By Braden Reddall

(Reuters) – Signs of a improvement in the depressed North American drilling market and steady growth elsewhere underpinned higher-than-expected first-quarter profits for oilfield services giants Schlumberger Ltd (SLB.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Sector leader Schlumberger posted profits that beat analysts’ estimates for the sixth straight quarter, lifted by strong and consistent growth in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, China and Australia.

/HOUSTON (Reuters) – - The U.S. Chemical Safety Board on Monday recommended that Chevron Corp check for ongoing damage to pipes and equipment at its U.S. refineries to prevent another explosion like the August 6 pipeline blast at the company’s San Francisco Bay area refinery.

The Safety Board, in an interim report issued Monday, said Chevron did not act upon six recommendations over 10 years to increase inspection and replace the line at its Richmond, California, refinery with upgraded pipe.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 15 (Reuters) – A late-blooming activist
who helped secure a moratorium in South Africa against fracking
has won a prominent U.S. environmental activism prize in
California, where the debate over the oil and gas extraction
technique is only heating up.

Jonathan Deal, a 54-year-old photographer and landowner in
the Karoo region of South Africa, said he had to battle against
the plans of Royal Dutch Shell Plc to use hydraulic
fracturing in the region and secured a country-wide fracking
moratorium that was lifted in September.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 9 (Reuters) – A court ruling that the
U.S. government must consider the environmental impact of
“fracking” on federal lands leased to oil companies offers
opponents of the technique a useful weapon in the fierce public
debate in California and other parts of the country.

In a regulatory setback for hydraulic fracturing on public
lands, a federal magistrate judge in San Jose, California, on
Monday ruled that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to
analyze its impact on 2,500 acres in Monterey County
.

RICHMOND, California (Reuters) – The federal agency investigating the fire that broke out in August at Chevron Corp’s oil refinery in Richmond, California, faulted the state’s regulatory system for not being proactive enough in preventing accidents.

“The California process safety regulatory system lacked sufficient well-trained, technically competent staff and also lacked more rigorous regulatory requirements to require Chevron to reduce safety risk,” said the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s lead investigator Dan Tillema at a public hearing in Richmond on Friday.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 3 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge has rejected
efforts by Chevron Corp to secure documents from a
California environmental advocacy group in a fraud case related
to a $19 billion award for rainforest pollution in Ecuador.

Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins on Wednesday quashed
Chevron’s subpoena for a deposition and documents from Amazon
Watch, which the group’s own lawyer described as the U.S. oil
company’s “sharpest critic.”

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) – The first crossing of the United States by a solar-powered plane is expected to start in just over a month, its creators said on Thursday, as they make final preparations for an attempt two years from now at the first round-the-world flight without any fuel.

Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard and project co-founder and pilot Andre Borschberg, whose Solar Impulse made its first intercontinental flight from Spain to Morocco last June, aim for their plane to take off from near San Francisco in early May and land at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport about two months later.

March 21 (Reuters) – Chevron Corp, after years of
living in the shadow of Exxon Mobil Corp, has grown
accustomed to having to punch above its weight, and it has now
landed a notable blow against another big oil company.

Though it ranks fourth in oil and gas reserves among the
world’s non-government-controlled producers, the California
major recently seized the number two spot from Royal Dutch Shell
Plc in terms of stock market valuation.

March 18 (Reuters) – Schlumberger Ltd, the world’s
largest oilfield services company, warned on Monday that North
American activity was weaker than expected in the first quarter
as U.S. drillers returned to work at a slower pace than the
company predicted.

Shares of Schlumberger fell 2.6 percent to $77.34 in morning
trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Chevron Corp (CVX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the second-largest U.S. oil company, said on Tuesday it had already started nearly all the projects that would deliver 25 percent growth in oil and gas output over the next half a decade.

At its annual New York meeting with analysts, Chevron said 98 percent of its targeted production by 2017 was already in design, construction or production.