INDUSTRY BRIEFS

EXPLORATION

CHEVRON U.S.A. PRODUCTION CO. declared its 3 Mobile Block 863 wildcat a discovery in the Gulf of Mexico's Jurassic Norphlet trend off Alabama. The well, which was not tested, cut more than 250 ft of net gas pay below 21,700 ft. Chevron holds a 70.9575% interest in the well and lease, Elf Exploration Inc. 17.5%, and Murphy Exploration & Production Co. 11.5425%.

OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM CORP. acquired rights under terms of a production sharing agreement (PSA) to the 1.1 million acre MPolo block off Southwest Gabon. It gives Oxy a combined 5.6 million acres in the central part of the West Africa salt basin. The PSA calls for Oxy to conduct a 310 mile seismic program and drill at least one wildcat within 3 years.

COMPANIES

MITCHELL ENERGY & DEVELOPMENT CORP., The Woodlands, Tex., closed its $35 million sale of gas compression unit Brazos Gas Compressing Co., Bridgeport, Tex., to Tidewater Inc., New Orleans.

POCO PETROLEUMS LTD., Calgary, plans fourth quarter spending of $74 million (Canadian), giving it combined 1994 outlays of $200 million. The company said 20% of fourth quarter spending will be on exploration and development in Southeast Alberta and Southwest Saskatchewan. Poco will allocate 35% of E&D funds to the Pembina region of Alberta and 20% to deep gas exploration in Alberta and British Columbia.

MCLEOD RUSSEL (INDIA) LTD., Calcutta, agreed to pay $90 million for a 50.9% interest in Union Carbide India Ltd. Closing is expected by yearend.

SPILLS

EXXON CORP. asked a federal district court in Anchorage, Alas., to overturn or reduce verdicts against Exxon in civil lawsuits stemming from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Exxon particularly cited the $5 billion punitive damage verdict.

PORTUGAL'S northern beaches were fouled by an oil slick after Panamanian registered tanker Cercal ran aground Oct. 2 off Oporto, Portugal, London's Financial Times reported. The tanker is believed to have spilled as much as 1,300 metric tons of crude oil. Last week the slick was drifting south and tending to break up on its own, Reuters reported.

PIPELINES

UNITED MERIDIAN INTERNATIONAL CORP., Houston, and Ivory Coast state company Petroci will develop two gas fields off Ivory Coast. A pipeline will be laid to shore at Jacqueville, then 35 miles west to Abidjan. The line is to reach Abidjan by Oct. 1, 1995,

NUMAC ENERGY INC., Vancouver, B.C., sold its 506 mile, 36,000 b/d crude oil pipeline between Taylor and Kamloops, B.C., to Federated Pipe Lines Ltd. The line links oil fields in the province's northeast region to Prince George and Kamloops, delivering crude for use in refineries in British Columbia and Washington.

NRG INFORMATION SERVICES INC., Calgary, expects in December to release version 1.0 of its NrG Highway software, a program that will allow North American customers to make seamless contractual and operational arrangements to move natural gas via participating pipelines through one electronic window.

NATURAL GAS CLEARINGHOUSE, Houston, and National Fuel Gas Co., Buffalo, signed final agreements to form Ellisburg-Leidy Northeast Hub Co., a gas market center in North Central Pennsylvania. It aims to serve Canadian and U.S. Northeast markets.

NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORP. and Chevron Nigeria plan to build a $570 million, 165 MMcfd gas gathering system for Okan and Mefa fields off the western Niger delta in southern Nigeria. The project is scheduled for completion late in 1996.

ZAIRE GULF OIL CO. hired Offshore Pipelines International Ltd. (OPIL), a unit of Offshore Pipelines Inc., Houston, to perform structural and pipelay installations off Zaire as part of Tshiala field development. OPIL will use its DLB-1 derrick barge to transport and install one caisson in 35 ft of water and 3.8 miles of 8 in. pipeline from Tshiala to the platform.

