Statoil, the Norwegian national oil company, has begun a two-year drilling programme in Arctic waters to determine the potential of Norway’s share of one of the world’s few remaining unexplored oil prospects.
It also hopes to co-operate with Russian companies such as Gazprom to find oil and gas further into the Arctic, including areas disputed between […]

Last week we blogged how over half the rigs in the North Sea failed safety checks.
As if to highlight the problem, a major evacuation operation was launched yesterday after a fire broke out on a remote North Sea oil platform. Ninety of the 159 people on board the Thistle Alpha platform, 120 miles north-west […]

The safety regime at Britain’s North Sea oil operators has been condemned after a report found almost 60% of oil platforms had problems that oil companies should have addressed.
The report, by the Health and Safety Executive, argues the industry had lost the trust of the regulator as a result of the failings uncovered by the […]

“God is Brazilian,” declared the country’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after his government’s announcement earlier this month that massive new oil reserves had been discovered offshore.
Brazil’s government and the state-run oil company Petrobras announced two weeks ago that exploration of its Tupi offshore field showed it had enough to increase national oil reserves […]

Brazil is to consider joining OPEC after it has gauged the impact on its oil exports from its newly discovered giant offshore Tupi oil field. Isnard Penha Brasil said that “a membership decision will come after we know what our export capacity will be and we think this will be good.”
Last week, Brazil confirmed a […]