The EU Commission has intervened in construction of the South Stream gas pipeline on the grounds that deals signed between Russia’s Gazprom and seven European countries violate an EU law forbidding a company from acting as both pipeline operator and monopoly gas supplier. The EU energy commissioner will go to Moscow next month for talks with the Kremlin. The pipeline will feed gas to Europe from Russia via the Black Sea, Bulgaria and Serbia. [Natural Gas Europe]

With pipeline and processing infrastructure additions lagging, Norway’s Statoil is looking for alternative uses of natural gas production from the Bakken shale that might otherwise be flared. These include a project with GE to compress and store gas in something called CNG – or compressed natural gas – in a box, which would allow for the use of methane as vehicle or rig fuel. [New York Times]

A former BP engineer has been convicted of obstruction of justice for deleting text messages to hide them from an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon incident and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. “He could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced on March 26.” [Houston Business Journal]