By Isabel Ordonez Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES May 24, 2010 17:54 ET (21:54 GMT)

HOUSTON -(Dow Jones)- Greenpeace activists on Monday staged an anti-drilling protest at a Louisiana-based ship contracted by Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) to help look for oil in Alaska, the environmental organization said.

Environmental activists painted a message against drilling in the Arctic on the bridge of the Harvey Explorer, which is scheduled to depart for Alaska to support drilling operations in July, according a statement in Greenpeace’s Web site.

Shell confirmed that the vessel was targeted by the activists and said nobody was injured in the incident. “The matter is now in the hands of Fourchon Port Police in Port Fourchon, Louisiana,” Kelly OpDeWeegh, a spokeswoman for Shell, said in an email. “We are disappointed in the approach taken by Greenpeace today.”

Greepeace said in its Web site that the action had the purpose to send a message to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who was visiting Louisiana to assess the impact of a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The leak followed the explosion and sinking last month of the Transocean Ltd. (RIG) rig Deepwater Horizon, which was drilling a well for BP PLC (BP).

Environmental groups in Alaska have been separately calling on Salazar to stop new offshore oil and gas exploration in Alaskan coastal waters. Shell is hoping to drill exploratory wells this summer.

-By Isabel Ordonez, Dow Jones Newswires; 713.547.9207; isabel.ordonez@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

SOURCE ARTICLE

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By SPENCER SWARTZ And STEVE STECKLOW

A U.S. House committee has proposed barring the Pentagon from buying fuel from companies that do business with Iran’s energy industry—a stance that is a long shot for becoming law but that underscores U.S. lawmakers’ ongoing dissatisfaction with international efforts to slap tough sanctions on the nuclear ambitions of Tehran.

An amendment to a defense-spending bill, co-sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat and passed with full support in the House Armed Services Committee, would cost some European oil firms billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts if they buy Iranian oil, and would dramatically escalate U.S. sanctions against Tehran. “The Secretary of Defense may not enter into any contract with an entity that engages in commercial activity in the energy sector of Iran,” the amendment says, according to a copy reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The measure’s passage reflects growing frustration in parts of Congress with the failure of diplomacy to rein in Iran’s nuclear program. The bill passed through the committee last Wednesday, one day after the U.S., Russia and China agreed on a new list of sanctions against Iran for what they say is its refusal to abide by the United Nations’ Security Council resolutions calling for Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment program.

The proposed U.N. sanctions would crimp trade in Iranian weapons and certain investments. But like current U.N. and U.S. sanctions, it doesn’t ask international companies to stop doing business with Iran’s energy sector. About half of the Iranian government’s revenues come from oil exports.

The Pentagon is the world’s single-largest oil consumer, burning around 400,000 barrels a day for its sprawling fleet of aircraft and vehicles, according to Congressional estimates.

The amendment was co-sponsored by Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, a California Republican and Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat. The full House is scheduled to vote on the legislation later this week.

Even if the amendment makes it through the House, it is likely to face stiff opposition in the Senate and at the Pentagon, which would be forced to find alternative suppliers. Iranian oil officials have also said recently that any move by the U.S. targeting its oil exports would be viewed as an “act of war,” another reason the Pentagon and the White House are likely to look unfavorably on the House amendment.

An aide to Mr. McKeon said the measure gives the U.S. defense secretary the right to override the measure if he deems it too burdensome for the Pentagon to find alternative fuel suppliers. The aide also said that, at this point, there is no sponsor in the Senate for a similar measure.

European energy companies Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC have been the Pentagon’s top fuel-supply contractors in recent years, according to data from USAspending.gov, an Office of Management and Budget website that tracks federal contracts. It estimates that since 2000, Anglo-Dutch Shell has signed deals with the Pentagon worth about $8.8 billion. BP PLC has signed contracts worth a total of about $7.2 billion in the 2000-2009 period and has an estimated $838 million worth of contracts expected this year with the Pentagon.

The two oil companies also buy crude oil from Iran. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that some companies, including Shell, have been disguising some of those Iranian purchases, according to shipping records, even though they remain perfectly legal.

Spokespeople for Shell were not available to comment on the amendment. A BP spokesman declined to comment. A Pentagon spokeswoman also declined to comment.

