By Jeremy Kutner| Contributor of The Christian Science Monitor/ December 3, 2008 edition At the edges of the Alaskan permafrost, a consortium of government and oil industry scientists are preparing to drill. They aim to tap one of the largest potential energy sources ever discovered, and one that few people have ever heard of: flammable ice crystals packed [...]
Posts on ‘December 4th, 2008’
Shell Says Fire Breaks Out at Pernis Oil Refinery
Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) — A large fire erupted today in a pipeline at Royal Dutch Shell Plcs Pernis refinery in the Netherlands, Europes largest plant.
Royal Dutch Shell Board appoints new non-executive director
Thursday, December 4, 2008 The Board of Royal Dutch Shell plc today announced the appointment of Hans Wijers, Chairman of the Board of Management of Akzo Nobel NV, to replace Nina Henderson, who will be retiring as a non-executive director. Hans Wijers, who joins the Board on 1 January 2009, will stand for election at the Annual General Meeting [...]
Royal Dutch Shell Board appoints new head of downstream
Thursday, December 4, 2008 The Board of Royal Dutch Shell plc today announced that Mark Williams will take over the responsibilities of Rob Routs for the Oil Products, Chemicals and Oil Sands business, as Downstream Director and a member of the Executive Committee of Royal Dutch Shell. Mark Williams succeeds Rob Routs effective 1 January 2009, when he retires [...]
Shell shuts entire Dutch refinery after fire
LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell closed its Dutch Pernis refinery, the Europe’s largest, after a fire on Thursday, trade sources said.
Northern Petroleum farms out 6 Italy licences to Shell
Dec 4 (Reuters) – Oil and gas explorer Northern Petroleum Plc said on Thursday it farmed out six of its offshore Sicily Channel licences in Italy to an affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, sending its shares up 9 percent.
Corruption overseas Britains bribery shame
The UK has been identified for several years by the OECD as one of the worst laggards… This is highlighted by the fact that the suspension of the Al-Yamamah investigation in 2006 looking at alleged bribes paid by BAE Systems as part of a UK-Saudi Arabia arms deal
Oil market watch: crude slips below $45 a barrel
The bear trend resumes, with oil prices dropping below $45 a barrel.
Commodities Collapse: Fast, Big and Still Going: Analyst who projected $200 oil should have lopped off a zero
The crash in oil, copper, grain and other commodity stocks in 2008 has outpaced the crash of technology stocks at the turn of this century — with many taking only six months for the 80% wipeouts that took the tech sector two years.
Will the hoped-for green jobs materialise?
Although BP and Shell have pulled out of the UK offshore market, others such as Masdar, the Abu Dhabi government’s investment vehicle for sustainable energy, moved to fill the gap. Masdar acquired a 20 per cent stake in in the £2bn London Array offshore wind project after Shell walked away.
Sibir’s bail-out of investor stuns market
The development of the Salym field in western Siberia, a joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell, has been a huge success, taking Sibir’s production to 76,700 barrels of oil per day last month, a very respectable amount for an independent. It has proved and tested reserves, under Russian definition, of 491m barrels of oil. An often-rumoured deal with Shell has so far come to nothing. But the reserves remain a valuable asset and the best hope for shareholders is that some way can be found to realise that value.
As Kermit the Frog observed, it’s not easy being green.
Royal Dutch Shell and Anglo American yesterday became the latest natural resources companies to shelve a clean energy scheme. Their joint A$5bn project in Australia to convert coal into liquid fuels may go ahead, eventually, but not with development costs this high and an oil price this low.
Pipe dreams
The second assumption is that steep declines in non-Opec oil fields will be offset by increases in “non-conventional” oil production, such as the Canadian oil sands. This also looks unlikely. Oil sands projects are uneconomic at less than $80 per barrel, and several have recently been shelved.
Spending on oil and gas projects collapses
This week it emerged that Royal Dutch Shell had shelved plans for a $3 billion (£2 billion) coal-to-liquid fuels project in Australia. Last month the group announced a delay to the expansion of its oil sands mining project in Northern Alberta, Canada.
Shell opens expanded north shore training center
Shell’s Robert Training and Conference Center, located in Tangipahoa Parish, already provides a range of energy sector training to about 3,000 students a month. But a $21 million expansion adds 55,000 square feet of space to the facility and doubles the number of students that can be trained, said Tom Broom, Shell’s operations learning and development manager.


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