Canada trade group lowers drilling forecast

Low natural gas prices and a shortage of skilled labour will limit the number of wells drilled in Canada this year, the trade group representing the country’s oilfield services companies said on Friday.

South Sudan oil shutdown near 'complete'

South Sudan's top negotiator said his country would complete an oil production shutdown by Saturday, after Sudan and South Sudan failed to agree on a deal to end an oil crisis.

ExxonMobil still keen on German shale

US supermajor ExxonMobil will continue to push for unconventional gas exploration in Germany alongside conventional gas production, despite scepticism over new drilling methods, its Europe chief said on Friday.

Magellan in Montana oil find

US junior Magellan Petroleum is producing oil from what the company calls a new pool discovery in the Amsden formation at the East Poplar Unit in Montana.

Petrobras director may step down

Petrobras exploration and production director Guilherme Estrella is to stand down in February, according to the website of Brazil’s O Globo newspaper, citing Brazilian mines and energy minister Edison Lobao.

Secret Windows 8 Weapon: Kinect Built Into Your Laptop

The Windows release of Kinect is coming up in a couple days, but for most people that won't be a major event: the Kinect they have is sitting on their TV or in a drawer, waiting to be taken out for an impromptu Dance Central 2 party. Of the 10 million Kinects out there, the only ones connected to computers are the ones being fiddled with by the various hackers and students making science projects out the things. But according to the Daily, Microsoft is hoping to remedy this particular situation by building Kinect sensors right into your laptops. TechCrunch alum Matt Hickey got to handle a pair of prototypes, which were confirmed to be official, not just one of the many experiments that hide within Microsoft's various lairs.

Twitter Puts Its DMCA Takedown Requests Up For All To See

Yesterday's announcement that Twitter would be selectively censoring tweets based on country was not well-received. But part of that announcement was the assurance that the process would at least be transparent. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. They also mentioned that they were working with Chilling Effects to make notices and orders sent to Twitter publicly available. At the time of the post yesterday, the site wasn't up yet, but you can now browse it at chillingeffects.org/twitter.

Y Combinator Names Seasoned Entrepreneur Geoff Ralston As Its Newest Partner

Y Combinator has just announced the newest partner to join the prestigious firm: Geoff Ralston. Ralston's previous credentials include founding Four11, which was acquired by Yahoo back in 1997 for $96 million and served as the foundation for Yahoo Mail. Ralston spent eight years at Yahoo, eventually becoming Yahoo's Chief Product Officer. Several years after leaving Yahoo he was named CEO of Lala, before it was acquired by Apple in 2009. Most recently he cofounded Imagine K12, a tech incubator for education-related startups, which presented at TechCrunch Disrupt SF (you can find the incubator's first batch of companies here). 

Gillmor Gang Live 01.27.12 (TCTV)

The Gillmor Gang - Danny Sullivan, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Doc Searls & Steve Gillmor - is recording live today at 1pm PT. Recording has concluded.

Flurry: Amazon’s Kindle Fire Is Already Starting To Smoke Samsung’s Galaxy Tab

Wuh oh, Samsung — better watch your tail. While Apple might not be seeing any impact (be it positive or negative) on iPad sales from the launch of the Kindle Fire, Samsung's Galaxy Tab ought to be feeling the heat. Tapping into the data provided by their app analytics platform (which they estimate has found its way onto around 90% of the Android devices out there), Flurry highlights a few surprising numbers.