December 5th, 2007:

Lionel Laurent, 12.05.07, 3:00 PM ET

LONDON – China has given the go-ahead to a $5 billion oil refinery project shared between China’s Sinopec and Kuwait’s national oil company, marking a big step towards even closer ties between the Persian Gulf and its loyal Asian customer. But the European oil majors that were once reportedly involved in the project, such as Royal Dutch Shell, remained conspicuously absent from the announcement.

Chinese oil refiner Sinopec (nyse: SHI – news – people ) said that the Chinese government had approved plans to start work on the refinery project in the Guangdong province, which is slated to begin processing 300,000 barrels per day in 2010. Kuwaiti oil will be used, according to a memorandum of understanding signed with the Gulf country in 2005, and the project could be the biggest international energy joint venture of its kind in China. read more

LONDON (Thomson Financial) – Russian gas giant Gazprom said it has invested around 956 mln usd in the Sakhalin-2 project since it took control of the vast Siberian oil and gas field early this year.

Its share in the losses of Sakhalin Energy, the Gazprom-led developer of Sakhalin-2, from the date of acquisition to end-June was around 5.3 mln usd, the company said in a statement accompanying its second-quarter results.

The value of the group’s investments in Sakhalin Energy totaled 8.4 bln usd as of June, it said. read more

Lionel Laurent, 12.05.07, 7:36 AM ET 
 
LONDON – If the world wants more of OPEC’s oil, it will have to wait until February.

The oil-exporting cartel said on Wednesday that it had decided to keep production quotas on hold, dashing hopes of a 500,000-barrel-a-day output hike. Although it will review this decision at the next meeting in February 2008, the prospect of a winter without a helping hand from the 13-member organization has put added pressure on oil prices.

The European Brent crude benchmark price rose $1.90, or 2.1%, to $91.49 per barrel, during midday trading in Europe. Unusually, Brent crude is now more expensive than the U.S. West Texas Intermediate benchmark, which fell 1.1%, to $88.32 per barrel, on Tuesday. A similar situation took place this summer following a refinery shutdown in Cushing, Oklahoma. read more

The proposed pipeline would run through the Mackenzie Valley. (HO/AFP/Getty Images)

TransCanada steps in to jump start Mackenzie

Claudia Cattaneo And Jon Harding, Financial Post 
Published: Wednesday, December 05, 2007

CALGARY – A deal that restructures the stalled Mackenzie natural-gas pipeline appears to be close at hand, and would involve TransCanada Corp. and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group taking control away from a consortium of oil companies led by Imperial Oil Ltd., sources said yesterday. read more

By Isabel Gorst in Moscow
Published: December 5 2007 02:00 | Last updated: December 5 2007 02:00

Kazakhstan yesterday exposed ExxonMobil as the only member of an international oil group led by Eni of Italy unwilling to surrender part of its equity in the giant Kashagan oilfield to Kaz- Munaigas, the Kazakh state oil company.

“ExxonMobil does not share the opinion of other members of the consortium,” Sauat Mynbaev, Kazakhstan’s minister of energy, told reporters in Astana, the Kazakh capital. read more

December 05, 2007: 05:21 AM EST

OSLO -(Dow Jones)- An outage at Ormen Lange gas field in Norway continues as testing on compressors is ongoing after a fault was detected, a spokesman for operator Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) said Wednesday, taking the giant gas producer into its sixth day of outage.

Shell spokeswoman Lillian Aasheim said compressors at Ormen Lange’s onshore processing plant at Nyhamna are still being tested following repairs to correct leakages which occurred Nov. 30.

The field currently has three wells in operation, each with a maximum capacity of 10 million cubic meters a day. Gas flows through the northern spur of the Langeled pipeline to Sleipner gas processing hub in the North Sea and on from there to either European gas markets or to the U.K. through the southern leg of Langeled. read more

By Selina Williams
Last update: 6:23 a.m. EST Dec. 5, 2007

ABU DHABI (MarketWatch) — Iraq’s oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani, is Wednesday to meet senior executives from oil majors BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC after a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The executives confirmed a meeting would take place following OPEC’s policy meeting Wednesday, but they didn’t disclose the nature of the talks.

In early November, al-Shahristani said Iraq was close to hiring five major oil companies to help increase oil output by 500,000 barrels a day by the end of 2009 through technical service agreements. read more

5 December 2007

Highland Gold has struggled for years to make progress in Russia and last month the roof appeared to be falling in. Oleg Mitvol, Moscow’s environmental policeman, was warning darkly that licences might have to be revoked, which, as Shell learned at Sakhalin, can be costly.

