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MADRID - Spanish oil firm Repsol YPF SA has begun offshore drilling in Cuban waters as part of its global exploration operations, a person familiar with the situation said Thursday. Deep-water exploration drilling began about 50 kilometers north of Havana and will take at least 60 days to complete, this person added. Repsol is resuming exploration in the area after it failed to find exploitable oil in 2004. The U.S. Geological Survey has said there could be a substantial amount of untapped oil off the Cuban coast. The Repsol well is much closer to Florida than any other well in...

Florida has long fought to prevent oil drilling anywhere near its white sandy beaches. But as the state continues to deal with oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill washing up on its shores, it faces a new threat: deepwater drilling in nearby Cuban waters. Maria Ritter, a spokeswoman for Spanish oil company Repsol YPF SA, said it plans to drill off Cuba, about 60 miles south of Key West, Fla., early next year. If successful, this would likely kick off a spate of exploration. Only one deepwater well has been drilled in Cuban waters, by Repsol in 2004. The...

Sacyr Vallehermoso, a Madrid based Spanish construction firm, has expressed interest to lead the construction of the Agua Negra tunnel, a project that aims to build a highway that crosses over the Chile-Argentina border, connecting the San Juan province in Argentina to Coquimbo in Chile. The project’s high profile comes from its ambitiousness. The tunnel in question is planned to go for nearly 8.6 miles and will be built in complicated conditions under the Andean mountains. It comes as part of a Mercosur integration process, and will be part of the highway that traverses the continent, from Coquimbo in Chile...

Spain's conservative opposition leader Saturday hit out at the possible sale of a stake in oil major Repsol to Russian energy group Lukoil, saying he would do "everything possible" to prevent it. "Nobody in Europe has sold its energy supply and put it in the hands of a Russian company," Mariano Rajoy told a political meeting. He said such a sale would be "immoral and unjust" and he would do "everything possible to prevent it happening." He was backed by Socialist former prime minister Felipe Gonzalez, who also opposed any deal. Spanish media said Lukoil could acquire 29.9 percent of...

Austrian businessman Bernd Bergmair, former majority owner of Pornhub, has approached the U.S. Treasury about buying assets of Russian oil major Lukoil after the Trump administration sanctioned the company. "Obviously Lukoil International GmbH would be a great investment and anybody would be fortunate to have the privilege of owning those assets,” Bergmair told Reuters. "I don’t comment on potential investments as a matter of course," he added.Last month, U.S. Treasury issued the greenlight for companies to begin talks with Lukoil for its foreign assets, with U.S. oil and gas giants Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) have already expressed interest....

Oil prices jumped and energy companies helped the FTSE 100 to a record high after Donald Trump announced new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil producers.Brent crude increased by 5.2% to $65.83 a barrel – a two-week high – after the news of the fresh restrictions on Rosneft and Lukoil, as the US president ramps up pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.The jump in oil price also boosted shares in the energy companies Shell and BP by about 3%, which in turn helped to drive the FTSE 100 to a record high of 9,594.82.

Kirill Dmitriev — Vladmir Putin’s special envoy and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund — is suddenly ubiquitous. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been largely quiet since his maximalist negotiating approach with Team Trump failed. Moscow, presumably largely guided by Lavrov, after winning a concession on Tomahawk missiles, opted to continue Putin’s hardline demands for ending the war in Ukraine ahead of the proposed Trump-Putin summit in Budapest. NATO would have to admit that it was the root cause of the war. Kyiv would have to cede all of the Donbas, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine would...

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said that he had held several rounds of talks with Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, during which Shmygal emphasized Kiev’s determination not to resume the transit of Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary. In July, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that Ukraine had stopped the transit of Lukoil's oil. The Slovak Economy Ministry confirmed that the country was no longer receiving oil from the Russian oil giant, which was sanctioned by Ukraine. "The sanctions imposed by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine do not pose a threat to the...

Ukraine launched a sweeping drone attack on Russian regions on Wednesday, causing a fire at Rosneft's biggest oil refinery in what President Vladimir Putin said was an attempt to disrupt Russia's presidential election. -snip- The day after seriously damaging Lukoil's NORSI refinery, a Ukrainian drone attacked Rosneft's Ryazan oil refinery, Russia's seventh largest, 180 km (110 miles) from Moscow. -snip- "The Ryazan oil refinery was attacked by a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)," Pavel Malkov, governor of the Ryazan region bordering the Moscow region to its north, said on the Telegram messaging app. "A fire broke out as a result. According...

A fire broke out in an oil refinery in southern Russia, 200 miles from the border with Ukraine, following a drone strike, local authorities have said. The blaze at the Lukoil site in Volgograd comes amid reports of Kyiv stepping up its targeting of energy facilities in Russia. Volgograd regional governor Andrey Bocharov said on Telegram that Russian air defenses and electronic warfare (EW) systems had "repelled a drone attack" in the region overnight on Friday. As a result, "one drone fell and set off a fire at the Volgograd oil refinery."

