LONDON, May 16 (Reuters) – On approaching his 60th birthday
this year, long-serving Tullow Oil boss Aidan Heavey
told staff he felt “like two 30 year-olds”.

A handful of recent shock departures by 50-something chief
executives at European blue chip companies – none of them under
any obvious pressure to quit – suggest some of his peers either
lack that vigour, or want to channel it elsewhere.

LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) – BG Group is to focus more
tightly on oil and gas exploration, Liquefied Natural Gas, and
bringing partners into projects at an early stage, in a bid to
boost value per barrel after being forced to abandon ambitious
output growth targets.

In a strategy statement on Tuesday the gas-focused company
said the proportion of its production with cash margins of more
than $50 per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) would triple over
the next five years. That would allow earnings to grow faster
than production and allow it to return cash to shareholders.

May 8 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch/Shell will build the
world’s deepest offshore oil and gas facility, pushing the
boundaries of industry technology to search three kilometres
(1.9 miles) underwater in the Gulf of Mexico.

The project go-ahead demonstrates Shell’s confidence in
pricey offshore projects despite a recent downturn in oil
prices. Last month, BP decided to delay development of
its biggest new Gulf of Mexico project, Mad Dog Phase 2, citing
tough market conditions and fast-rising costs.

LONDON, May 2 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s
54-year old chief executive Peter Voser is to retire next year
in a surprise early departure he said was driven by a desire for
a change of lifestyle.

The softly-spoken Swiss national with a quarter century
career at Europe’s top oil company, has transformed it since
2009 from sector laggard to a leading position in the burgeoning
industry of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

LONDON, May 1 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch/Shell’s
55-year old chief executive Peter Voser is to retire next year
in a surprise early departure he said was driven by a desire for
a change of lifestyle.

Voser has run Europe’s top oil company since 2009 and led it
from sector laggard in the wake of the 2004 reserves crisis to a
position of sector leader in the burgeoning industry of
liquefied natural gas (LNG).

LONDON, April 30 (Reuters) – BP Plc has been hit by
over 2,200 new lawsuits seeking payback for the 2010 Gulf of
Mexico oil spill in the past few weeks as individuals, companies
and government bodies rushed to stake their claim before their
right to do so expired.

The British oil company, whose deepwater Macondo well
ruptured on April 20, 2010, killing 11 men and spilling crude
into the sea for weeks, revealed the number of new claims made
since March 6 in its first-quarter results on Tuesday.

LONDON, April 30 (Reuters) – BP Plc profits
outperformed expectations by almost $1 billion in the first
quarter thanks in part to the high margin nature of new
production that came on stream at the end of 2012 and a strong
performance from its trading division.

The British oil company – still fighting multi-billion
dollar lawsuits over its Gulf of Mexico oil spill of three years
ago – turned in underlying replacement cost net profit of $4.215
billion for the quarter.

LONDON (Reuters) – New producing countries are set to redraw sub-Saharan Africa’s oil and gas map over the next five years, contributing to a significant net increase in output and attracting the top global companies.

Today, the region’s heavyweight producer nations, Nigeria and Angola, together pump around 4 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude and also dominate natural gas output. Only a handful of other countries in the region produce more than a couple of hundred thousand barrels of oil and gas equivalent.

LONDON, April 8 (Reuters) – - Tewedros Ashenafi hopes his
Ethiopian exploration outfit will become the first indigenous
company to make a basin-opening discovery in sub-Saharan
Africa’s 21st Century oil and gas boom.

His privately-held SouthWest Energy holds 46,000 square
kilometres of exploration acreage amounting to almost 4 percent
of the vast, land-locked east African country.

KAMPALA/LONDON, April 4 (Reuters) – Ugandan officials and
UK-listed oil company Heritage Oil escalated their
legal dispute over tax on Thursday, entering a war of words over
who was winning.

The case, being heard by an arbitration tribunal in London
under the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law,
centres on more than $400 million of tax that Uganda has charged
Heritage on its $1.45 billion sale of exploration acreage to
Tullow Oil in 2010.