Posts on ‘December 29th, 2006’

By Stephen Voss and Torrey Clark Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company by market value, will cut its proven oil and gas reserves by more than 4 percent when it gives up half its stake in Russia’s Sakhalin-2 venture, analysts said. The equity transfer to state-run Russian energy company [...]

By Jim Polson Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) — Centurion Energy International Inc., the Canadian oil and gas producer that’s being acquired by a United Arab Emirates-based energy company, announced the termination of plans by Royal Dutch Shell Plc to help it explore for natural gas in Egypt’s Nile Delta. The two companies mutually agreed to end [...]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — FreeEnterpriser.com today announced the “Five Worst CEOs of 2006″ — a review of the worst CEOs of the year. “Despite this year’s bull market, 2006 was a banner year for CEOs who are undermining free enterprise, free markets and capitalism,” said Tom Borelli, editor of FreeEnterpriser.com. “Instead of relying on [...]

Published: Dec 28, 2006 SAKHALIN II PSA: EXTRACT: ‘Delyagin alleged that the deal was murky and could discredit Shell if investigated properly. ‘ The director of the Moscow-based Institute of Problems of Globalization, Mikhail Delyagin, has sharply criticized Gazprom’s decision to raise the price for Russian gas exported to Belarus 4.3-fold from 1 January 2007. [...]

Published: Dec 28, 2006 Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced Thursday that one of its Brazilian offshore oil fields is commercially viable and that two deep-water areas of the block have been identified for development. Europe’s second-largest oil company did not say when production would begin in the BS-4 block or offer yield estimates, but the [...]

By: DAN CATERINICCHIA, Published: Dec 28, 2006 The kidnappings and armed attacks plaguing oil companies operating in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger delta are among the top security challenges U.S. businesses are likely to face in 2007, a State Department official said Thursday. “We’re keeping our eye on Nigeria right now,” Doug Allison, a special agent with [...]

EXTRACT: After the recent tensions over the Sakhalin development between Shell and Gazprom, there were doubts about whether Russia would be willing to develop stable relationships with foreign investors, a fear that was dismissed by Stephen O’Sullivan of Deutsche Bank in Moscow, who has followed the battle closely. The scale of pressure on Shell developed [...]

Published: Dec 29, 2006 Shell has hired the former US interior secretary Gale Norton as general counsel for its “unconventional resources” division. Ms Norton will provide and co-ordinate legal services for the division, which develops technology to get oil from sources such as oil shale.

By Barney Jopson Published: December 29 2006 02:00 | Last updated: December 29 2006 02:00 The average size of fines doled out by the City watchdog dropped in 2006, but the total number of penalties edged up from the previous year. The Financial Services Authority collected just over �13m in fines from 25 cases this [...]

By Chris Hughes Published: December 29 2006 02:00 | Last updated: December 29 2006 02:00 Sakhalin throws up a fresh disappointment Shell suffered a blow when it was forced to surrender control of Russia’s Sakhalin-2 oil field to state-backed Gazprom last week. Now the Anglo-Dutch oil group faces fresh embarrassment in defeat. To re-cap, Shell [...]

By Arkady Ostrovsky in Moscow and Ed Crooks in London Published: December 28 2006 18:44 | Last updated: December 28 2006 18:44 Royal Dutch Shell and its two Japanese partners are to be made to share the burden of the huge cost overruns of Sakhalin-2, it emerged on Thursday, in news that cast a less [...]

Last Updated: 1:34am GMT 29/12/2006 � Centrica, the UK’s biggest energy supplier, said four employees were among six people who died in a helicopter crash this week in the Irish Sea, in Morecambe Bay off the coast of north-west England. � Gazprom, Russia’s natural-gas export monopoly, is in talks with Belarus to avoid a possible [...]

(Paying the cost overruns, part of a secret protocol, will allow spending on the Sakhalin project to be increased) By James Quinn Last Updated: 1:34am GMT 29/12/2006 Royal Dutch Shell and its two Japanese partners are to be made to foot the bill for huge cost overruns at the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in [...]

Chris Noon, 12.28.06, 3:58 PM ET� � It sounds as though Royal Dutch/Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi the three companies developing the Sakhalin-2 energy site in the eastern part of Russia, have been thoroughly humiliated by the Kremlin. The companies will have to shoulder $3.6 billion in new costs to develop the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas [...]

December 29, 2006 Carl Mortished, International Business Editor � Royal Dutch Shell and its Japanese partners in the Sakhalin-2 gas project will be forced to swallow a third of the $10 billion (�5.1 billion) cost overrun suffered by the giant liquefied natural gas facility in eastern Siberia, according to reports from Moscow. A confidential agreement [...]