Drilling & production

NextEra will purchase four Canadian solar projects from First Solar once they have been built, the four solar projects will be capable of developing 40 MW of electricity a year.

The Zubair oil field in Iraq has had its production raised by 10% to 200,000 bpd of oil, putting the consortium that runs it on target to reach 1.2 million bpd of oil in six years time.

Iran LNG and Venezuela have signed a Letter of Intent (LOI), which will see Iran export LNG to Venezuela, which may then be exported onto Argentina and Cuba.

Riversdale Mining has confirmed that it has held takeover discussions with Rio Tinto.

FLSmidth has made an offer to acquire ESSA Australia Ltd, corresponding to an enterprise value of DKK 170 million.

Fraser Bomford, AKE, examines the risks of living and working in Pakistan, especially for foreign expatriates who have become a target in recent years.

Walter Energy will acquire Western Coal Corp. for C$ 3.3 billion (US$ 3.3 billion) to create a leading, publicly traded, pure-play met coal producer with total coal reserves of approximately 385 million t and a significant and growing production profile in Canada, the US and the UK.

API comments on the recent US tax recommendations.

Grain LNG, owned by National Grid Plc, has completed a capacity expansion plan worth £310 million. The terminal can now handle 20% of the UK’s annual gas demand.

In the last year a number of territorial disputes, which had been quietly ignored before the financial crisis, have come back to prominence; the disputes have been further exacerbated by the presence of oil in some instances.

Icthys LNG project, which is owned by INPEX Browse and Total, has released the invitations to tender for the project's gas processing facility on Blaydin Point, Darwin, Australia.

Minnesota Power has ordered 15 turbines from Siemens for its Bison 1 wind farm in North Dakota.

The African Continent’s west coast has long been an oil rich haven for oil companies from the west to exploit, yet now with the continual discoveries of oil rich deposits in the east, companies are turning their attention to countries like Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique to source large quantities of Africa’s oil reserve.

Enel Green Power has opened a new 20 MW geothermal power plant in Chiusdino, doubling the geothermal power the company generates in Tuscany, Italy, after the opening of the Radicondoli 2 geothermal station at the start of the month.

China is increasingly looking to exploit its native reserves of unconventional gas but this development will not match the pace of the US.