Free Republic

Invitees : Karen Hughes, Hunter Hunt, Ray Hunt, Kay Bailey Hutchison,Harriet Miers, Holly Kuzmich, Mark Langdale, Mike Meece, James C Oberwetter, Jeanne L Phillips, Karl Rove, Joe Strauss.

Venezuela's new petroleum minister sees her South American home not as a dilapidated former oil giant, but as an emerging energy economy ripe for U.S. and foreign investments in new oil and gas exploration, both onshore and offshore. Paula Henao, who took over as the hydrocarbons minister in March after the forced U.S. removal of former leader Nicolás Maduro, told an overflowing Houston energy audience on Wednesday that Venezuela is much more than just its famed heavy-grade crude oil. There are more than 916 exploration opportunities awaiting foreign investment, she said, including natural gas and other untapped oil basins. She...

Oil and natural-gas producer XTO Energy Inc. said it will buy closely held Hunt Petroleum Corp. for $4.19 billion in cash and stock, in a deal that highlights the changing of the guard in the U.S. oil patch. Hunt Petroleum, which traces its lineage to legendary wildcatter H.L. Hunt, is the largest in a series of private companies, many of them family-owned, that have sold to larger public companies in recent months. Large players are rushing to snap up assets in emerging oil and natural-gas fields, while small producers are seeking to cash in on holdings whose values have soared...

A court convicted 15 Yemeni militants on terror charges including the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker and plotting to kill the US ambassador. One man was sentenced to death for killing a Yemeni police officer and seven received 10 year prison terms. Six of the defendants plus the one man tried in absentia, who received the longest prison terms, 10 years, were found guilty of participating in the October 2002 bombing of the Limburg oil tanker, which killed one Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden. The conviction of one of...