(Bloomberg) — Nigeria has started investigating an explosion on an oil production vessel capable of holding about 2 million barrels of crude. “I’ve instructed our field operatives to move in and carry out a full-scale incident report,” Gbenga Komolafe, chief executive officer of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, said...

(Bloomberg) — The extreme cold that’s descended across Texas is prompting some oil producers in the Permian Basin to halt a small part of their output as icy roads disrupt critical trucking operations.  One large Permian driller had about 4,000 barrels a day of crude production shut because of the weather, according to a person familiar...

(Bloomberg) — Venezuela’s government and Chevron Corp. are in preliminary talks to give the company greater control of some operations in exchange for debt relief as the country’s socialist leaders try to increase production despite U.S. sanctions.  The head of Chevron’s Venezuela unit, Javier La Rosa, and the president of state oil...

(Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc has made an oil discovery in Namibia, an area where previous explorers have largely failed to find commercial resources. Searching for oil and gas in the waters of the southwest African nation has been compared to the early days of the North Sea, where a number of wells were drilled before any significant di...

(Bloomberg) — A fire on an oil production vessel that exploded off Nigeria’s coast has been extinguished, according to the government official in charge of investigating the environmental toll. The blaze was put out Thursday night, Idris Musa, director general of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, said by text message. The...

(Bloomberg) — Output in the U.S. shale patch is “re-booming” this year, with research and data analysis firm  forecasting production will surge by more than 1 million barrels a day. That’s the most bullish industry forecast yet. By comparison, the Energy Information Administration says the U.S. will end the year  abou...