There is no project that is too small or big for a company like Texas Allied Petroleum. When it begun in 2005, TAP operated in the sidelines, taking its time as it worked on gaining a feel of how the oil industry operated in general and how it may affect company operations. TAP also displayed early on a unique but effective combination of bold and conservative taking. Few can match this unique strategy of the company, which allowed TAP to produce more than half a million cubic feet of oil every day. As production rates of many local oil producers continue to shrink, those of TAP only goes higher and higher.

There are several reasons why Texas Allied Petroleum is able to continue to ride high on its success while others continue to sink. For one thing, the oil business is very much dependent on human resources. Although equipment and machineries do most of the work, they still have to be operated by highly skilled, qualified, and experienced individuals. If an oil company is unable to treat his workers right, they are likely to look for employment opportunities elsewhere sooner or later. In the end, the company will only have unqualified individuals on the job and that could eventually lead to its shutdown.

Such a thing will never happen to the likes of Texas Allied Petroleum, though. Although most of the articles about the company online are about the many projects it has as well as status updates on those fields, there are also a few that talk about how great it is to work for a company like TAP. The company is the best place to work for if one is looking for excitement and challenge – the type that can completely transform prospects and leads to actual resources they can tap into.

Texas Allied Petroleum today is waiting for many of its projects to reach completion date. All of them are likely to be fully operational this year and lead to a significant increase in the company’s rate of oil production. The most promising sites so far is the Coffee, County Kanasa well that’s 2,200 feet deep.

Bush

Consultant

financing that can provide detailed information about the current difficulties of the loan will be useful for most entrepreneurs, but experts in the field of trade finance are not always easy to find. Without adequate information about what needs to be done in order to obtain loans to small businesses in these extreme circumstances, business borrowers are legal frustrated and confused. Due to these difficult conditions, corporate finance, trade finance and working capital finance effective councils has become a scarce and precious.

Stephen Bush is a cash advance companies and small business loan experts who advise entrepreneurs frank provided 30 years => AEX Working Capital and programs for commercial loans – http://aexcommercialfinancing.com

Search-and-rescue efforts recovered more bodies in hard-hit areas across a broad swath of the northeastern coast of Japan’s main island on Tuesday.

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Reuters

Japanese Self Defense Forces searched for victims Monday in the tsunami-racked Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan.

Meanwhile, the nation’s humanitarian and nuclear crisis appeared to take a turn for the worse four days after a historic earthquake rocked the archipelago and shut down the world’s third-largest economy.

The latest figures from Japan’s National Police Agency showed some 2,414 people confirmed dead and 3,118 others missing.

Those numbers are expected to rise as aid workers reach more devastated areas.

Rescue workers struggled to get food and water to Japan’s ravaged northern communities on Monday as the impact of Friday’s quake continued to ripple throughout the nation.

It raised new fears about its nuclear facilities, shaking its financial markets and bringing big chunks of its economy to a halt.

The U.S. Geological Survey updated the magnitude of the earthquake to 9.0 from 8.9, which it said made the quake Japan’s largest since modern recordings began 130 years ago.

National broadcaster NHK reported that more than 450,000 people had moved to temporary shelters in the affected areas.

The death toll in Japan climbed Monday as rescues scrambled to help survivors and more than a half a million people sought temporary shelters and food aid. Meanwhile, the risk of a nuclear meltdown is rising. Eduardo Kaplan has the latest details.

Ruined Homes and Radiation

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Reuters

Emiko Ohta, 52, can’t bear to look at the debris that was her home in Kuji, Iwate prefecture.

A day after sowing widespread confusion by announcing—and then postponing—rolling blackouts in Tokyo and other parts of eastern Japan to conserve energy, Tokyo Electric Power Co. started the planned power outages on Tuesday morning in bedroom communities in greater Tokyo.

A second round of blackouts in other areas was set to begin later Tuesday morning.

The lack of planning was apparent in the haphazard manner in which the power outages were carried out.

