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Azerbaijan produced an average of 940,500 barrels a day of oil in April, up 0.9% on the previous month. (5/13, #7)

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Eni and the partners developing the Kashagan oil field may delay production by as much as two years, the fourth postponement at the 7 billion to 9 billion-barrel discovery to date. The start of commercial output may not occur until 2012 or 2013. The government threatened new financial penalties for this delay. (5/12, #5; 5/13, #8)

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Ecuador offered foreign oil companies a cut in a controversial windfall profits tax if they keep dwindling output levels up this year. (5/17, #9)

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A planned 500,000-barrel-a-day refinery to be built in Brazil by Petrobras will cost between $8 billion and $10 billion. A second smaller refinery, to process 200,000 b/day, would cost $5 billion. Construction on both would start in 2009. (5/17, #10)

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Petrobras leased about 80 percent of the world's deepest-drilling offshore rigs to explore its new deepwater finds. The world has 21 such vessels. Other oil companies probably will pay $50,000 more per day to lease deepwater rigs (likely over $600,000 per day) during the next three years because Petrobras has already contracted for so much of the worldwide fleet. (5/15, #9)

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Petrobras will start a long-term production test at its giant Tupi field in March 2009. The 2-3 month test will produce 30,000 barrels a day from the field from three wells. The company already has a platform available for the long-term test, and it is searching for a rig for a pilot production of 100,000 barrels of oil and 4 million cubic meters of gas a day at the field beginning in December 2010. (5/14, #9)

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Indonesia, facing widespread protests over planned fuel price hikes, aims to lower its costs by reducing expensive imported oil and increasing the country's production to 1.2-1.5 million b/d by 2010 from the current 920,000 b/d. (5/16, #10) [Editors note: Indonesian production has declined 30% since its peak production in 1994; the relatively steady decline makes more than a short-term reversal unlikely.]

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