Shell says a fire has forced it to close a key oil pipeline feeding Nigeria's strategic Bonny Export Terminal, which militants attacked last week.

The deal, worth about $2.02 billion, was approved by the cabinet Wednesday, said an official, who didn’t wish to be named. The cabinet also approved another deal worth $1.24 billion reached by the three companies earlier this year to acquire a 29.9% stake in Russia’s Taas-Yuryakh oil field.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that oil services company Weatherford International has agreed to pay a $140 million penalty to settle charges that it inflated earnings by using deceptive income tax accounting. Two of the company’s senior accounting executives at the time have agreed to settle charges that they were behind the scheme.

"Saudi Aramco is forecast to spend around $334 billion. This will be spent on material and services to support service facilities, infrastructure projects, drilling and maintain (oil) potential projects, unconventional resources both in the exploration phase and development and several other projects,"

Top Russian producer Rosneft expects the share of hard-to-recover oil production to rise to 11 percent of its total crude output by 2020, from 7 percent this year. Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of state gas producer Gazprom, is raising its share of output of hard-to-recover oil by tapping more reserves at the Messoyakha project and other assets.

“While the oil market has recovered from its most severe period, it’s still weak,” Nasser said.

Russia's oil taxes are already among the highest in the world.

In Saudi Arabia, Saipem has been awarded an extension of three years to drilling activities being carried out by ten 2000 HP drilling rigs. In South America, in addition to various extensions ranging in duration from two to twenty-four months for medium and high power rigs in Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and Chile, Saipem has also been awarded a new contract for operations in Argentina, which will be carried out by an hydraulic type rig over a period of eighteen months.

Schlumberger will drill 80 wells in an extra-heavy oil field in the Orinoco Belt, said company spokesman Joao Felix. Terms of the deal, which are still being negotiated, will ensure payment from the government.

US major ConocoPhillips will sell its 40% operating interest in the South Natuna Sea oil and gas production-sharing block B to Indonesian player Medco Energi, the latter announced on Monday.

Petróleo Brasileiro SA, as Petrobras is formally known, pledged up to $74.1 billion in capital spending for the 2017-2021 period compared with a $98.4 billion target in the prior four-year 2015-2019 plan, according to a securities filing.

From January 1 to September 13, 2016, Gazprom supplied 8 billion cubic meters of gas to France, which was 27.3 per cent higher than in the same period of 2015.

Vankorneft is the operating company of the Vankor oil and gas condensate field and the North Vankor licence, in East Siberia, Russia. This acquisition will increase ONGC Videsh’s stake in the company to 26%. The company had previously acquired 15% in the project in May this year for USD 1.27 billion. The new transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

We expect these acquired assets to generate substantial free cash flow,(1) enhancing our ability to increase US onshore activity in the Delaware and DJ basins. Our current plans are to add two rigs in each play later this year, and to increase activity further thereafter, with an expectation of more than doubling our production to at least 600,000 BOE per day collectively from these two basins over the next five years.

“This important contract is a key milestone for the Nord Stream 2 project: It will provide the logistical back-bone for the construction phase and is fully in line with our project schedule,” said Nord Stream 2 chief project officer Henning Kothe. “We are also pleased that Wasco will be co-operating with the ports, which successfully participated already in implementation of the existing Nord Stream.”