March, 2007:

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

BLOOMBERG

PetroChina Co. made a discovery in an offshore field in eastern Bohai Bay that that may be the largest in East Asia in 33 years.

The field may hold as much as 2.2 billion barrels of oil, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported on its website, citing officials at the Beijingbased company it didn’t identify.

The field might produce 200,800 barrels of oil a day in three years, Xinhua said, enough to meet 95 per cent of the needs of PetroChina’s largest refinery in Dalian.

“That’s a pretty big field,” said Ian Cross, vice-president of business intelligence at Inc., an Englewood, Colo.-based research company. “We only get a few discoveries a year in that range worldwide.” read more

Royal Dutch Shell PLC installed tougher clamps on its Mars platform, the biggest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, to protect the $1-billion US structure from hurricane damage.

Shell finished installing a drilling rig aboard Mars Tuesday that buckled under the force of waves and wind during hurricane Katrina in August 2005, spokeswoman Darci Sinclair said. The work included stronger deck clamps to prevent the 1,000-tonne rig from collapsing onto other equipment during storms, Sinclair said.

Oil production from the platform 209 kilometres southeast of New Orleans was shut down for nine months after Katrina swept through the Gulf. The drilling rig fell onto the deck and a 12-tonne anchor slashed through subsea pipelines. read more

Thu Mar 29, 2007 3:03 PM BST

LONDON, March 29 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Thursday it planned to establish a joint venture with OJSC Alliance Group to operate a network of more than 150 Shell-branded retail sites in the Ukraine.

Rob Routs, Executive Director of Shell’s downstream business, said in a statement the new venture would capitalise on Ukraine’s large population, growing GDP and its strategic location.

The new venture, in which Shell will have a 51 percent share and Alliance a 49 percent share, comes as Shell has scaled backed retail operations in some other countries where the company has deemed these to be too small to be strategic. read more

EXTRACT: Tom Borelli, fund manager at Feaf, said Lord Browne had spent too much time burnishing BP’s green credentials, with its “Beyond Petroleum” campaign, and not enough time paying attention to safety. 

THE ARTICLE

By Stephen Foley in New York
Published: 28 March 2007

Lord Browne of Madingley, the outgoing chief executive of BP, came under fire from shareholders at Goldman Sachs at the bank’s annual meeting.

The peer has sat on the Goldman Sachs board since its flotation in 1999, but yesterday he faced calls for his resignation because of what some investors said was his poor management record at BP. read more

15:07 | 29/ 03/ 2007 

MOSCOW, March 29 (RIA Novosti) – No court action will be initiated against the Sakhalin II operator for environmental damage incurred during the implementation of the major oil and gas project in Russia’s Far East, an environmental regulator said Thursday.

The ambitious project, formerly led by Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell, was subjected to months of intense pressure last year from Russian authorities, who accused it of causing serious environmental damage to Sakhalin Island, including deforestation, toxic waste dumping and soil erosion. read more

Web Posted – Thu Mar 29 2007

Opposition Senator Dr. Denis Lowe, wants Government to pay more attention to the plight of small farmers.

While speaking in the Upper House yesterday morning during debate of the Appropriation Bill, 2007, Senator Lowe made a call for the country’s import food bill to be reduced, and for Government to pave the way for small farmers, to enable them to run sustainable businesses. It is time that healthier eating is encouraged, and persons living in the country should be aided in doing so, by being encouraged to eat what they grow. Many food outlets he said, should pay more attention to giving these small farmers a chance and should partner with them, so that they are able to produce consistently, some of the agricultural commodities needed in supermarkets across the country. read more

March 29, 2007
Bloomberg

Exxon Mobil Corp. and four other U.S. gasoline retailers must face a lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to drive up the price of the fuel, a federal judge ruled.

Exxon, Marathon Oil Corp., Citgo Petroleum Corp. and U.S. affiliates of Royal Dutch Shell and BP are accused in the complaint of intentionally limiting the available gasoline supply, driving up prices and boosting profits, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve in Chicago said Monday.

“Facts consistent with these allegations could establish that defendants unjustly enriched themselves or acted deceptively or unfairly,” St. Eve said, rejecting the companies’ request that she dismiss the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status on behalf of all affected Illinois consumers. Some claims in the complaint were dismissed. read more

03.29.07, 8:53 AM ET
 
LONDON – Royal Dutch Shell PLC and ConocoPhillips have secured the licenses to develop the Caravel, Shamrock and Kelvin fields in the North Sea, said Alistair Darling, the UK’s trade and industry secretary.

Shell, along with partner ExxonMobil Corp (nyse: XOM – news – people ), will be developing Caravel, which will pump its first oil in December. It will also be operating the nearby Shamrock field.

ConocoPhillips (nyse: COP – news – people ), meanwhile, will be developing the Kelvin discovery with partners GDF Britain Ltd and Tullow Oil PLC. read more

AN ancient Persian proverb, much beloved of the ayatollahs in Tehran, urges Iranians to “be lions at home and foxes abroad”. This is exactly the strategy being pursued by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his hardline Revolutionary Guards, with the result that Great Britain is suffering its greatest foreign policy humiliation since the Suez crisis of 1956.

British military personnel have been abducted by a foreign power; yet a British nation shell-shocked by its disastrous Iraqi adventure doesn’t want to know. The Iranians, long convinced that the West is now too decadent, weak and crippled by self-doubt to react to even the most egregious of provocations, are jubilant. read more

TOM GILLESPIE
Published: Mar 29, 2007

A TD is at the centre of an alleged phone tapping scandal involving rivals of the Corrib gas project, it emerged yesterday.

Dr Jerry Cowley wants a probe into claims his phone line in north Mayo has been under Garda surveillance for several months, along with senior figures within the Shell To Sea group.

The independent TD revealed he was alerted to the alleged undercover operation “by a series of unusual coincidences”.

In an interview with the Connaught Telegraph he said: “I am not the only one to hold these fears. read more

Lorna Siggins & Tom Shiel
Published: Mar 29, 2007

Independent Mayo TD Dr Jerry Cowley says he intends to ask the Circuit Court judge who acts as the State’s complaints referee in relation to phone tapping, to investigate alleged surveillance of telephones held by himself and six prominent members of the Shell to Sea campaign.

This follows a Dail reply to Dr Cowley by Minister for Justice Michael McDowell yesterday in which Mr McDowell said it was “not the practice” and would be “contrary to public interest” to disclose if authorisation for such surveillance had been granted. read more

By REUTERS
Published: March 28, 2007
Filed at 8:59 p.m. ET

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Shell U.S. Gas and Power (RDSa.L) is discontinuing plans to build a liquefied natural gasterminal offshore of Louisiana because import capacity will be sufficient without it, the company said Wednesday.

“It’s just an assessment of the market,” said project manager Greg Koehler in announcing cancellation of the terminal that had been dubbed Gulf Landing.

When Shell proposed Gulf Landing for a site 38 miles (61 km) south of Cameron, La., in 2003, there was one LNG terminal in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, including Mexico, there are seven either operating or under construction and more are planned. read more

Julia Finch
Thursday March 29, 2007

Jeroen van der Veer deserves the chance to continue much of the good work he has put in at Shell since taking over from Sir Philip Watts in 2004.

Memories of the reserves scandal will stay with many investors for a long time but the oil major has seen its reputation hugely enhanced since its humiliation at the hands of the US regulator.

Mr van der Veer can take much of the credit for that, although the restructuring of the dual-company structure that has also helped modernise the group, was the result of a wider board decision. read more