Higher crude oil prices, breakthroughs in technology, and more access to prospective acreage are creating a US oil production revival that is a major break from nearly 40 years of declining production, two experts told the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Jan. 31.

British Gas parent Centrica PLC has signed an agreement to acquire ConocoPhillips’s nonoperated interests in the gas and oil-producing Statfjord field, along with associated satellites in the North Sea, for $223 million.

Energy prices declined across the board Jan. 30 with the front-month crude contract again temporarily cresting the $100/bbl barrier in the New York market, before closing at a 1% loss. Natural gas was down 1.5% in the futures market, but escalated in the cash spot market.

Albanian Refining & Marketing of Oil (ARMO) has let a contract to the Global Engineering & Construction Group of Foster Wheeler AG to study feasibility of modernizing its two refineries in Albania.

Industry analysts lately have been counting barrels—barrels of refining capacity lost as plants shut down on both sides of the Atlantic; barrels of crude flowing into the US Midwest and their impact on prices for West Texas Intermediate; and barrels of supply that may be lost if the European Union activates its proposed embargo on Iran in 6 months or if Iran beats them to the punch by stopping shipments.

McMoRan Exploration Co., New Orleans, said its Blackbeard East ultradeep exploratory bypass well on the Gulf of Mexico shelf encountered potential hydrocarbons in the Sparta carbonate section of Eocene and Vicksburg section of Oligocene.

A subsidiary of HRT Participacoes em Petroleo SA, Rio de Janeiro, has spudded the 4-HRT-7D-AM well on the Igarape Maria prospect in Coari municipality in the Solimoes basin onshore northwestern Brazil.