The blackouts were total—even critical infrastructure such as hospitals and traffic lights weren’t spared. Many communities seemed unable to dispatch enough police or other authorities to direct traffic.

In the town of Ageo in Saitama Prefecture, live footage of major intersections taken by helicopter and broadcast on Japanese television depicted chaotic scenes during the Tuesday morning rush hour.

With no traffic lights or police to direct vehicles, large trucks and buses awkwardly alternated the right of way at a major transportation artery with groups of passenger cars, pedestrians and people on bicycles.

East Japan Railway Co. and other railway companies operated more trains in the Tokyo area than they did Monday. However, services remained well below normal levels.

Investors in Japanese markets registered their waning confidence in the Japanese economy’s ability to bounce back from the disaster.

The Nikkei Stock Average dropped 6.5% in Tuesday’s morning session.

Then, following the comments from Prime Minister Naoto Kan during the break on radiation risks, stocks plunged further. By midafternoon, the average was down 14% at 8236.95.

Rescue workers, meanwhile, tried to bring supplies to thousands of residents of towns along the northeastern coast of Japan that were among the worst-hit communities.

Survivors told the nation via television that they didn’t have power and were running out of food and water.

People atop one building had written a huge character for “water” on the roof, so it could be seen by rescue helicopters.

Information on the progress of relief efforts was sketchy.

A spokesman for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces said they were in charge only of distributing food and water to regional supply points.

He added that they didn’t know how much had reached needy communities since regional governments were supposed to take the supplies from there.

Miyoko Sugiyama, who lived a few blocks from the beach near the hard-hit city of Sendai, said she was happy to escape with her husband and 14-year-old dog.

“There were 2,700 homes” in her neighborhood, she said. “Now there are only a few left.”

U.S. military forces, meanwhile, continued to amass in and around Japan as part of Operation Tomodachi (which means “friend” in Japanese), with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard three ships moving up through the Philippine Sea and toward the coast of mainland Japan. The U.S. armed forces–including the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps—have been engaged in search-and-rescue operations and resupply missions in cooperation with Japanese civilian and military relief efforts.

The 2,200 Marines and sailors of the 31st MEU, who are due to arrive Wednesday, will support elements of the Marine Expeditionary Force that already have been deployed.

“We are repositioning to be ready to support to our Japanese partners,” Col. Andrew MacMannis, commanding officer of the 31st MEU said early Tuesday. “We stand ready to help our partners in need as they work tirelessly to respond to this evolving crisis.”

Megumi Fujikawa, Kana Inagaki and Miho Inada contributed to this article.

Write to Kazuhiro Shimamura at kazuhiro.shimamura@dowjones.com

Asian shares tumbled Tuesday as Tokyo’s stock benchmark plunged 10.6% on panic selling amid worries that a possible nuclear catastrophe in Japan would further complicate and endanger the nation’s recovery from its worst earthquake on record.

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Associated Press

A photographer takes a photo of a stock price board in a street Tuesday, March 15, 2011 in Tokyo, Japan.

The Nikkei Stock Average finished 10.6% lower at 8,605.15 after sliding more than 14% earlier in the day, pressured by news of explosions at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s No. 2 and No. 4 reactors, on top of previous blasts at the Nos. 1 and 3 reactors.

Coming on top of a 6.2% fall Monday, the performance is the Nikkei’s worst since its Oct. 16, 2008, drop of 11.4%, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

“What the world is watching right now is whether Tepco’s Fukushima nuclear power plant is going to turn into Chernobyl,” said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, referring to the world’s worst nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 in present-day Ukraine.

Investor wealth of $364 billion—9.4% of the Tokyo stock exchange’s market capitalization—was wiped out during the session after Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said there is a high risk of elevated radiation levels from the nuclear reactors and urged people within 30 kilometers (about 20 miles) of the plant to stay indoors. The Tokyo metropolitan government said radiation levels in the capital surged to 23 times the normal level Tuesday.

