BP and Total, Europe’s biggest oil companies after Shell, won exploration rights in the Amazon basin as Brazil’s first oil auction in five years attracts a record level of bids. Total, based in Paris, gained exploration access to operate five blocks at the Foz do Amazonas basin in northern Brazil together with partners BP and Petrobras, the oil regulator said on Tuesday.
BP Plc agreed on Thursday to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the deadly Gulf of Mexico spill and pay a record 4.5 billion dollars including the biggest criminal fine in United States history. Three BP employees were also charged, two of them with manslaughter.
Argentina’s Chubut province is reviewing the operating license of BP Plc main oil field in the country and may revoke it, the provincial oil minister said. The review started after operations were interrupted last month for over three weeks during a workers’ protest, Minister Ezequiel Cufre said in an interview in Buenos Aires.