Savannah Petroleum plc has spudded Bushiya-1 in south east Niger, the first well in a three well drilling campaign.

Bushiya-1, which is located on the R3 portion of the R3/R4 PSC Area in the Agadem Rift Basin, is designed to evaluate potential oil pay in the Eocene Sokor Alternances.

BAGHDAD, April 4 (Reuters) - Iraq is still in discussion with Exxon Mobil over a multi-billion-dollar project to boost output from several southern oilfields, the Iraqi oil ministry said on Wednesday.

TBILISI, April 4 (Reuters) - Oil and oil-related shipments from Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi fell 53.7 percent between January and March from a year earlier, an official at the KazMunaiGas-operated terminal said on Wednesday.

SANTIAGO, April 4 (Reuters) - The state-run energy firms of Chile and Argentina said on Wednesday they had inaugurated a $354 million project to increase oil rig flanges gulf coast production of natural gas off the southern tip of South America.

April 3 (Reuters) - Australia's Oil Search Ltd said on Tuesday that operations have resumed at a facility closed in the wake of a major earthquake in Papua New Guinea in February, with oil output under way from a number of wells in the Kutubu field.

(Bloomberg) -- Oil clung to its gains following an industry report that U.S. stockpiles unexpectedly shrank.

Futures in New York held close to the settlement Tuesday after the American Petroleum Institute was said to report crude inventories declined 3.28 million barrels last week.