Posts on ‘December 27th, 2006’

EXTRACT: Shell has just discovered that quirky can swiftly become impossible. Last week’s agreement to sell control of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project to Russian state-controlled Gazprom will have felt like a body blow. And yet, squeezed by environmental complaints which as good as disappeared the minute the deal was concluded, Shell apparently had [...]

Thursday, December 28, 2006. Issue 3569. Page 6.   The Prosecutor General’s Office has made it clear that it’s not pleased with the work of Federal Subsoil Resource Use Agency head Anatoly Ledovskikh, saying that it is not preventing the infringement of environmental regulations. It says that the agency should use its powers more often [...]

Crude-oil futures fell to a one-month low of nearly $60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as warm seasonal weather in the U.S. Northeast showed no signs of letting up, damping winter demand for heating oil. Here is Wednesday’s roundup of oil and energy news: * * * CHINA SUBSIDIZES SINOPEC AGAIN: Underscoring [...]

Posted by Peter Lattman December 27, 2006, 3:42 pm Royal Dutch Shell announced today that it has hired former Interior Secretary Gale Norton as an in-house lawyer. Norton, who stepped down from her White House post in March, will be based primarily out of Colorado, where she served as the state’s attorney general from 1991 [...]

Tehran Iran has repeated threats that it was ready to use its massive oil exports as a weapon to defend itself if it felt necessary in an international dispute over its atomic programme, the semi-official Fars news agency said. ‘If necessary, Iran will use any weapon to defend itself,’ said Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh. The [...]

By Yuriy Humber Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) – OAO Gazprom, Russia’s natural-gas export monopoly, will pay Royal Dutch Shell Plc and two Japanese companies $7.45 billion in cash by April for half of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project off Russia’s east coast, Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev said. The payments will be made by [...]

Don’t be fooled by oil and car companies’attempts to appear green. They are still a major obstacle to tackling climate change, warns George Monbiot 27 December 2006 IF YOU were the chief executive of an oil company hoping to defend your business against environmental campaigners, there are several ways you might go about it. The [...]

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published December 27, 2006 www.washingtontimes.com   Seemingly unrelated events of last week suggest considerable trouble ahead for U.S. vital interests. As President Bush puts the finishing touches on his plans for a new strategy for waging the War for the Free World, he had best make sure [...]

12.27.06, 7:44 AM ET   LONDON (AFX) – Royal Dutch Shell PLC (nyse: RDSA – news – people ) has assured its operations in Nigeria were not affected by the explosion of an oil pipeline in Lagos that killed over 200 people. ‘It’s not our pipeline. (The blast) has not affected our operations at all,’ [...]

EXTRACT: Gaffney’s targets include Royal Dutch Shell, the multinational oil conglomerate. It has extensive holdings in the key Iranian offshore oil fields Soroush and Nowruz, where its investments have been pivotal in raising oil output by 190,000 barrels per day – about an 8 percent increase in total Iranian output. (In October, Shell diversified its [...]

(“Thank you very much for your support,” Shell’s chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, told President Vladimir V. Putin) December 27, 2006 Memo From Moscow By STEVEN LEE MYERS MOSCOW, Dec. 26 — Inside the Kremlin last week, the executives of three major international companies — Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsubishi and Mitsui — heaped praise [...]

December 27, 2006 Tony Halpin: Analysis Vladimir Putin is entitled to take immense satisfaction from 2006. The year opened with Russia cast as the great gas ogre, embroiled in a bruising “cold war” over supplies to Ukraine that also threatened to dim the lights from Poznan to Paris. As 2006 closes, the state monopoly Gazprom [...]

COMMENT FROM breakingviews  December 27, 2006 The Russian airbrush is back. In Soviet times, it was normally used to remove a “nonperson” from a photograph and so create a more politically convenient version of reality. Now it’s being used to airbrush someone in. That, in essence, is the deal that Gazprom has just struck with [...]

By JAMES HERRON and LANANH NGUYEN December 27, 2006 Despite being one of the most heavily explored and exploited hydrocarbon basins in the world, energy-industry observers say the United Kingdom’s long-developed North Sea has riches to be extracted. In many cases, it is small independent oil and natural-gas companies that are proving them right. Taking [...]

EXTRACT: It hasn’t stopped Russia from targeting its Khariaga project with the same sort of “environmental” complaints that saw Shell driven out of the country last week. THE ARTICLE BUSINESS WORLD By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.   December 27, 2006; Page A9 The coming year is likely to be a case of good news/bad news for [...]