New Delhi, Apr 2: Reliance India Ltd. (RIL) achieved a landmark in the history of oil and gas production when its deep-sea Krishna Godavari basin fields flowed to the surface on Thursday.

Unlike the practice around the world of a minimum nine years, the RIL just took seven years from the date of discovery to begin gas production from the deep-sea KG-D6 block.

According to Petroleum Secretary R S Pandey, India will save USD nine billion in oil import bill annually with the beginning of production from Reliance Industries'' eastern offshore KG D-6 fields.

Vienna  - The price for oil produced by the Organ

Berlin  - Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday offered Germany's good offices to help resolve a new gas dispute which has surfaced between Russia, the European Union and Ukraine.

The chancellor said after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Berlin that she would raise the issue with the European Commission.

Russia has called an agreement with the EU to modernize Ukraine's gas infrastructure an "unfriendly act," pointing out that Moscow was excluded from the talks.

French nuclear giant Areva announced plans on March 30 to expand its India operations. The company will start operations this week at eight new factories in India.

On Monday, the company started off its four factories at Kotambi near Vadodara in Gujarat.

Vienna  - Austria's leading oil and gas group OMV AG announced Monday it has ended its involvement with Hungarian counterpart MOL plc by selling its 21.2-per-cent stake to the Russian company Surgutneftegas OJSC.

The shares were sold for 1.4 billion euros (1.86 billion dollars), OMV said in a statement, calling the deal a "logical step" after the company ended its unsuccessful bid to take over MOL last August.

Nicosia, Mar 30: The state-run Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) confirmed press reports that it had scrapped plans to built a fourth refinery at Al Zour, at an estimated cost of 15 billion dollars and has informed accordingly the companies involved.

This is the second multi-billion project which has been abandoned by a Kuwati state-run company in the past three months.