Ranking among the major losers in Tokyo, shares of Tokyo Electric Power Co. dropped 24.7%, Toshiba Corp. fell 19.5% and Fast Retailing Co. shed 17.5%.

In the futures market, the Nikkei June contract fell 820 points to close at 8,640 on the Osaka Securities Exchange, where circuit breakers were triggered during the session, prompting a temporary trading halt.

The hefty losses in Tokyo also drove declines in other Asian markets, raising concerns about a wider global market fallout.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index tumbled 2.9%, China’s Shanghai Composite lost 1.4%, Australia’s SP/ASX 200 shed 2.1%, Taiwan’s Taiex skidded 3.4% and South Korea’s Kospi gave up 2.4%, while India’s Sensex fell 0.7% in afternoon trading.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures slumped 167 points in screen trade.

In commodities trading, April crude-oil prices shed $1.95 to $99.22 a barrel, while spot gold was at $1,415.10, down $13.70 a troy ounce.

“[The nuclear developments are] still unfolding as we trade the market,” said Ben Collett, head of Japanese equities at Louis Capital Markets. “With a 12% down-move on the Nikkei, you’ve got to sell not just the Nikkei but also the SP” and other global markets, unless there is a Japanese government-coordinated move to support markets, he said.

Other analysts said the impact on global markets was likely to be more subdued and that the fall in Tokyo stocks this week presented a buying opportunity.

“How many times in a lifetime do you see a major market drop nearly 20% in two days? Professional investors should and will look at buying opportunities at this point,” said Uwe Parpart, chief economist and Asia strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Figuring among the major stock movers in the region were Chinese coal and gold miners, which retreated, tracking a fall in global oil and gold prices. China Shenhua Energy Co. dropped 2.7% and Zijin Mining Group Co. lost 3.8% in Shanghai; in Hong Kong, they gave up 2% and 3.4%, respectively.

“There is panic selling in the A-share market [in Shanghai] as investors are fretting over the reactor leaks in Japan, and further downside is likely to depend on whether the leaks in Japan can be placed under control,” said Tang Yonggang, an analyst from Hong Yuan Securities.

Shares of Ping An Insurance Group Co. of China sank 6.1% in Hong Kong on the insurer’s plan to raise $2.5 billion from a private placement.

In Sydney, shares of uranium miners and explorers extended Monday’s falls, with Energy Resources of Australia Ltd. sliding 14.3% and Paladin Energy Ltd. shedding 17.5%.

Several steel and refining stocks that had risen the previous day also retreated amid worries about the scale of Japan’s nuclear problems.

Posco fell 3.5% and S-Oil Corp. dropped 0.7% in Seoul, Bluescope Steel Ltd. declined 5.8% in Sydney, Tata Steel Ltd. slid 1.1% and Indian Oil Corp. shed 1.3% in Mumbai trade.

China Petroleum Chemical Corp. shed 2.3% in Hong Kong and 1.6% in Shanghai.

Elsewhere in the region, New Zealand’s NZX 50 gave up 1.4% and Philippine shares lost 0.6%. In afternoon trade, Singapore’s Straits Times Index gave up 2.6%, Thailand’s SET stumbled 2% and Indonesian shares retreated 1.8%.

Foreign-exchange markets saw choppy trade as Prime Minister Kan’s comments sparked a wave of selling in riskier currencies such as the Australian dollar.

The U.S. dollar dropped to a low of 81.21 yen before bouncing and was last at 81.53 yen, compared with 81.62 yen in late New York trade Monday. The euro was at 113.56 yen from 114.22 yen, and at $1.3927 from $1.3993.

The Australian dollar tumbled to 99.45 cents from its intra-day high of $1.0095.

There was also heavy selling in the Singapore dollar, the Indian rupee, the Korean won and the New Zealand dollar.