View Full Image

Reuters

A U.S. Army soldier takes cover as a Black Hawk chopper takes off from a U.S. military base in Arghandab valley, Afghanistan, earlier this month.

The House and Senate currently are reconciling bills that would expand existing U.S. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program by penalizing companies that ship gasoline to Iran.

The country imports around 40% of its total gasoline needs due to limited refining capacity. The legislation has drawn opposition from some U.S. business groups and from foreign companies, which say it tries to impose U.S. law beyond its borders.

Fearing those sanctions will come to pass, some oil companies with U.S. operations, including Shell, say they have stopped sending gasoline to Iran.

But the buying of Iranian crude—a more lucrative business than selling gasoline to Iran—continues.

U.S. companies long have been banned from doing business in Iran. The U.S. believes Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons; Iran denies this.

Write to Spencer Swartz at spencer.swartz@dowjones.com and Steve Stecklow atsteve.stecklow@wsj.com

WSJ ARTICLE

Years before the Gulf of Mexico became witness to the nightmare scenario of an unstoppable volcano of crude oil gushing from an unplugged oil well deep beneath the ocean, both the oil industry and the federal agency charged with monitoring seabed drilling off America’s coasts knew the last-ditch “failsafe” technology intended to prevent just this sort of catastrophe might not work.

Daily Telegraph

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has heightened fears of a similar disaster occurring off America’s Arctic coast, where Shell is due to begin exploratory drilling later this year.

Smoke rises from a controlled burn in the Gulf of Mexico by BP Photo: GETTY IMAGES

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 6:30PM BST 23 May 2010

President Barack Obama has ordered a review of the Anglo-Dutch firms plan’s to drill off the coast of Alaska.

Activists have claimed that the remote nature of the proposed drilling site, sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds would be formidable obstacles to any potential clean-up operation.

The Alaska Wilderness League said in a statement that it would be almost impossible to mount the kind of clean-up witnessed in the Gulf of Mexico, describing the Arctic as one of the “most remote and extreme environments on Earth”.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Mexico, there was no end in sight for the massive clean-up operation, as BP officials said on Sunday that one of their efforts to slow the leak was not working as effectively as it had initially.

A mile-long tube inserted into the leaking well siphoned some 57,120 gallons of oil within the past 24 hours, a sharp drop from the 92,400 gallons of oil a day that the device was sucking up on Friday, according to John Curry, a BP spokesman.

However, the company has said the amount of oil siphoned was likely to vary from day to day.

Over the weekend Mr Obama created a commission to examine what caused the explosion on and subsequent leak from Deepwater Horizon BP rig and to “make sure it never happens again”.

He noted concerns about the “cozy relationship between oil and gas companies and agencies that regulate them”.

However, the president underlined that he remained committed to retaining off-shore oil as part of his energy plan. “Because it represents 30 per cent of our oil production, the Gulf of Mexico can play an important part in security our energy future,” he said.

The establishment of the commission came as oil continued to gush from the rig, blackening more of the Louisiana’s marshlands and beaches. Even at the lowest estimates, more than six million gallons of crude have soiled Gulf waters.

Bob Dudley, BP’s managing director, said that the latest bid to stop the leak in a ruptured pipe 5,000 feet below the surface would began on Tuesday or Wednesday. A “top kill” operation that has never been tried before will shoot heavy mud into the pipe then seal it with cement.

With the crisis entering its fifth week, the Obama administration has been forced increasingly on the defensive for responding too weakly and placing too much trust in BP.

Normally friendly voices have begun to criticise the president personally. James Carville, a former Bill Clinton campaign manager and Louisiana native, said the president had been “lackadaisical” and “naïve”.

Chris Matthews, a popular liberal cable TV presenter, said the president was “acting a little like a Vatican Observer”.

“The president scares me,” he said. “When is he actually going to do something? He doesn’t want to take ownership of it.”

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said: “There’s no doubt that we have had some problems with BP’s lack of transparency: We asked that a video feed [of the oil gush] be made public, and that took ten days. We have sent letter recently in order to get them to post their air-and-quality data.”

BP ‘using Gulf of Mexico as toxic testing-ground’

BP insists oil spill impact ‘very, very modest’

Chronology of the disaster

Shell declined to give a predicted date for full production pending the outcome of the planning application. However, it is unlikely full production will start before next year.