Another one bites the dust...Less than two weeks since Ravil Maganov, the vice president and chair of the board of directors of Russian oil giant Lukoil, died after falling out of a sixth floor hospital window in Moscow, another Russian energy executive has been found dead in mysterious circumstances.39-year-old Ivan Pechorin, managing director of Putin's Far East and Arctic Development Corporation, fell off the side of a boat while sailing in the waters close to Russky Island near Cape Ignatiev, according to Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.For two days, rescuers searched for a man at sea near the coastline - unfortunately,...

MOSCOW, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russia's second-largest oil producer Lukoil (LKOH.MM), died on Thursday after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, two sources familiar with the situation said, becoming the latest in a series of businessmen to meet with sudden unexplained deaths. The sources confirmed reports by several Russian media that the 67-year-old had plunged to his death, but the circumstances surrounding his fall were unclear. Two people who knew Maganov well told Reuters they believed it was highly unlikely he had committed suicide. Another source close to the company said there was a...

Russian natural-gas giant Gazprom, oil-producer Lukoil and leading bank Sberbank are all penny stocks based on their trading on the London Stock Exchange, as the local market was shut for a third day. Sberbank SBER, -87.43%, which had assets of over $500 billion at the end of 2021, was trading for 3 cents a share in afternoon action. The European Commission on Wednesday approved the resolution plan for its Croatian and Slovenian arms that will be sold. Its Austrian and Czech operations will be wound down, with depositors compensated up to €100,000. Lukoil LKOD, -96.03%, Gazprom OGZD, -84.21%, and Rosneft...

Russians secretly mocked Obama for so easily giving them American uranium, nuclear fuel contracts and technology, FBI informant reveals in excerpts from the new book "Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties." The failed Russian reset .. repeatedly gave Russia's nuclear monopoly, Rosatom, assets like uranium under U.S. soil and billions of dollars in nuclear fuel contracts that made American electricity customers reliant on Moscow for years to come. And then Vladimir Putin pulled the rug out from under the Obama administration in 2014, invading the Crimea region of U.S. ally...

PART 2 OF 3. The Hunter Biden Files Hunter Biden and his business partners were involved in discussions about possible deals in dozens of foreign countries, often corrupt backwaters, at times invoking official channels like ambassadors, emails reviewed by The Daily Wire show. While most attention has focused on Ukraine, where a gas company paid the now-president’s son tens of thousands of dollars a month while he was in deep crack addiction, and China, Hunter and his partners at a consultancy called Rosemont Seneca were eager to do business in a vast array of other places. The map below highlights...

nlike Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia, Russia, Russia, Biden’s is not imaginary but very real and in your face. Democrats could never say what exactly Trump did, what precise decision was made or what policy was changed. He “colluded”, don’t ya know,. With Biden, we can start with the Colonial pipeline hack by Russian conspirators and Biden’s non-reaction to it, Biden;s approval of a pipeline designed make our NATO allies dependent on energy from Moscow, and, of course, his day one cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. Trump promised Europe a share in our energy independence, to the oint of...

A snowshoe racer from India whose entry into the U.S. to compete was made possible by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer was being held Friday in a New York jail on a sex charge. The U.S. embassy in New Delhi last month rejected Tanveer Hussain’s application for a visa so he could compete in the World Snowshoe Championship in upstate. Local officials then intervened on Hussain’s behalf, appealing for help to the offices of Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. Their offices reached out to the New Delhi embassy, which allowed Hussain to reapply for a visa and granted that...

More than 50 gas stations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are jacking up prices to more than $9 a gallon to protest what they say are unfair pricing practices by Lukoil North America. Sal Risalvato of the New Jersey Gasoline, Convenience, Automotive Association said Wednesday's protest is aimed at getting Lukoil to respond to dealers' grievances. Fox affiliate WNYW reports that a station in South Plainfield, N.J., had signs listing regular gas for $8.99 a gallon and premium listed at $9.49 a gallon for cash and $9.59 for credit.

More than 50 Lukoil gas stations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania jacked up prices to more than $8 a gallon Wednesday to protest what they say are unfair pricing practices by Lukoil North America that leave them at a competitive disadvantage. Dozens of Lukoil franchise owners also gathered to protest at a station in this central New Jersey town where the posted prices were an eye-popping $8.99 a gallon. The owners and the New Jersey Gasoline, Convenience, Automotive Association said the one-day protest was aimed at raising consumer awareness about the challenges facing Lukoil dealers and getting the company to...

The initial reason for Tehran’s anger was Russia’s decision to vote for new United Nations’ sanctions against the Khomeinist regime. That was compounded by President Medvedev’s assertions that Tehran was, indeed, trying to build a nuclear arsenal and that Russia would not allow that to happen. Russia has also announced it would not deliver the S300 anti-aircraft missile system that the Islamic Republic paid for in 2007. The system would have significantly increased Iran’s defences against possible air attacks by Israel or the United States. The Bushehr nuclear power plant, the first of its kind in Iran, presents another piece...