Then, as if by magic, Highland’s licences in the north eastern Russian province of Chukotka were extended. Now Roman Abramovich, who happens to be Chukotka’s governor, appears as Highland’s major shareholder, buying his shares at a discount to the market price. Are these facts related? read more

LONDON (Thomson Financial) – Sakhalin Energy, the developer of the 20 bln usd Sakhalin-2 project in Russia, said oil production from the Molikpaq platform increased by 800,000 barrels to 12.4 mln barrels this year despite the disruptions caused by bad weather.

About 19 cargoes of oil were delivered from the Vityaz facility to Japan, Korea and the US this year, it added.

Bad weather damaged the Single Anchor Leg Mooring buoy at the Vityaz complex last month, forcing Sakhalin Energy to start the seasonal production shutdown on Nov 25, weeks earlier than planned. read more

DUBAI: The energy industry in the region needs to take urgent steps in order to be better equipped to face the various challenges, says Royal Dutch Shell officials.

They were speaking at the International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC) 2007.

“According to the International Energy Outlook 2007, the worldwide marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 57 per cent between 2004 and 2030,” Shell Middle East, Caspian and South Asia executive vice-president Raoul Restucci said. read more

Shell confidential reserves fraud discovery documents published on 5 December 2007

Exhibit 167: CONFIDENTIAL: NOTE – 31 May 2002: From Anton Barendregt to Lorin Brass and Chris Finlayson (Managing Director, BSP) copied to Brian Straub, Rosmawatty Abd-Mumin, Salieh-Bostaman Zainal-Abidin, Martin Graham, Thomas Prudence, Peter Worby, Ben van den Bergh, Chris Kennett, Dominique Gardy, Rahim Khan, Malcolm Harper, Jaap Nauts, John Pay, Paul Tauecchio, Han van Delden (KPMG Accountants NV) and Stephen Johnson (PriceWaterhouseCoopers): Subject: SEC PROVED RESERVES AUDIT – BRUNEI SHELL PETROLEUM SDN BHD, 29 April – 3 May 2002 (17 pages) read more

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent
Published: December 5 2007 07:52 | Last updated: December 5 2007 07:52

Twelve years ago the proposed dumping at sea of the Brent Spar, a North Sea oil storage facility owned by Shell, sparked one of the biggest environmental campaigns ever seen.

Greenpeace argued that disposing of the rig at sea would cause toxic pollution in the area, and should not be permitted. The group urged the UK government, which had given permission for the disposal, to force Shell instead to tow the equipment ashore for break-up on land, and gained widespread public support for its campaign. read more

Capitalism alone won’t save the planet, but it has a critical, innovative role to play. The alternative is to rely on a revolution

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday December 5, 2007

Think about climate change long enough and you soon realise that it’s more than our lightbulbs that we’re going to have to change. Colleagues have already argued on these pages this week, as delegates gather in Bali to hammer out a global accord to avert this catastrophe, that a much more fundamental overhaul will be required, a war on carbon as fierce as the 1940s war on fascism. Madeleine Bunting suggested a return to wartime rationing, in order to curb a hyper-consumerism that is palpably unsustainable. read more

The Independent: Is Britain’s economy heading for the perfect storm?

Sean O’Grady, Economics Editor
Published: 05 December 2007

The storm clouds are gathering over the jobs market; the climate on the high street is growing distinctly chilly; a typhoon of bad debt is buffeting the banks. Could a “perfect storm” be about to hit the British economy?

The signs couldn’t be much bleaker. The switchback in sentiment since the credit crisis began in the summer has been violent. The Nationwide Consumer Confidence Index recorded its largest drop yesterday, and joins the GfK/NOP survey earlier this week in suggesting that a wave of pessimism not seen for years is washing over the economy. read more

By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 1:52am GMT 05/12/2007

The security service MI5 has asked consultants KPMG to lead a group to monitor cases of industrial espionage and co-ordinate information between Britain’s leading companies.

MI5 is increasingly concerned at attempts by foreign governments to hack into the computer systems of major firms, and last week accused China of trying to steal corporate secrets.

KPMG, which works closely with the GCHQ listening station, is creating a “risk management information exchange”, with a team of security and IT experts to assess “threat levels” and warn of imminent dangers. read more

OLUSOLA BELLO on 05 December, 2007

Chima Ibeneche has been appointed the new managing director of Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas. Ibeneche,who until this new appointment was the immediate former managing director of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company had led SNEPCo into its new phase of deepwater production through the well-managed start up and production of Bonga.

With this latest movement of Ibeneche, he becomes the first indigenous managing director of NLNG..

Meanwhile, Basil Omiyi, presently managing director of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), and country chair, Shell Nigeria, has also been appointed as a full-time chair of Shell in Nigeria as from January 1 2008. He will have to operate from Abuja as against his present location, Port Harcourt, the operational base of Shell. read more