FOX BUSINESS

Shell Oil Unable To Assure Safety Of Arctic Drilling; Proposal Is “Imagineering, Not Engineering,” Says Former Shell Official

May 21, 2010 (PRWeb.com via COMTEX) —-Two engineers with extensive experience in the oil industry said on Capitol Hill today that Shell Oil’s plans to begin drilling off the coast of Alaska in less than six weeks are fraught with risks that have not been adequately addressed by the company.

Dr. Robert Bea, a former Shell official, and Susan Harvey, who previously worked for British Petroleum, expressed serious concerns about Shell’s drilling plans, noting that a spill in the Arctic could not be cleaned up. Those same concerns were detailed in a twelve-page letter (http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2010/WWFBinaryitem16362.pdf) that World Wildlife Fund submitted today to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, analyzing Shell’s proposed safety procedures for drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

Dr. Bea, who now heads the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California-Berkley, said he still considers Shell to be like “family,” but nevertheless is concerned that the company’s proposal does not provide an accurate assessment of the true risks of drilling in the Arctic. “This is imagineering, not engineering,” Bea said.

Shell plans to begin drilling in the Beaufort Sea as soon as July 1 and expand drilling operations to the Chukchi Sea soon thereafter. The company’s drilling vessel, the Frontier Discoverer (http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2010/WWFPresitem16367.html), is expected to depart Subic Bay, in the Philippines, for the coast of Alaska within days. Nearly 700 leases have been sold in the Beaufort and Chukchi, setting the stage for what WWF officials have called an “Arctic oil rush.” Photos taken last week of the Frontier Discoverer in Subic Bay are available here (http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2010/WWFPresitem16367.html).

Harvey, who once headed the state agency in Alaska that oversees oil spill prevention and response, noted that the Alaskan North Slope is a particularly risky area to drill given its remoteness and lack of basic infrastructure needed to deploy oil spill response equipment. “All of that spill response infrastructure you see in the gulf right now, it doesn’t exist in Alaska,” she said.

Harvey explained that the freezing temperatures and icy waters of the Arctic render traditional response procedures inadequate and said oil trapped under ice would be unrecoverable for up to half a year. In that situation, she said, “The only thing you can do is wait six months for the ice to melt and by then [the oil] will have spread far and wide.”

The only practical response procedure in the Arctic environment, Harvey said, would be burning off the oil, but she noted severe limitations in using that technique. She agreed with oil industry claims that it is technically possible to burn up to 90 percent of oil that is in a contained space, but said it would be nearly impossible to contain more than just a small fraction of the oil, given the limited number of vessels that would be able to help with containment and the vast size of the potential spill area. “It’s like trying to mow a 100 acre lawn with one lawnmower,” she said.

Bea and Harvey made their remarks at a Capitol Hill briefing that was co-hosted by WWF and moderated by WWF President and CEO Carter Roberts.

As the BP oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico continues to worsen, WWF has called upon President Obama and Secretary Salazar to halt Shell’s planned drilling until the Deepwater Horizon disaster has been fully investigated and the technology and procedures have been put in place to respond to and clean up a spill in the harsh, remote waters of the American Arctic.

“We still don’t have a full picture of what went wrong in the gulf and we need to make sure we don’t sow the seeds of disaster in this very, very special place,” said WWF President and CEO Carter Roberts, referring to the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

In the May 20, 2010 letter to Secretary Salazar (http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2010/WWFBinaryitem16362.pdf), WWF addressed Shell’s proposal, point-by-point, illustrating how the technology and procedures have not yet been developed to adequately respond to a spill in Arctic waters. WWF’s analysis noted that drilling in the harsh, remote environment of the Arctic is far more perilous than in the Gulf of Mexico and that the technology and logistical infrastructure does not exist to contain and clean up a spill in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

For the native Alaskan communities along the North Slope, an oil spill could be devastating to their culture and way of life, which is entirely dependent on the sea for subsistence hunting and fishing. Several Native Alaskan leaders visited the gulf coast earlier this week to observe the unfolding disaster first-hand. They are now in Washington, D.C., urging federal leaders to prevent a similar catastrophe in their back yards by halting Shell’s proposed drilling.

