13-05-08 Japanese engineering company JGC Corp. has started developing crude oil and natural gas fields in the United States, becoming the world's first major plant-engineering company to enter this field on its own.
JGC has acquired a 100 % interest in an oil and gas field in the US state of Louisiana and has succeeded in extracting 1,000 barrels of oil and gas a day -- enough for commercial production.

The company hopes to turn its resource exploration operations into a new source of profit, it said. JGC plans to raise daily production to 5,000 barrels in two to three years.
The investment is estimated to total about 10 bn yen ($ 95.5 mm), including the cost of acquiring the rights to the site and expenses for this year's test drilling, it said.
($ 1 = 104.76 yen)