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YANGON -- Myanmar has determined to raise its onshore crude oil production starting December to help meet the country's oil demand by drilling more test wells, the local newspaper Myanmar Times reported Monday.

The onshore oil output will be increased to 10,000 barrels from the current 9,400 barrels per day, the state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

According to the report, Myanmar yields about 20,000 barrels of oil per day from both onshore and offshore areas, accounting for 40 percent of the total amount the country consumes. The rest of demand was fulfilled through import from Singapore and Malaysia.
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WASHINGTON -- The oil and gas industry faces a huge paradox as executives from its biggest companies gathered in Washington, DC, for the American Petroleum Institute's 2006 annual meeting Oct. 15-16.

On one hand, the business itself is in excellent shape. Profit margins are good not only in exploration and production, but also, for a change, in refining and marketing. Efficient operations and dedicated employees kept disruptions from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year from being worse, and the recovery since has been impressive.

On the other hand, the industry has a bad public image. The Gallup Poll listed energy as No....

LA PAZ -- Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and Bolivia President Evo Morales on October 19 signed a natural gas accord calling for $1 billion worth of investments to increase the flow of Bolivian gas into Argentina.

The 20-year accord signed in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, calls for Argentina to receive 27.7 million cu m/day of Bolivian gas by 2010. Argentina already held contracts to import 7.7 million cu m/day, although current shipments average 4.5 million cu m/day, said Bolivia's state-owned Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos.

In a separate announcement last month, Chilean Mine and Energy Minister Karen Poniachik said that Chile will end its dependence on neighboring Argentina for natural gas by 2008.
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LAHTI, Finland -- European leaders agreed on Friday to deliver a blunt message to President Vladimir Putin that Russia must give European firms more chance to exploit its huge energy resources or risk an investor exodus.

Putin arrived as guest at a potentially fraught EU summit dinner, with bloc president Finland pledging to raise the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the Kremlin's heavy handed treatment of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The Europeans are dismayed by Russian moves to impose punitive sanctions on firms such as Royal Dutch Shell and Total that signed contracts in the 1990s, and to shut out foreign capital from development of the giant Arctic Shtokman gas field.
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MOSCOW -- Russia's electricity monopoly is launching a drive to attract $79bn of investment, mostly from private investors, into the country's overstretched electricity sector over five years, in the biggest infrastructure upgrade since Soviet times.

The investment plan devised by Russia's Unified Energy System was made possible by a breakthrough government agreement last week to introduce market mechanisms into wholesale electricity prices after decades of state regulation kept them well below international levels.

President Vladimir Putin this year approved plans to attract foreign and Russian capital into power generation. That should lead to initial public offerings or share placements by 20 generating companies that UES is spinning off after a huge restructuring. The first IPO will come in November.
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TEHRAN -- Negotiations on the Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas deal or the so-called “Peace Pipeline Project” would be finalized after the designated consultant company tasked with working out a pricing formula presents its report in November, noted Iran’s deputy oil minister for international affairs Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian.

Based on the earlier agreements reached by the representatives of Iran, Pakistan and India, the three sides should outline the strategies for the pricing consultant company, he said.

The contractor company is currently carrying out the gas pricing studies, the Iranian official emphasized adding that although the beginning of the work has run into delays, the project implementation method has not changed....

LOS ANGELES -- Actress Julia Roberts has added her name to a growing list of celebrities and politicians supporting a proposal, to be put to voters next month that would tax oil to fund alternative energy research. "We're all victims of this state's tragically poor air quality," she said. "California has the worst air pollution in the nation."

Roberts toured the Mattel Children's Hospital at the University of California at Los Angeles Monday while urging the public to vote for the proposal, known as Proposition 87, in the November 7 elections. She joins actors James Caan and Gina Davis, as well as former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore, who are supporting it.
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BAGDHAD -- Iraq could hand China the first foreign contract to develop its vast oil resources, if Beijing agrees to put into effect a deal originally signed with Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Oil Ministry said yesterday.

While U.S. oil majors, excluded from Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003, wait for Iraq to pass new laws on the sector before investing, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani will visit China, Japan and Australia shortly to discuss projects and developing exports, ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said.

"The minister will discuss with Chinese companies fulfilling previous contracts signed with the former regime," he said. He declined to give specific dates for the trip.
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RIYADH -- The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) needs to pump a whopping $395 bn to increase the region’s oil production capacity and also to invest in other energy projects in the next five years, said a report.

Over $345 bn alone will have to be invested by the Persian Gulf and the remaining Arab producers during 2007-11, the report said quoting figures released by the Saudi Arabia-based Arab Petroleum Investment Corp (Apicorp).

The estimates are sharply higher than previous reviews. Apicorp said the rise was a result of larger projects, an increase in the prices of industrial materials, higher financing costs and other factors.
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LIMA -- A group of native Amazonians has seized parts of Peru's largest oil facility without violence. The Native Federation of the Corrientes River trapped 40 workers inside three of Pluspetrol's facilities Wednesday, complaining that the company is polluting local water supplies.

"There are about 40 Pluspetrol employees being detained in the Jibarito, Huaylluri, and Dorissa camps," Roberto Ramallo, the company's local director, told Radioprogramas radio late Wednesday night. "They are not being held hostage. They are simply inside their offices of the Pluspetrol camps. They do not have the possibility to leave because the entrances are blocked," he said.
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