Write to V. Phani Kumar at phani.kumar@dowjones.com and Colin Ng at colin.ng@dowjones.com

Japan’s nuclear-power crisis is reviving long-held doubts about the strength of the nation’s nuclear regulatory system and its independence from government efforts to sell nuclear technology abroad.

There aren’t indications that any government regulatory failures contributed to the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi complex in northeastern Japan, where government and industry officials are battling to keep three of the six nuclear reactors from overheating and releasing dangerous levels of radioactivity.

The health of the badly damaged nuclear plant in Japan is deteriorating by the hour. Video courtesy of Reuters

However, the woes there put a spotlight on Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which oversees design and regulation of Japan’s nuclear plants.

It also highlights past problems with falsified safety records at the Fukushima Daiichi plant and with its parent company, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, though there is no evidence those prior problems are adding to the current problems.

The Japanese nuclear safety agency, known as NISA, is part of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The larger ministry, known as METI, has in recent months revved up a push to help Japanese power companies, including Tepco, win deals to build nuclear reactors abroad.

A METI statement issued by ministry spokesman Tatsuji Narita says Japan maintains a healthy regulatory environment through a redundant, second agency attached to the Cabinet named the National Safety Commission. That agency reviews METI’s nuclear-regulation efforts with a focus on safety.

“Japan maintains the independence of its nuclear regulatory agencies through this redundant ‘double-check’ system,” the statement said.

In August, Masayuki Naoshima, then Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, led a delegation to Vietnam to promote the sale of nuclear power plants to the Southeast Asian country for the second phase of its atomic power project. The delegation included Tepco Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, as part of a group of Japanese power companies that banded together to win contracts in the face of rising competition from companies in South Korea and Russia, among other places.

Japan will likely win a contract to build Vietnam’s second nuclear power plant, following a joint statement late last year by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan saying that “Vietnam confirms that the Vietnamese government chooses Japan as a cooperation partner to build two nuclear reactors.”

Tepco couldn’t be reached to comment.

In the U.S., the previous nuclear-energy regulator, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, came under attack in the 1970s, accused by members of Congress of being unwilling to stand up to the commercial nuclear industry because it was supposed to promote the nuclear industry even as it assured public safety.

Confusion and panic levels are rising across Japan following another blast and fire in Fukushima. WSJ’s Mariko Sanchanta and Yumiko Ono separate fact from fiction in the latest nuclear reports.

In 1975, a new independent agency was created, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which was charged with overseeing safety issues. A newly formed Department of Energy was to guide research and grant monetary support to the sector.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has a black mark on its record from earlier in the last decade, when a scandal involving falsified safety records led to parent company Tepco briefly shutting down its entire nuclear fleet in Japan. In 2002, Tepco admitted to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency that it had falsified the results of safety tests on the containment vessel of the No. 1 reactor, which is now one of three reactors that workers are struggling to keep from overheating. The test took place in 1991-1992.

The scandal was the latest in a string of nuclear safety records cover-ups by Tepco, including the revelation that the company’s doctoring of safety records concerning reactor shrouds, a part of the reactors themselves, in the 1980s through the early 1990s. Five top executives resigned after the company admitted to having falsified safety.

In 2003, Tepco shut down all of its nuclear reactors for inspections, acknowledging the systematic cover-up of inspection data showing cracks in reactors.

Japanese regulators already have some credibility issues after previous episodes in which the strength of the response was called into question.

In Japan in 1999, an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction at a uranium-reprocessing plant killed two employees and spewed radioactive neutrons over the countryside. Government officials later said safety equipment at the plant was missing and the people involved lacked training, adding that their assessment of the accident’s seriousness was “inadequate.”

In 2007, an earthquake heavily damaged Tepco’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. The company initially said there was no release of radiation, but admitted later that the quake released radiation and spilled radioactive water into the Sea of Japan.

“The Japanese government is saying that the containment’s OK, but that belies belief when you see the violence of the explosion,” said John Large, a nuclear consultant, referring to the current troubles at the plant. He added, “Understandably, they do not want to panic their population.”

