LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – BP Plc promised improved drilling practices on Friday as the company balances twin aims of rebuilding investor and public confidence after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill while not admitting flaws in its own procedures.

BP said it would more closely oversee the work of its contractors, echoing its position that the rig blast, which killed 11 men and led to the spill, was the fault of its contractors, including driller Transocean and Halliburton.

LONDON (Reuters) – BHP Billiton’s $12.1 billion agreed takeover of U.S. shale gas producer Petrohawk Energy Corp shows environmental concerns and weak margins have not cooled interest in this controversial energy source.

Since the countries with the biggest oil and mineral resources restrict foreign companies’ ability to access those reserves, companies have been forced to reinvest their cash from bumper commodity prices in possibly the most widely criticized and least lucrative part of the industry.

LONDON, June 30 (Reuters) – British gas producer BG Group
said it had doubled its best estimate of its oil and gas
reserves in Brazil’s Santos basin to six billion barrels,
lifting shares in the company and its partners.

The upgrade of the fields, co-owned with state-controlled
Petrobras , Spain’s Repsol and Portugal’s
Galp Energia , follows new tests and highlights the
value of the finds, which represent one of the industry’s
largest new oil provinces in recent decades.

LONDON (Reuters) – Gas producer BG Group (BG.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said it had doubled its best estimate of its oil and gas reserves in Brazil’s Santos basin to six billion barrels, lifting the company’s shares by more than 6 percent.

The upgrade of the fields, co-owned with state-controlled Petrobras (PETR4.SA: Quote, Profile, Research) and Spain’s Repsol (REP.MC: Quote, Profile, Research), follows new tests and highlights the value of the finds, which represent one of the industry’s largest new oil provinces in recent decades.

LONDON, June 20 (Reuters) – UK explorer Premier Oil Plc
has agreed to pay around $110 million to increase its
stake in the Wytch Farm fields in Dorset, southern England,
boosting reserves at what it said was an inexpensive price.

Premier said on Monday it had exercised pre-emption rights
to give it an additional 17.715 percent interest in the assets,
after oil major BP Plc agreed to sell its controlling
stake to unlisted French explorer Perenco.

LONDON, June 17 (Reuters) – Greenpeace ignored a court
injunction on Friday and boarded a Cairn Energy drilling
rig offshore Greenland, raising the stakes in a battle over the
development of the area as a major new oil-producing province.

Greenpeace said campaigners including the global head of the
environmental group, Kumi Naidoo, boarded the rig, which is
drilling just outside the Arctic circule, following similar
occupations in recent weeks and last year.

LONDON (Reuters) – Former BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) boss Tony Hayward and financier Nat Rothschild said they had raised 1.35 billion pounds from investors to create a bid vehicle to target emerging market oil assets.

Vallares, as the company will be known, aims to make a reverse takeover of an unlisted oil group in an emerging market, which needs money to develop its assets.

LONDON, June 17 (Reuters) – Former BP boss Tony
Hayward and financier Nat Rothschild said they had raised 1.35
billion pounds ($2.18 billion) from investors to create a bid
vehicle to target emerging market oil assets.

Vallares, as the company will be known, aims to make a
reverse takeover of an unlisted oil group in an emerging market,
which needs money to develop its assets.

LONDON (Reuters) – Vallares, the oil and gas bid vehicle founded by former BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) boss Tony Hayward and financier Nathaniel Rothschild said it had closed its fundraising earlier than expected, raising 1.35 billion pounds.

Vallares’s business model is to make a reverse takeover of unlisted oil group in an emerging market, which needs money to develop its assets.

LONDON (Reuters) – Western oil firms are unlikely to face widespread asset seizures or contract revisions as a result of Arab uprisings, thanks to deft diplomacy, legal protections and efforts to depict themselves as partners of the local citizenry.

In the past, big political shifts in the Middle East have often been followed by the eviction of foreign oil producers — Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran to cite a few examples.