“What we saw [in the gulf] was very sad,” said Martha Ipalook-Falk, Tribal Council Treasurer of the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, who participated in the Capitol Hill briefing today. “These memories of black plumes will stay with us – especially imagining the contrast to the white of the Arctic that we see around us in our homes.”

Notes To Editors: WWF’s letter to Secretary Salazar is available at www.worldwildlife.org/DOI. Photos of Shell’s drilling vessel, Frontier Discoverer, taken last week of the ship in Subic Bay, Philippines, are available at www.worldwildlife.org/shellletter. A report issued by WWF detailing the oil spill response gap in Arctic waters, Not So Fast: Some Progress in Spill Response, but US Still Ill-Prepared for Arctic Offshore Development, is available at: http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/wherewework/arctic/WWFBinaryitem14712.pdf. About World Wildlife Fund WWF is the world’s leading conservation organization, working in 100 countries for nearly half a century. With the support of almost 5 million members worldwide, WWF is dedicated to delivering science-based solutions to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth, halt the degradation of the environment and combat climate change. Visit www.worldwildlife.org to learn more.

Learn more about WWF’s efforts to secure Senate passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation at www.ActForOurFuture.org.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/arctic_drilling/Shell_Oil/prweb4031634.htm.

By John Donovan

The Shell brand is so well known in the USA that most Americans probably believe that it is as American as apple pie, rather than what it actually is – a foreign owned company: Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

In the wake of the still unfolding BP/Transocean catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, Shell is currently trying to reassure the US government and other parties, including environmentalists, that they can all trust Shell to commence drilling for oil in offshore Alaska. Shell, which has already invested billions of dollars in obtaining the drilling rights, has recently released information about its plans to tackle any consequential oil spills.

So can Shell be trusted?

Since it is deeds, not words, which count, Americans would be wise to carefully consider Shell’s environmental track record and whether it is a company which is open and honest.

Just days ago, The Wall Street Journal revealed in an article “Oil Trade With Iran Thrives, Discreetly“, the tricks that Shell has been up to disguise oil purchases from the fanatical Iranian regime  supplying munitions, including roadside bombs, which have maimed and killed large numbers of American and British solders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Extract from the article:

“One tanker industry executive speculated that Shell might want to disguise its Iranian purchases so as not to suggest that the gasoline it sells in the U.S. is refined from Iranian oil, which would violate U.S. law.”

Shell has continued to do business in Iran despite American sanctions against the Country. It is also doing business with the supposedly reformed Libyan state sponsor of terrorism, Muammar al-Gaddafi. The man behind the bombing of Pan American flight 103.

Comment by Shell director at AGM:

We next come to a sneer by Mr. Winston Churchill which is unworthy of him.

By John Donovan

I have been described by Reuters as “A prominent critic of Royal Dutch Shell“.

I had no idea that I shared this distinction with a great man, Winston Churchill no less.

During a pre-first World War speech in the House of Commons, Churchill, in his then capacity as First Lord of the Admiralty made an attack on Shell, accusing the company of secret oil price rigging.

Extracts from pages 161/162/163 “The Prize” by Daniel Yergin.

On June 17, 1914, Churchill rose in the House of Commons to introduce a historic measure. The bill he proposed had two essential elements: First, the government would invest £2.2 million in Anglo-Persian, acquiring in turn 51 percent of the stock.

Also present in the Commons was the member from Wandsworth, one Samuel Samuel, who, working for many years by the side of his brother, Marcus Samuel, had helped to create Shell-and who, that day, became increasingly fidgety and aggravated as Churchill spoke.