The recent problems have prompted new rounds of warnings from anti-nuclear groups. “A nuclear disaster which the promoters of nuclear power in Japan said wouldn’t happen is in progress,” the Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center said in a statement on its website. “It is occurring as a result of an earthquake that they said would not happen.”

—Alison Tudor

and Dionne Searcey contributed to this article.

Japan’s unfolding nuclear-power crisis deepened Monday, with a new explosion and accelerated overheating at one reactor in Fukushima and the start of cooling troubles at another.

The explosion took place Monday morning at the No. 3 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, the same place where a failure to cool overheated fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor resulted in a similar blast on Saturday. That explosion also damaged a pump used to bring in sea water for added cooling, the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said at a briefing Monday evening. The agency said the fuel rods …

Daniel Mudd, the former chief executive of Fannie Mae, said he has received a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the latest clue that federal investigators have expanded their years-long probe into the troubled mortgage finance giant.

Mr. Mudd, now the head of Fortress Investment Group LLC, said in a statement provided to Bloomberg News that he had received the formal notification from the SEC that it plans to pursue civil claims against him. The development was first reported by Bloomberg News.

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Reuters

Former President and CEO of Fannie Mae Daniel Mudd testifies during the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 9, 2010.

Mr. Mudd took the helm of Fannie in 2004 in the midst of an accounting scandal and oversaw its financial-reporting restatement with the SEC. He was sacked by the government when it took control of the mortgage firm in 2008 and agreed to inject unlimited sums as ballooning loan losses wiped away thin capital reserves. In August 2009, he became CEO of Fortress, the New York-based hedge fund.

A Wells notice indicates that the SEC staff is preparing to recommend civil enforcement actions and gives individuals the opportunity to persuade regulators against such an action.

Mr. Mudd plans to submit a written response, he said in the statement provided to Bloomberg. The disclosures under investigation by the SEC were “accurate and complete,” had been previewed by federal regulators and “have been issued in the same form since the company went into government conservatorship,” the statement said. Mr. Mudd declined to elaborate.

The notification is the latest clue that the SEC is deepening its investigation into Fannie Mae and its sibling, Freddie Mac. Both companies have previously disclosed that federal prosecutors and the SEC were conducting investigations into potential violations of federal securities laws.

Mr. Mudd is the highest-ranking official to have disclosed receiving such scrutiny. Last month, the SEC filed a similar notification to one current Freddie Mac executive and at least one former Freddie Mac executive related to unspecified “disclosure matters.”

Donald J. Bisenius, a 19-year veteran of Freddie who currently serves as the executive vice president in charge of the firm’s single-family credit guarantee business, will leave Freddie on April 1. Anthony “Buddy” Piszel served as Freddie Mac’s chief financial officer until the government takeover in 2008, and he resigned a similar position at CoreLogic Inc. last month.

Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com

While all eyes are trained on Japan’s effort to overcome its biggest earthquake on record and the radiation threat from a damaged nuclear plant, some investors are raising eyebrows over the yen’s recent strength.

On Friday the Japanese currency appreciated sharply against the dollar after the massive earthquake sparked speculation that companies from the world’s third-biggest economy could start shifting funds back home from the U.S. and elsewhere to help pay to rebuild — something that happened after Japan’s last major earthquake in 1995.

But this knee-jerk response may prove short-lived, several investors and analysts say.

For starters, worries are …

A huge relief effort continued Sunday in earthquake-ravaged northern Japan as tens of thousands of Self-Defense Forces searched desperately for survivors while more bodies were recovered and concerns rose about a radiation leak at a nuclear power facility in the country.

More than 200,000 Japanese have been moved to relief shelters and millions of homes remain without power and water after the country’s most powerful quake ever struck on Friday.

The National Police Agency said the death toll from the disaster as of midday Sunday in Japan was 801, with 678 missing. There were various reports of discoveries of more …