HOUSTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – U.S. oil major ConocoPhillips
Co <COP.N> wants to grab a bigger chunk of global oil trading,
including markets where it has not normally been active, three
people familiar with the firm’s plans said this week.

The move marks a departure from ConocoPhillips conservative
approach to trading. The company, in its 2008 annual report
filed with U.S. securities regulators, described its trading
business as “limited” and said it was “immaterial” to the
company’s earnings or cash flow according to regulatory
filings.

HOUSTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – U.S. oil major ConocoPhillips
Co <COP.N> wants to grab a bigger chunk of global oil trading,
including markets where it has not normally been active, three
people familiar with the firm’s plans said this week.

The planned expansion of its worldwide trading activities
was a major part of the motivation of the recently disclosed
reshuffling of its trading arm, which saw the bulk of the
company’s risk-taking trading centralized in London.

HOUSTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s
<RDSa.L> Perdido oil and gas project in the Gulf of Mexico will
start up soon, perhaps as early as the end of January, the U.S.
Minerals Management Service said on Wednesday.

The government agency, which oversees oil and gas
production in U.S. federal waters, did not say how much it
expected the project to produce initially. The Perdido platform
is capable of producing 100,000 barrels per day of oil and 200
million cubic feet per day of natural gas.

MEXICO CITY, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Mexican oil production fell
for the fifth year in a row last year but the pace of the slide
slowed and output rose in December from November, according to
data released by state oil monopoly Pemex on Friday.

Mexico pumped 2.601 million barrels of oil per day in 2009,
the lowest annual rate of production since 1990, as yields at
the giant Cantarell field continued to decline and output at
Pemex’s flagship Chicontepec project failed to increase.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Felipe Calderon proposed a package of electoral reforms on Tuesday that would allow most politicians to seek fresh terms and institute a second round of voting in presidential elections.

The proposal, which overturns a decades-old constitutional prohibition on politicians seeking re-election, is designed to tackle Mexicans’ disillusionment with their political system, Calderon said.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Global climate change talks in Copenhagen next month should yield a concrete base that will allow for a definitive treaty to be agreed within a year, Mexico’s top climate change diplomat said on Wednesday.

Acknowledging that world leaders will not be able to draw up a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol at a December 7-18 summit in the Danish capital, Luis Alfonso de Alba said he was optimistic the meeting would yield a major results including an accord to cap rising temperatures and set billions of dollars to help poor countries.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A legal challenge to a Mexican oil reform law passed last year means international oil firms will have to wait longer for new contracts aimed at luring them back into the country.

Mexico’s lower house of Congress has asked the Supreme Court to invalidate recently published regulations for the law, which was passed in late 2008.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Major oil exporters in Latin America and the Middle East have expressed “strong interest” in switching the basis of their oil prices to Argus’s U.S. Sour Crude Index following Saudi Arabia’s adoption of the index, an Argus executive said on Thursday.

Euan Craik, chief executive of Argus’s U.S. operations, declined to name the countries that were studying the change but described the interest as “unprecedented.”

MEXICO CITY, Oct 28 (Reuters) – Mexico’s state oil monopoly
Pemex posted a loss of 3.69 billion pesos ($273 million) in the
third quarter, less than the 14.393 billion pesos it lost in
the same period a year ago, the company said in a filing with
the Mexican stock market on Wednesday.

Pemex [PEMX.UL] said its results improved due to lower
taxes and cheaper fuel imports but these positive factors were
partially outweighed by reduced volumes of crude oil exports.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A dramatic slide in Mexico’s oil production has come to an end and it can maintain output at 2.5 million barrels per day for the coming years, Energy Minister Georgina Kessel said on Tuesday.

Mexican crude output has plunged by nearly a quarter since peaking in 2004, straining public finances and spurring bond rating agencies to warn the country’s debt could be downgraded.