that Anthony Perrett of the UK and Russian freelance photographer Denis Sinyakov have been “presented with hooliganism charges by Russia's Investigative Committee.” Earlier in the day, Greenpeace spokeswoman Maria Favorskaya said the same charges had been brought against Argentinean nationals Miguel Hernan Perez and Camilla Speziale and Colin Russell of Australia. A dozen other activists have been...

First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the no-bid contract to build the failed Obamacare website. Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company. Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

The oil production technique known as fracking is more widespread and frequently used in the offshore platforms and man-made islands near some of California’s most populous and famous coastal communities than state officials believed. In waters off Long Beach, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach — some of the region’s most popular surfing strands and tourist attractions — oil companies have used fracking at least 203 times at six sites in the past two decades, according to interviews and drilling records obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request. Just this year in Long Beach Harbor, the nation’s second-largest...

Polluted by crude, crises and fears of ceaseless political entanglements, the Gulf of Mexico looked endangered as an oil hub after BP’s massive 86-day spill three years ago. But international oil companies, including BP, are ramping up in the largest U.S. offshore oil and gas region again, drilling some of the largest new fields and jostling for lucrative reserves as oil gets harder to find in the much-tapped reservoirs of the Middle East. The Gulf has accounted for 19 percent of U.S. oil production this year, according to the Energy Information Administration. Oil companies are set to unleash a backlog...

In late August, French oilfield services firm Technip announced it had been awarded a contract by Shell Offshore Incorporated to lay the world's deepest gas pipeline. The work will be part of Royal Dutch Shell plc's 100 percent-owned and operated Stones project, which will see a production facility installed under 9,500 feet of water in the Walker Ridge area of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico – some 200 miles from New Orleans. So far, the world's deepest production platform is at the Independence project in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. "What we're trying to do is open up a new...

Environmental activists who protested at a Russian Arctic offshore oil platform last week will be prosecuted and could face piracy charges punishable by up to 15 years in prison, Russian investigators said on Tuesday. They said the "attack," in which Greenpeace activists tried scaling the Gazprom-owned Prirazlomnaya platform, Russia's first offshore Arctic oil platform, violated Russian sovereignty. "When a foreign ship full of electronic equipment intended for unknown purposes and a group of people, declaring themselves to be environmental activists, try to storm a drilling platform there are legitimate doubts about their intentions," the investigators said in a statement. The...

Seven people have pleaded guilty to stealing money from an oil spill settlement fund, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange announced Monday. Five of the defendants were charged with theft of property. They’re collectively ordered to pay more than $20,000 in restitution, officials said. The defendants were indicted by a Mobile County grand jury on accusations that they created fake documents to file fraudulent claims saying they had lost income because of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Defendants who were paid from the settlement fund have been sentenced to between one and five years in prison. Their sentences...

Our North-Western department has opened a criminal case on probable violation of the part 3 article 227 of the Russian Criminal Code "piracy committed by an organised group". The investigators have claimed that a group of people, probably associated with the "Greenpeace" international ecological organization approached the sea platform "Prirazlomnaya" on the ship "Arctic Sunrise" and attempted an illegal descent onto that platform. Their illegal action was foiled by officers of the Murmansk province's border-guarding department of the FSB. We must state that the ship 'Arctic Sunrise' used by the persons who attempted an illegal descent onto "Prirazlomnaya" was in...

Greenpeace activists arrested after trying to board a Russian oil rig are likely to face piracy charges, local media reports. Two New Zealanders are among the crew of the protest vessel Arctic Sunrise who were confronted and detained by armed members of the Russian coastguard on Thursday. Authorities said the rig was in an exclusion zone, but Greenpeace argues its boat was in international waters. All the activists will be prosecuted for the "attack" on the oil rig, an investigative committee told Russian media. In a statement the committee said it had opened a criminal case on suspicion of piracy....

Armed Russian officials have boarded a Greenpeace ship and arrested activists, including six Britons, protesting against oil drilling in the Arctic, according to the environmental group. The Arctic Sunrise is in the remote Pechora Sea in the Russian Arctic, near to Russian oil company Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya oil platform to try and prevent attempts to drill for oil in the region. Greenpeace said the Russian coastguard abseiled onto the Arctic Sunrise from helicopters and arrested 25 protesters on-board, including six UK nationals.