Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to CONSOL Energy and CNX Gas First Quarter Earnings Conference call. As a reminder today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Dan Zajdel. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, John and welcome to our joint earnings call today with CONSOL Energy and CNX Gas. With me this morning is Brett Harvey, Chief Executive Officer of CONSOL Energy and Chairman and CEO of CNX Gas. Also with us today are Bill Lyons, Chief Financial Officer, Nick DeIuliis, Chief Operator Officer and Bob Pusateri, President of Sales. This morning we will be discussing the first quarter results for both companies. In addition we will be discussing our outlook for the remainder of 2010. [Read the full article]

Oil service firms were in focus earlier this year when President Obama announced that he was lifting a ban on expanded offshore oil and gas drilling on parts of the Atlantic coast. However, recent developments have thrown a wrench into these plans, as a number of government organizations and private sector firms race to avoid a disaster in the Gulf Coast region. On April 20th, a Transocean rig called the Deepwater Horizon caught fire and exploded, presumably killing as many as 11 people. After burning for close to two days, the rig sunk on the 22nd, setting off the next phase of the crisis (see the full timeline here) . Earlier this week officials noticed that the rig was beginning to leak oil, and it has continued to do so since the incident was first discovered. Now officials estimate that the spill covers some 600 square miles off of the Louisiana coast and has recently started to come ashore on Louisiana marshlands. [Read the full article]

Samson Oil & Gas Limited (ASX: SSN - News) (NYSE AMEX: SSN) today announced that it has received binding commitments for a placement of 123,529,412 fully paid ordinary shares at a price of A$0.034 cents per share to raise A$4,200,000 before costs. Patersons Securities Limited (“Patersons”) acted as Lead Manager to the placement. The issue was heavily over subscribed during the book build process which was conducted during a trading halt in its ordinary shares on the Australian Securities Exchange and in its American Depositary Shares on the NYSE AMEX LLC.

The placement was made pursuant to Section 708 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and in accordance with Listing Rule 7.1 of the ASX Listing Rules.

Funds raised by the placement will be used to fund a drilling program on the Company's properties in the U.S. and to provide general working capital. [Read the full article]