Apache Corp. has been hit hard by the downturn in natural gas drilling in North America, as lower margins and increased costs drove down earnings for 2012.  More »

President Barack Obama’s proposal to fund clean-energy research with fees paid by oil and gas producers is renewing a debate over whether the promise of innovation tomorrow is worth expanding drilling today.  More »

A multi-agency group formed to deal with the New Year’s Eve grounding of a Royal Dutch Shell PLC drill barge near an Alaskan island says the rig is safe to tow to its next port and the unified command is disbanding.  More »

The owner of the deep-water rig that exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico nearly three years ago after an undersea well blew out is now the second company to be convicted of a crime stemming from the deadly disaster.  More »

The price of Brent crude oil on average is expected to decline slightly this year and next year, compared to the average price in 2012, the federal energy data agency said.  More »

The North Dakota winter is relentless. Air temperatures hover around zero degrees Fahrenheit. Yet that’s easy to forget here, inside a network of steel mobile homes opened in 2011 in the state’s northwestern corner. Guys walk around in flip-flops, shorts and T-shirts. They eat ice cream at regularly available opportunities and then sweat it off on a treadmill.  More »

Statoil ASA is giving up a Kazakh offshore block after Norway’s biggest energy producer spent about seven years negotiating to start exploration, the latest international defection from a Caspian Sea project.  More »

Tullow Oil Plc, the worst-performing oil stock in the U.K.’s benchmark index, will maintain its focus on exploration rather than developing existing discoveries.  More »

Prominent environmental leaders, including the head of the Sierra Club and the organizer of a public campaign to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, are planning to risk arrest Wednesday at a protest outside the White House.  More »

Congressmen from Mississippi and Alabama want the Department of Interior to stop demolishing inactive offshore oil rigs until more study details the dangers to Gulf of Mexico fish species.  More »

It’s Transocean’s turn in the penalty box.  More »

Permits for companies to carry out a form of underground natural gas exploration in North Carolina could begin in March 2015, under a bill offered by Senate Republicans.  More »