"Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea."

• Ghanem 'is gone' - Upstreamonline - Head of Libyan NOC gone. He tended to be very pro-IOC, so we'll see what happens. Under his tenure, there was extensive Exploration & Production by Western firms. BP and Total especially. Related: (?) Lockerbie bomber 'set free for oil' - Times Online It's no secret oil and geopolitics are regular bedfellows.
  

• How UK oil company Trafigura tried to cover up African pollution disaster | World news | The Guardian

  Large British oil trading company buys sour crude, strips out H2S, dumps H2S contaminated slop in Africa.

• BP's Tiber has to be big but how big? - GLG News

  Analysis on how much it costs to run Tiber. Throws around $5.50/barrel/day as an oil industry average for the GoM, with Tiber being more like x5. Still obscenely profitable, but with risks. (by Michael E. Lynch, not to be confused with Michael C. Lynch
  

• Burgan, fabled Kuwait oil field in irreversible decline with high wa - GLG News\ Also by Lynch.
  

• RIGZONE - Pa. Oil and Gas Fields Eyed for CO2 Storage

  Carbon Capture and Sequestration being analyzed for depleted fields in PA. We'll see how CCS works out. I think there will be some highly successful projects, but we'll have to see how large it can scale up.
  

• RIGZONE - Kuwait Oil Field, World's 2nd Largest Needs IOCs

  Burgan going to IOC's? Kuwait must really be desperate if they are thinking about handing over their crown jewel. The thing is, there's not that much the IOC's can do that Schlumberger can't. For example, when Exxon bought Mobil, they shut down a very large R&D department, so I just don't know if the IOC's have that much to give.

• RIGZONE - Obama Administration: US Has Overinvested In Oil, Gas

  $31.5 Billion in new taxes as a part of a push to end the US government's role as nurturer to the oil industry. John Malcolm Blair wrote an excellent history of the tax breaks the industry has gotten (imagine $1 million dollars in tax writeoffs for a $100,000 drilling investment, thanks to the Oil Depletion Allowance) that was heavily cited in The Prize.
  

• Obama wants worldwide end of fossil fuel subsidies - Yahoo! News

  The end of fossil fuel subsidies. Obama points out lots of subsidies (Royalty relief, for one), despite the oil industry being well established. I don't think it will make much of difference, as long as oil doesn't dip below $40-$50 / barrel for long (say, 6 months). If it stays at $30 for a year, South Louisiana economy (especially Morgan City, which has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the US) will crater and burn. Long term, a $5 swing in the price of oil has more effect on activity than US subsidies.

• U.S. awards $550 million in renewable energy grants | Green Business | Reuters

  Lots of money from Obama for Wind. How come River Turbines got left out?

• FT.com / UK - Decision on pipeline threatens to soil Obama's green image
  

  Canadian Oil Sands Pipeline (which was later approved, but I forgot to bookmark that news article) was under a lot of scrutiny from some environmentalists due to Synthetic Oil's larger carbon footprint. Producing 1 barrel of oil sands synthetic crude is at least 10% more carbon-intensive than light, sweet crude imported from overseas.
  

• Reservoirs that cross country lines need special agreements Unlike Norway and the U.K., the US and Mexico haven't worked out border agreements, which could delay production or cause US-situated platforms to siphon off Mexican oil.
  

UPDATE: More links to add.

Help! They Can't Find Any More Oil!

International oil and gas companies increased exploration spending by 21% in 2008 to $492 billion, but worldwide oil and gas reserves were .4% lower by year end. There was a 4.4 billion barrel decline in oil reserves. This isn't a singular event, either. Over the past three years reserves have been flat.

Related: FT.com | FT Energy Source | Finding new oil gets ever more expensive ...One significant finding of the study: in the US, reserve replacement costs more than doubled [in a single year].