
Falkland Oil & Gas is to buy a smaller Falklands-based firm to create a “combination” company with licences to search for oil both to the north and south of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. FOGL said on Thursday it had agreed to buy Desire Petroleum offering 0.6 FOGL “consideration” shares for each Desire share, in a deal valuing Desire at 61 million pounds (99 million dollars).

Two days ago, former Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista crossed a line. He started to default on a 45 million dollars interest payments on his oil and gas company, OGX's, bonds. The default will be official on October 30th, according to Bloomberg. That leaves bondholders, like PIMCO, the largest bond fund in the world helmed by legendary investor Bill Gross, taking a massive hit. And what's worse is that there could be more to come, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman has confirmed that Argentina will go before the international court of justice at The Hague over the decision of Uruguayan president José Mujica, who on Wednesday authorised increased production at the UPM (ex-Botnia) paper plant.

Lukoil, Russia's second-biggest oil producer wants to sell its stake in a Russian consortium developing a large oil project in Venezuela because it is not a high priority, Lukoil's head said on Wednesday.

Brazil's oil and natural gas output rose for the second time in three months in August as new output from giant offshore fields barely outpaced declines from the depletion of older areas and maintenance, oil industry watchdog ANP said this week.

Germany's Daimler plans to build a new car factory in Brazil, becoming the third German premium automaker to announce such plans within the past year. The company announced it would invest around 170 million Euros to set up a shop in Iracemapolis, near Sao Paulo.

Argentine President Cristina Fernández met on Monday with her Uruguayan counterpart José Mujica after the pair inaugurated a new vessel belonging to the ferry company Buquebús, (which joins Montevideo with Buenos Aires), in order to discuss matters related to the controversial UPM pulp plant formerly known as Botnia.

Chile's Supreme Court confirmed a freeze on Barrick Gold Corp's suspended Pascua-Lama gold mine but the Toronto-based miner escaped having the project's environmental permit revoked. The ruling dispels a significant uncertainty surrounding the controversial project, which now essentially has to complete a water management system issued by the environmental regulator to likely be re-activated.

Thanks to the shale boom, markets already perceive the trade balance optimizing, energy prices are cheaper than they would otherwise be and we've even cut carbon emissions. And we are only getting started, according Tyler Cowen, New York Times best-selling author and one of the most influential economists of the decade.

Brazil's Petrobras and its Indian partners have made a beautiful oil discovery off Brazil's northeast coast, Sergipe-Alagoas basin, and it will produce a minimum 100,000 barrels of petroleum a day starting in 2018, the company's CEO said on Friday.