LNG

INDONESIA'S Pertamina agreed to ship an additional total of 6 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas to South Korea's Korea Gas Corp. during the next 5 years, beginning at once. The price for this volume is slightly higher than the current level, China's Xinhua News Agency reported.

GAS STORAGE

MOSS BLUFF GAS STORAGE SYSTEMS completed expansion of the Phase II cavern at its Moss Bluff storage site in Liberty County, Tex., 60 miles east of Houston. Expansion gives the site a combined 5.5 bcf of storage capacity in two caverns.

J. MAKOWSKI CO., Boston, is considering expanding service options for its planned gas storage site at Avoca, N.Y. The site may include a pipeline hookup allowing shipment into National Fuel, CNG, Texas Eastern, and Transco pipeline systems through the Leidy, Pa., interchange and further into Columbia Gas. A link with any of those systems will allow gas from Avoca via Leidy to reach many U.S. East Coast market centers.

DRILLING-PRODUCTION

CENTRAL ASIAN PETROLEUM (GUERNSEY) LTD., a new company formed by a group that includes Chaparral Resources Inc., Denver, (OGJ, Sept. 19, p. 35) is negotiating with the government of Kazakhstan to develop Karakuduk oil field in Kazakhstan, Chaparral expects final agreement by the end of this month.

RANGER OIL LTD., Calgary, 55% and Sun Co. Inc. unit Sun Oil Britain Ltd. 45% completed the first development well on Columba D terrace in the U.K. North Sea. An 18,500 ft extended reach well drilled there from Ninian field's southern platform is on extended test, producing 11,000 b/d of 38 gravity oil through Ninian facilities and Sullom Voe terminal.

BENTON OIL & GAS CO., Oxnard, Calif., issued $15 million in 13% senior unsecured notes due Sept. 30, 2002, to John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. Benton will use most of the proceeds to help develop South Monagas Unit fields in Venezuela. The rest of the money is earmarked for drilling U.S. Gulf Coast wells, development in Russia through Benton's Geoilbent joint venture, and general working capital.

CALLON PETROLEUM CO., Natchez, Miss., paid $34 million cash to W&T Offshore Inc., Houston, for interests in Main Pass 234, Matagorda Island 558, Chandeleur 40, and West Delta 30 fields off Texas and Louisiana. The purchase includes combined production of 35.8 MMcfd of gas and 3,691 b/d of oil.

TATHAM OFFSHORE INC., Houston, expects to start oil production early in 1996 from its Gulf of Mexico Sunday Silence field project through use of a floating production system (FPS). The FPS will be provided on a lease rental basis by Tatham affiliate Deepwater Production Systems Inc. and Reading & Bates Corp. Tatham's 1 Ewing Bank 1003 step-out well for the fie

MAXUS BOLIVIA INC., a unit of Maxus Energy Corp., Dallas, will sell its 55% share of crude produced from Surubi field in Bolivia's Mamore 1 block to Bolivia state company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos. Maxus operates the 1.6 million acre concession, 125 miles northwest of Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

PONDER INTERNATIONAL SERVICES INC., a unit of Ponder Industries Inc., Alice, Tex., started well service work in Azerbaijan under terms of a deal with State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan Republic. It's using coiled tubing to clean sand from a Guneshli field well (OGJ, Sept. 26, p. 48) and conducting a fishing job on a well in Artuom Island field.

ABU DHABI CO. FOR ONSHORE OIL OPERATION plans to double production from Sahil field, 75 miles south of Abu Dhabi City, to nearly 25,000 b/d. The $120 million project calls for construction of oil gathering and separation units, gas reinjection equipment, and upgrading Asab field receiving facilities. Work schedule isn't disclosed.

HAMILTON OIL CO. LTD., London, began commercial production Oct. 1 from Johnston gas field in U.K. North Sea Blocks 43/26a and 43/27. Plateau production is expected to be 53 MMcfd. All gas has been sold to Eastern Electric plc, Ipswich. The 58 million ($87 million) development program involved installation of a 200 metric ton subsea wellhead template with four well slots and a 12 in. pipeline to North Ravenspurn processing platform 7 km away.

NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORP. and Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, through Hyundai Heavy Industries, hired John Brown, Houston, to provide detailed engineering for an offshore gas compression and injection platform and gas injection flow lines to injection wells on existing remote wellhead platforms. The platform is in 110 ft of water 30 miles off Southeast Nigeria.

WOODSIDE PETROLEUM PTY. LTD. confirmed defects were detected in process pipe welds on the Northwest Shelf Goodwyn A gas platform but said they are minor. Specialists will be brought in to determine whether the welds are acceptable. First production from Goodwyn is expected later this year after a 12 month delay to repair damaged jacket piles.

ECUADOR'S Petroecuador seeks expressions of interest from companies to participate in a tender to operate marginal fields currently under Petroecuador operatorship. The state company is conducting technical and economic studies to draft tender terms and select fields to be offered. The tender is scheduled for fourth quarter.

NORWAY'S Den norske stats oljeselskap AS let drilling supplies contracts worth a combined 400 million kroner ($58 million) to Baker Hughes Norge AS, Tananger, Norway. These include contracts to supply drilling and completion fluids for East Sleipner and Heidrun fields and drilling fluids for Troll field.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

U.S. FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION approved Gas Research Institute's 1995-96 research, development, and demonstration program and related 1995-99 five year plan. FERC approved the institute's request for an obligations budget of $210.4 million and a cash outlay budget of $208 million to support 1995 cooperative energy R&D.

TANKERS

INDIA'S Shipping Corp. of India took delivery of the first of four double hull, 140,000 dwt crude oil tankers from South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries Co. Three more tankers, each to cost $65.5 million, are to join the company's fleet by March 1995.

RUSSIA'S Novorossiisk Shipping Co., which handles export of Russian crude oil from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk via the Bosporus into the Mediterranean Sea, applied to join the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, Oslo. Intertanko said the company operates a fleet of 66 tankers with total tonnage of 4 million dwt.

PETROCHEMICALS

ARCADIAN CORP., Memphis, hired Fish Engineering & Construction Partners Ltd., Houston, to move an ammonia plant in Brea, Calif., to Point Lisas, Trinidad. There the plant will be modernized to produce 255,000 short tons/year of ammonia. The relocation and modernization project is expected to take 18 months.

FARMLAND INDUSTRIES INC., Kansas City, agreed with National Gas Co. of Trinidad & Tobago Ltd. and the international unit of Enron Corp., Houston, to develop a 1,900 short ton/day ammonia plant at La Brea, Trinidad. Work is to be complete within 24-30 months.

MITSUI & CO. plans to build a $20 million general purpose plastics plant in China, to begin production as early as 1996, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Tokyo, reported. The company is said to have proposed a plant at Shanghai to produce resins such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene for sale to Japanese electrical appliance makers in China.

TAIWAN'S Kaohsiung county government ordered Chinese Petroleum Corp. (CPC) to shut down its fourth naphtha cracker for allegedly failing to comply with air emissions standards. The government said CPC was warned repeatedly about the plant's alleged failure to comply with environmental rules and has been fined three times since mid-August.

REFINING

AMOCO CORP. signed a letter of intent with Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. and Institut Francais du Petrole enabling the engineering firms to license Amoco's quench technology for vapors from fluid catalytic cracking units. The technology will be part of FCC reactor technologies licensed jointly by S&W and IFP.

BP AUSTRALIA shut down its 117,000 b/cd Kwinana, Western Australia, refinery near Perth Oct. 1 to conduct a 28 day turnaround. The plant increased production recently to ensure the closure did not curtail supply.

VENEZUELA'S Petroleos de Venezuela SA renewed its agreement with the government of Curacao to operate the 320,000 b/cd Refineria Isla Curacao SA refinery and terminal at Emmastad, Netherlands Antilles. The 20 year deal will take effect Jan. 1, 1995.