“This afternoon we have to deal, not with the policy of building oil-driven ships or of using oil as an ancillary fuel in coal-driven ships,” Churchill began, “but with the consequence of that policy.” The oil consumer, he declaimed, had freedom of choice neither in regard to fuels nor in regard to sources of supply. “Look out upon the wide expanse of the oil regions of the world. Two gigantic corporations-one in either hemisphere-stand out predominantly. In the New World there is the Standard Oil. … In the Old World the great combination of the Shell and the Royal Dutch, with all their subsidiary and ancillary branches, has practically covered the whole ground, even reached out into the New World.” Churchill proceeded to argue that the Admiralty, along with all private consumers, had been subjected to “a long steady squeeze by the oil trusts all over the world.” Early in the debate, Samuel Samuel popped up three times to object to Churchill’s characterizations of Royal Dutch/Shell. He was ruled out of order. “He had better hear the case for the prosecution,” Churchill acidly said after the third interruption, “before he offers an argument for the defense.” Samuel resumed his seat but not his composure. “For many years,” Churchill went on, “it has been the policy of the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, and the Indian Government to preserve the independent British oil interests of the Persian oil-field, to help that field to develop as well as we could and, above all, to prevent it being swallowed up by the Shell or by any foreign or cosmopolitan companies.” Since the government was going to give such a boost to Anglo-Persian, it was but reasonable, he added, that it share in the rewards. And “over the whole of these enormous regions we obtain the power to regulate developments according to naval and national interest.” Declaring that “all the criticisms” of such a plan “so far, have flowed from one fountain,” Churchill then launched an attack on that fountain-Royal Dutch/ Shell and Marcus Samuel-though adding, “I do not wish to make any attack upon the Shell or the Royal Dutch Company.”

“Not the least!” Samuel Samuel called out from the back bench. Churchill’s oratory was full of sarcasm. Were the bill to fail, he said, Anglo- Persian would become part of Shell. “We have no quarrel with the ‘Shell.’ We have always found them courteous, considerate, ready to oblige, anxious to serve the Admiralty, and to promote the interests of the British Navy and the British Empire-at a price. The only difficulty has been price.” With the leverage of Persian oil “at our disposal, we do not think we shall be treated with less courtesy, or less consideration, or shall we find these gentlemen less obliging, less public spirited, or less patriotic than before. On the contrary, if that slight difference of opinion which has hitherto existed about prices-I am obliged to return to that vicious and sordid matter of prices-were removed, our relations would be better; they would become … the sweeter, because no longer leavened with the sense of injustice.” Samuel finally had his chance, later in the debate, to reply. “I do protest most strongly on behalf of one of the greatest British commercial industrial companies, that the attacks that have been made are wholly unjustifiable.” He catalogued Shell’s services to the Navy and its championing of oil-powered propulsion. He asked the government to make public the prices that Shell had charged, which had been kept secret, and which, he said, would prove that the company had never gouged the Admiralty. ”The attack we have heard had nothing on earth to do with the question before the Committee,” said another M.P., Watson Rutherford. Criticizing Churchill for raising the specter of monopoly and for “Jew-baiting,”…

And from pages 43/44 of “Moguls and Mandarins” by Marian Kent

The prime factor in Churchill’s reasoning was undoubtedly the steady rise in fuel oil prices quoted on the London market: between January 1911 and January 1913 they doubled, from 37s. 6d. to 77s. 6d. a ton.37 This great rise was due in large part to excessive freight charges, though also in part to the inevitable effects of market forces on a commodity for which the demand exceeded the supply. There was also another reason: Sir Marcus Samuel’s frequent and open prediction of continuing price rises greatly irked Churchill, who denounced the increases as evidence of secret price-rigging by the great oil interests. He was wrong in his reasoning.

Shell launched an equally outspoken response at their next AGM. We have featured some brief extracts. The detailed extensive response can be read by clicking on the link.

COMPANY MEETINGS: “SHELL” TRANSPORT AND TRADING CO. (LTD).

We next come to a sneer by Mr. Winston Churchill which is unworthy of him.

If not well founded at that time, Churchill’s instinct was bang on. Shell has a long track record of market manipulation, stretching from those days onwards, including cartel participation, price fixing,  fictions trades, monopoly, securities fraud etc. Shell was a founding member of the “Seven Sisters“, the first global oil cartel.

There does seem to be a tacit acceptance of cartel activity by Shell on shell.com.

“But the price of oil proved to be volatile and efforts to control the market by price-cutting or through an informal cartel with other oil majors were doomed to failure.”

Across the globe, industry-driven regulation is the norm, not the exception – and critics are calling for a re-examination of a system that puts crucial safety decisions into the hands of corporations motivated by profit.

This initiative is a three-year, $90 million deployment that is part and parcel of the estimated $1.6bn global strategic sourcing agreement inked by Shell and AT&T in 2008, during which Shell awarded AT&T with a contract to manage most of its telecom and IT infrastructure services.