Oil prices edged up on Thursday to extend gains into a third straight session, as tensions in the Middle East stoked fears of potential disruptions to supply. Brent crude futures were at US$72.04 a barrel at 0110 GMT, up 27 cents, or 0.4per cent, from their last close. Brent closed up 0.7per cent on Wednesday.
YPF, the largest oil and natural gas producer in Argentina, is focusing on shale oil for production growth as a glut slows natural gas output, managers at the state-backed company said Friday.
Developers have presented more than 150 proposals for power plants ahead of an auction this month to supply electricity to the Brazilian state of Roraima, which has struggled with a rash of blackouts due to reliance on the shaky Venezuelan power grid.
Shell plans to invest as much as US$2 billion annually in its Brazilian operations by 2025, Shell’s chief executive officer Ben van Beurden told Brazilian business daily Valor Economico in an exclusive interview published on Thursday.
Brazil expects to collect some US$ 30 billion in signing bonuses this year from three upcoming offshore oil auctions set for October and November, an official revealed this week.
Mining giant BHP Billiton is facing a US$5bn claim for damages over a dam collapse in Brazil in 2015. Law firm SPG, which is representing than 200,000 Brazilian claimants, said the company knew of the risks at the Samarco mine in Minas Gerais state.
One of Brazil’s best-performing hedge funds has been scooping up the shares of state-controlled oil giant Petrobras. Joao Braga and Marcos Peixoto, who manage US$ 1.3 billion (5 billion reais) at XP Asset Management, have increased their stake in Petrobras, making it the biggest holding of their XP Long Biased fund even as the oil producer’s rally has outpaced the benchmark.
Petrobras oil production fell 3.5% in the first quarter from the same period a year before, according to Brazil’s oil regulator ANP, which attributed the fall to a number of scheduled and unscheduled stoppages.
Penguin News caught up with the Commander of British Forces for the South Atlantic Islands, Brigadier Nick Sawyer stationed in the Falkland Islands.
Chevron Corp completed a US$ 350 million purchase of a refinery in the Houston suburb of Pasadena, Texas, from Brazil’s Petrobras, Chevron said in a statement. The sale was agreed to in January, but Chevron put the transfer of the 112,229-barrel-per-day plant’s ownership on hold on April 2, telling Petrobras it had to prove the refinery would operate as promised.