Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson told analysts today at the New York Stock Exchange that the company expects to start up more than 20 new global projects in the next three years that, at peak, are expected to add 1 million oil equivalent barrels per day to ExxonMobil's base volumes.

World oil markets tightened in recent weeks in response to production cuts by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the return of cold winter weather in North America.

Oil prices dropped sharply Monday, losing more than $1 a barrel, in a market driven by stock market declines and concerns about the world economy.

Reports say Iraq's Oil Committee, which groups senior national and regional leaders, has agreed a final draft of an oil law that sets rules for sharing revenues and boosting output.

Platts The 10 OPEC members bound by the group's output agreements produced an average 27 million barrels per day (b/d) in December, down 70,000 b/d from November, but some 700,000 b/d above its current output target, a Platts survey showed Friday.

Economic geographer Roger Stern has predicted in a recent study in a U.S. National Academy of Sciences publication that Iran might run out of oil for export by 2015. Stern, a researcher at John Hopkins University, spoke with RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari about what this might mean.

Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell said today that Russian state-controlled natural gas giant OAO Gazprom will acquire a 50 percent-plus-one share stake in the Sakhalin-2 energy project from Royal Dutch Shell and Japan's Mitsui and Mitsubishi, for $7.45 billion.

One of the challenges to come out of last month's Nairobi Environmental Conference on Climate Change was a push to limit the growth in oil subsidies that world producers continue to receive from Western financial interests.

Russian environmental control agency RosPrirodNadzor measures the environmental damage of Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Sakhalin Island. A full account of it will be ready in summer 2007.

From the minute you arrive in Baku, you can smell the oil. In a glass jar it looks nothing like the black viscous substance one would expect, but more like petrol. Experts praise Azerbaijani oil as among the best in the world.