June 23rd, 2006:

From MarketWatch
Last Update: 3:40 PM ET Jun 23, 2006

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Amicus, one of the U.K.’s largest trade unions, is calling for a public review of Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s (RDSA) U.K. North Sea oil platforms after new allegations over safety surfaced this week, a union official said Friday.

A Shell spokeswoman on Friday denied reports that the company had compromised safety to pursue higher production at the facilities.

But Graham Tran, a regional officer at Amicus who represent oil workers, said “we are calling for an independent government review” on the conclusions of a 1999 report in which senior engineer Bill Campbell, at the time a consultant for Shell, warned safety measures had been overlooked. read more

From Forbes/PRNewswire 

HOUSTON, June 22 /PRNewswire/ — Shell Oil Products US, the marketer of the No. 1-selling gasoline brand in America, launched a $30 million marketing campaign on June 19 to communicate that all gasolines are not the same.

The summer campaign builds on the company’s commitment to provide high quality fuel to consumers by touting that Shell gasolines exceed government standards as well as meet standards introduced by top automakers. The standard, to which the campaign alludes, is the voluntary TOP TIER Detergent Gasoline standard introduced by BMW, GM, Honda and Toyota. read more

From Forbes/AFX News Limited
 
06.23.2006

LONDON (AFX) – Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC has rejected claims by one of its former engineers that safety standards at its North Sea operations are lax.

‘Safety is Shell’s foremost priority at all times and we absolutely reject any suggestion that we would compromise safety offshore,’ a Shell spokesperson said.

The Times and the Guardian today reported claims by former Shell engineer Bill Campbell that the group failed to respond adequately to a 1999 review which warned that safety procedures were not being properly enforced at its North Sea platforms. read more

From Monsters and Critics.com
Jun 23, 2006, 14:39 GMT

Major oil firm Shell has failed to maintain its North Sea oil rigs as safely as they should have been, media reports have quoted a senior official within the company as saying.

Both the Times and the Guardian quote Bill Campbell, an ex-engineer for Shell who performed an audit of the company’s safety features in 1999, as claiming that senior Shell managers summed health and safety policy as the acronym TFA – Touch F*** All.

He alleges that the TFA philosophy encouraged a culture of non-compliance with health and safety regulations, which were covered up by the wilful falsification of regulatory documents relating to safety. read more

FROM REUTERS

Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:07am ET
By Tom Bergin

LONDON, June 23 (Reuters) – Oil workers’ unions have demanded a safety investigation of Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) facilities in the North Sea, following allegations Shell deferred maintenance and falsified maintenance reports.

The Oil Industry Liaison Committee (OILC) and Amicus, trade unions that represent offshore workers, said Shell’s shortcomings showed the need for tougher regulation in the mature oil province — which could boost costs for operators. read more

From www.kommersant.com

June 23, 2006

Gazprom is ready to part with its sole field in Sakhalin, the Lopukhovky area, the license for which exploration was obtained along with Sibneft (today’s Gazprom Neft). But Gazprom may think better of the area, if it joins Sakhalin-2 project by swapping assets with Shell. In any case, Lopukhovsky is an asset of low efficiency with no promising future, the branch analysts speculate.

Gazprom Neft is deciding whether to dispose of Lopukhovsky area, Sakhalin shelf (between Sakhalin-4 and Sakhalin-5), the company’s president Alexander Ryazanov announced yesterday. read more

Daily Mail: 23 June 2006

CITY & FINANCE
Telephone: 0207938 6000
Web: www.thisismoney.co.uk

By Brian O’Connor

Shell shocker: The group ‘strongly refutes’ the allegations about the North Sea field: ‘We accept there is still much to do’

OIL giant Shell ignored safety warnings on its key Brent Held in the North Sea, according to one of its former auditors.

He claims that over many years,’ top executives put safety second to meeting output targets.

Shell’s Expro arm allegedly sanctioned a policy known as TPA (Touch **** All), stopping any work that might interrupt production. read more

Forbes/AFX News Limited
06.23.2006

LONDON (AFX) – Royal Dutch Shell PLC is facing calls by North Sea oil and gas unions for a government inquiry into its safety record after an internal audit found widespread violations of safety procedures and the alleged falsification of compliance documents, according to the Times.

