Halliburton posts $18 million 1Q loss

Halliburton says it lost $18 million in the first quarter, pulled down by $637 million in charges related to its role in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The oil services company's loss amounted to 2 cents per share. That compares with net income of $627 million, or 68 cents per share, a year earlier.

Halliburton, which is in talks to settle claims against it related to the oil spill, said that excluding the charges it posted adjusted earnings of 67 cents per share. That beat the 57 cents that analysts expected.

The Houston company, which provides a variety of services for the petroleum industry, is benefiting from a boom in U.S. oil production, which is at the highest level in more than two decades. At the same time, Halliburton's natural gas business has slowed as drillers slowed production due to falling prices for the fuel.

Halliburton provided cementing services for BP PLC on the failed Macondo well in 2010. The two sides continue to spar over responsibility for the disaster. BP acknowledges it made mistakes that led to the blowout, but the company denies it was grossly negligent and argues Halliburton also must shoulder blame for the catastrophe. Halliburton maintains that BP, as the well's owner, is responsible for the blowout that created the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Air strike kills kidnappers, hostages in Algeria

Thirty-four hostages and 15 kidnappers has been killed when Algerian army helicopters bombed a gas complex where Islamists were holding more than 40 foreign hostages, one of the kidnappers told Mauritania’s ANI news agency.

According to Algeria’s Ennahar television, 15 foreigners, including a French couple, succeeded in escaping, along with about 30 Algerians.
A group calling itself the "Battalion of Blood" stormed the gas pumping station — operated by British Petroleum, Norway’s Statoil and Algeria’s state company — and its employee barracks before dawn. The group said it had seized more than 40 foreigners, including Americans, Japanese and Europeans.

Iraq considering BP for work on Kirkuk oil field

An Iraqi oil official says the country is considering a proposal for British oil giant BP to begin work on a major oil field that lies in territory contested by Baghdad and the minority Kurds.

The head of the Oil Ministry's petroleum contracts and licensing division, Abdul-Mahdi al-Ameedi, told reporters that the plan aims to boost output at the Kirkuk oil field, where production has been declining.

He says BP's offer has been sent to the Cabinet for consideration, though no deal has been approved yet.

BP spokesman Toby Odone says Iraq requested a proposal for work at the field. He declined to give details, including about the scale of any potential investment.

BP fined, charged in oil spill

Oil giant BP and three of its employees were indicted on criminal charges including manslaughter and obstruction of Congress on top of a record $4-billion fine that the company will pay the government for its role in the oil spill disaster that scarred the Gulf of Mexico.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the indictments in a televised news conference from New Orleans, where the grand jury has been investigating the 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the Louisiana coast. Eleven people died in the explosion.

The announcement of the charges against BP employees came on the same day officials announced that BP had agreed to an unprecedented settlement involving a guilty plea to criminal charges.

In addition, BP agreed to pay more than $525 million in civil penalties to satisfy complaints by the Securities and Exchange Commission. That brings the total settlement cost to more than $4.5 billion – not including the billions the company has already paid to settle civil claims from residents, fishermen and businesses harmed by the spill.

In all, the company said it agreed to enter guilty pleas to 14 charges, including the eleven counts of manslaughter. But the government went further, charging individuals as well.

Two BP employees, Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, who were described by Holder as the two highest-ranking BP supervisors on board the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded, were charged with manslaughter and other counts.

UAE's first ever oil and gas museum attracts visitors

Visitors to this year's Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC) have been treated to the UAE's first ever oil and gas museum.

The ADIPEC Museum is a unique collection of photographs, equipment, maps and documents that illustrates the history of the local oil industry from its humble beginnings with the signing of the Red Line Agreement in 1928 to the present day.

Hosted in an outdoor marquee at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, the 500-square-metre museum also has a chronological display of photographs of the Abu Dhabi region dating back to the 1930s. The photographs illustrate the growth of Abu Dhabi in the last 70 years from a modest fishing community struggling in the wake of a dwindling pearl diving industry into the 8th largest oil exporter in the world.

The ADIPEC Museum was assembled over the past year and offers visitors a unique opportunity to look at materials that have never been seen before in a single public display. The curators poured over 17,000 photographs from 15 local and international archives.

The museum is a notable collaborative effort between international oil companies. Four of the seven original signatories of Abu Dhabi's first oil concession agreement of 1939, namely: ExxonMobil, Total, Shell and BP, are significant contributors to the museum.

BP desperate to raise money through asset sale

BP is in talks to sell some of its Gulf of Mexico oil fields to Plains Exploration & Production Company for roughly $7bn looks to raise money to pay for damages from the 2010 oil spill.

The amount BP will have to pay in damages for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is still in dispute. But last month the United States Justice Department accused the company of gross negligence and willful misconduct over the spill, a position that could lead to nearly $21bn in civil damages if a federal judge agrees.

BP said in May that it was looking to sell a number of mature fields in the Gulf of Mexico, including its positions in the Marlin, Horn Mountain, Holstein, Ram Powell, and Diana Hoover fields.

A deal would be transformational for Houston-based independent oil explorer and producer, Plains, which had a market capitalization of $5.2bn. The company already has assets in the Gulf, as well as in California, Texas, Louisiana, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Like many other independent US oil and gas companies, Plains has been working to build up its oil assets, as the price for US natural gas has been in a prolonged slump. It had previously estimated that about 57 to 60 per cent of its 2012 production would be oil.