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Atwood Oceanics on Tuesday said Israeli player Shemen Oil & Gas Resources had hired the Houston-based driller’s Atwood Beacon jack-up rig for a project in the Mediterranean Sea.

Hercules Offshore has denied a report that one of its support vessels was boarded off Nigeria last month.

BP to pay bonuses this year after a period of abstention to quell public anger over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill

Jeroen van der Veer, the former boss of Shell famously undermined the cause of high pay among business executives by saying he would work hard regardless of how much he received. Bob Dudley, the chief executive of arch-rival BP, begged to differ arguing that high salaries were needed and driving down pay could hit Britain as a financial and corporate centre.

However, for himself, Dudley said he works seven days a week and is too busy to think about his own pay packet: "I don't have time to think about this (executive pay)… or the time to spend it." So that has at least cleared up that perennial question about when on earth do these guys find the time to spend all this loot. They don't apparently.

The American national confirmed that BP planned to pay bonuses again this year after a short period of abstention in deference to public anger over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Even without these extras, Dudley got more than £1m for 2010 but then his predecessor, Tony Hayward, received four times that much for 2009. At least he has time to spend it now.

Halliburton, the North American leader in hydraulic fracturing services, believes more weakness in natural gas prices may lead to a further drilling decline that could start weighing on its margins by the middle of this year.