US gas company Chesapeake Energy is to sell a third of its interest in the Eagle Ford Shale project to China’s CNOOC for $1.08 billion.

Chesapeake will continue to manage the project in South Texas, conducting all leasing, drilling, operation and marketing activities.

CNOOC will fund 75 per cent of Chesapeake's share of drilling and other costs until an additional $1.08 billion has been paid, which Chesapeake expects to happen by the end of 2012.

The Czech Republic's Energeticky a Prymuslovy Holding (EPH) and France's GdF Suez are said to have made the shortlist for a 51 per cent stake in Poland's Enea.

EPH has offered 25 zlotys per share, valuing the controlling stake at 5.63 billion zlotys (approximately €1.41 billion), while GdF Suez offered 24.9 zlotys per share or 5.6 billion zlotys (approx. €1.4 billion) for the stake.

The two other bidders are France's EDF and businessman Jan Kulczyk, who offered 5.4 billion and 5.2 billion zlotys respectively.

10. Drake neglects to patent oil drill

In 1858 Seneca Oil Company sent Edwin Drake to Titusville, Pennsylvania, to investigate ways to extract oil from the ground. Oil bubbled up in the area, and sometimes it was collected from the surface, but the idea of drilling for it, in the same way that salt mines were drilled at the time, seemed far-fetched.

Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas, Inc. (MPSA) has broken ground on a $100 million wind turbine nacelle manufacturing plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas, crediting a coalition of elected officials and the region's business community for creating the environment that allowed them to site the facility in America's heartland.

The nacelle, which is located at the top of the wind turbine tower and functions to convert wind energy to electric power, consists of the wind turbine rotor axis, generator, multiplying gearbox, control system and electrical equipment.

Eurostar International has announced the award of a £700 million contract for 10 new trains to German manufacturer Siemens.

Siemens will supply Eurostar—which operates high-speed trains between London and the continent—with 10 Velaro e320 trains. Designed by Italy’s Pininfarina, the trains will carry more than 900 passengers at a top speed of 320 kilometres per hour. They will also be capable of travelling on other networks, as Eurostar makes plans to expand into Germany and the Netherlands.

Bob Dudley, the new chief executive of UK oil giant BP, has signed a deal to develop a major natural gas field in Azerbaijan.

The agreement is to develop the deepwater Shafaq-Asiman field, which lies 125 kilometres south-east of Baku. The deal was signed by Rovnag Abdullayev, president of Azerbaijan’s national oil company SOCAR, and Rashid Javanshir, president of BP Azerbaijan.

The gas field has estimated reserves of 17,000 billion cubic feet, similar to the Shah Deniz gas field (also in Azerbaijan), in which BP has a 25.5 per cent stake.

In a reversal from 2010, the top 20 contract opportunities planned by US federal agencies for fiscal year 2011 are dominated by procurements out of defense agencies.

According to a new report, Top 20 Federal Contract Opportunities, published by market research firm INPUT, now owned by Deltek, more than 80 percent of the approximately $142 billion in total contract value for 2011 will be associated with defense agencies.

The Thompson Group of Companies has acquired Applied Instrument Technologies (AIT) from Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation, although financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed. AIT will be organized as a standalone company within The Thompson Group.

AIT manufactures and markets process analytical instruments including Analect FTIR, PIONIR Near-Infrared, MGA Mass Spectrometers, FXi Gas Chromatographs and RPM Raman analyzers, used by refining, petrochemical, chemical, pharmaceutical and steel industries to optimize their production processes.

Russian telecom giant Vimpelcom and Egypt’s Weather Investments have agreed to merge their assets, it has been announced.

The deal, worth $6.6 billion (£4.2 billion), will create the world’s fifth-largest mobile phone company, with combined subscriptions of more than 174 million. It will also give Vimpelcom, which has operations in many former Soviet republics, access to new markets in Africa and the Middle East.

The new company will operate in 20 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.

The Conference Board of Canada has released a less than conclusive report on BHP Billiton’s hostile $38.6-billion takeover bid for Saskatchewan’s PotashCorp.

The report indicates that there will be little short-term benefit to Canada in terms of jobs if the international mining conglomerate succeeds in its hostile bid for PotashCorp, and that the provincial government’s tax revenue could be hit by as much as C$2 billion over the next ten years.