The claims were made by Bill Campbell, a former senior Shell engineer, and reported in the Times and the Guardian.

He told the Guardian that he brought his concerns to the attention of directors as far back as 1999, and again in 2004, but still feels safety is compromised, so has decided to go public. read more

From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By RENYA PENG
June 23, 2006

BEIJING — Saudi Arabian Oil Co. is in talks with China Petrochemical Corp., or Sinopec, to gain access to China’s wholesale oil-products market, which the government will open to foreign investment at the end of this year, a Sinopec official said.

In exchange, Sinopec, China’s largest refiner and retailer by volume, is seeking to build a refinery in Saudi Arabia with an annual processing capacity of as much as 12 million metric tons, the official said in an interview. read more

From The Times

By Carl Mortished, International Business Editor
June 23, 2006 

NORTH SEA oil and gas unions are calling for a government investigation into Shell’s North Sea safety record after revelations that an internal audit found widespread violations of safety procedures and the alleged falsification of compliance documents.

The unions, including OILC and Amicus, want the Department of Trade and Industry to examine Shell’s licence to operate in the light of allegations made by Bill Campbell, a former senior Shell engineer, that Shell allowed the pursuit of greater oil and gas production to compromise safety. 
 
Mr Campbell, who led a Platform Safety Maintenance Review (PSMR) of Shell’s North Sea facilities in 1999, said that managers at the vast Brent complex were instructed not to take any action that might cause an unplanned shutdown of production. read more

From The Times
By Carl Mortished, International Business Editor
June 23, 2006
 
WHEN Shell dispatched Bill Campbell from The Hague to Aberdeen in 1999 to lead a safety audit of its North Sea platforms, the entire oil industry was in financial crisis. The price of crude had plummeted to $10 per barrel, below the cost of production, but Shell had an important money-spinner in Brent, a vast complex of offshore installations dating from the 1970s. 
 
Brent’s oil was depleting rapidly but Shell had a lucrative gas contract and the company had transformed the ageing Brent field into a major gas producer, delivering about a third of the nation’s supply. read more

From BEIJING (XFN-ASIA)

Shell Global Solutions said it has provided oil refining technologies to Dalian Petrochemical Refinery, a unit of PetroChina Co Ltd, enabling the refinery to increase capacity.

In a statement to XFN-Asia, the Shell unit said it helped upgrade the Dalian refinery with a 10 mln ton per year expansion.

After the upgrade, the Dalian Petrochemical refinery increased annual production capacity to 20.5 mln tons, making it the largest refiner in China, the statement said.

Shell said it used its crude oil distillation and deep-flash vacuum distillation technologies in its first project for refinery design work and technical services in China. read more

From The Moscow Times

ISTANBUL — LUKoil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell are among the companies interested in joining a project to build a $1.5 billion pipeline across Turkey that aims to speed up the flow of oil to world markets, oil executives said.

The Trans-Anatolian Pipeline, due to open in 2010, should relieve shipping traffic in the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, said Ahmet Calik, chairman of Turkey’s Calik Holding, partner with Italy’s Eni in the project. (Bloomberg)

From The Moscow Times

Gazprom is considering inviting Japan’s Mitsui and Mitsubishi as equity partners in its liquefied natural gas project on the Baltic Sea, Gazprom said Thursday. Gazprom has previously said it might build the plant together with Canada’s PetroCanada.

The deal with the two Japanese firms may unlock a stalled negotiation between Gazprom and Royal Dutch Shell over Gazprom’s plan to take 25 percent of the Shell-led Sakhalin Energy project.

Shell and Gazprom have an agreement in principle to allow Gazprom into the Sakhalin project by means of a swap deal. In return for the stake, Shell would get the deep deposits of Gazprom’s huge Zapolyarnoye field. (Reuters) read more

From The Moscow Times
Friday, June 23, 2006. Issue 3438. Page 7.
By Anna Smolchenko
Staff Writer  
 
Imagine the public reaction if a terrorist attack killed 100 people and injured another 800. Then imagine a similar mayhem happening every day.

“That’s exactly what’s happening on the roads” in car accidents across Russia, said Max Mosley, president of the International Automobile Federation.

Yet, there is virtually no public reaction and little action beyond government rhetoric on the issue, he said. “Why is the political will missing?” read more