March 30th, 2007:

By SHAI OSTER
March 30, 2007 4:53 a.m.

BEIJING — In one of the biggest deals of its kind, U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. Friday signed a deal with Saudi Aramco and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., better known as Sinopec, to expand an oil refinery in China’s rich southern province of Fujian and add on a vast chemicals facility for completion by 2009.

With China still tightly regulating fuel prices, big oil is increasingly looking at the country’s surging demand for chemicals. read more

If you’re hungry for WSJ energy news, but too busy to flip through the entire paper to find it, here’s a quick roundup:

Across the U.S. plains, farmers are placing big bets on where the price of corn will go in 2007. They are preparing to plant more corn than they have in decades, spending more on seed and fertilizer, investing in new equipment and buying crop insurance against the possibility of bad weather. Some are signing futures contracts to lock in prices now; some are holding off in the hope that prices will climb higher. read more

Van de Vijver shakes off reserves scandal to form investment outfit

CHRISTOPHER HOPSON
London

ROYAL Dutch Shell’s former upstream chief executive Walter van de Vijver is returning to the oil and gas industry, raising about $1 billion of private equity to form a new company called Delta Hydrocarbons.

Van de Vijver has founded the new company with Maarten Scholten, formerly head of Schlumberger’s mergers and acquisitions team. They have been joined by Jeri Eagan, formerly chief financial officer for Shell’s gas and power business and Frederik Rijkens, previously a Total project director. read more

By Torrey Clark

March 30 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc expects to cede control of the Sakhalin-2 project in Russia’s Far East to state-run OAO Gazprom by the end of the year as the two sides hash out the details of the $7.45 billion deal.

“Work is progressing well on the details,” said Maxim Shoob, a spokesman for Shell in Moscow. “We always expected the deal to be closed by the end of 2007.”

Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev said in December the company would join the project in February and pay for the stake by the end of the first quarter of 2007. read more

30 March 2007

Shell International Petroleum Company Ltd (Shell) and OJSC Alliance Group (Alliance) announce a commitment to establishing a joint venture to operate a network of more than 150 Shell-branded retail sites in the Ukraine.  This deal will provide Ukrainian customers with access to high quality fuels at competitive prices and with an emphasis on customer service.
 
“With this joint venture we are delivering our strategy to invest in growing markets,” said Rob Routs, Executive Director of Shell’s Downstream business.  “Ukraine’s large population, projected GDP and its strategic location in Eastern Europe make it attractive and an important part of our future retail business in Europe. We welcome the opportunity to work with a company such as Alliance, a respected organisation with expertise in Ukraine, and look forward to developing our cooperation.” read more

Russia is not going to sue Sakhalin Energy for environmental violations in the Sakhalin-2 project, a natural resources official said Thursday.

Deputy Head of the Federal Resource Management Agency Oleg Mitvol earlier announced that the agency was planning to go to Russian, European and “all possible courts” to appeal the violations.

Mr. Mitvol, however, mentioned Thursday that the agency won’t to go to any courts, and Sakhalin Energy is willing to solve the problems. In addition, Gazprom, which is become a major shareholder in the project soon, has already submitted a plan to amend the breaches, according to the official. Federal authorities are now studying the proposals. Gazprom will be asked to pay for the unsolved problems, according to Oleg Mitvol. read more

Published: Mar 30, 2007

Oil major Shell has scrapped plans to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in the Gulf of Mexico, writes Tony Gray .

Shell said the Gulf Landing project was not needed because import capacity would be enough without it.

‘It is just an assessment of the market,’ said project manager Greg Koehler.

He stressed that Shell was not abandoning the LNG business. ‘Our plans are to continue to increase volumes of LNG into the US,’ Mr Koehler said.

Shell is, for example, a partner in the Altamira terminal Mexico’s northeast coast, and has capacity at existing US terminals at Cove Point, Maryland, and Elba Island, Georgia. read more

Published: Mar 30, 2007

THE companies involved in the extraction of natural gas from the Corrib Gasfield said yesterday that they plan to resume the peat haulage operation next week.

This will involve the transfer of 350,000 tonnes of peat from the site of the proposed onshore terminal at Bellanaboy to a Bord na Mona cut-over site at Srahmore, 11km away.

The operation will be completed by October, when construction of the onshore gas processing plant will begin, the Corrib gas partners said.

There are currently almost 200 people working on the Corrib Gas project and this figure will rise to approximately 350 in the coming weeks, once peat haulage is underway, Shell said. By next autumn, 700 jobs will have been created by the project with the construction of the onshore terminal. read more

A round-up of headlines from across the financial sectors, provided by Bloomberg News

ENERGY

Royal Dutch Shell scrapped a plan to build a liquefied natural gas import terminal on the US Gulf Coast, citing adequate capacity to meet requirements among other terminals under construction or planned in the region.

• Sterling Energy, an oil and gas explorer, said it completed the purchase of Houston-based Whittier Energy for $145m (£73.8m), doubling reserves and production.

• Egdon Resources, a oil and natural-gas explorer, applied for planning approval to develop a gas storage site to supply as much as 5pc of daily demand during the heating season. read more

EXTRACT: Shell would be one of the biggest losers if diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran were to break down further. The company is part of a £5 billion project to export liquefied natural gas from Iran, which is the world’s fourth-big-gest oil exporter.

THE ARTICLE

March 30, 2007
By Michael Theodoulou and David Robertson

Many Iranians have yet to see the footage of Faye Turney that has caused such outrage in Britain, but few who did shared the sense of revulsion and shock.

“The interview was definitely staged but that doesn’t mean her confession isn’t true,” a well-travelled 59-year-old businessman in Tehran said. read more