The presidential commission probing the BP oil spill is questioning whether Shell Oil’s response plan for a potential spill in Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast is “realistic.”

“Shell’s exploratory drilling C-Plan is currently the only formal industry proposal for contingency planning and oil spill response in the Arctic. While Shell’s plan acknowledges many of the challenges of spill response in the Arctic, questions remain as to whether its solutions to those challenges are realistic,” the staff paper states.

“For its final report, the Commission may want to consider the forthcoming analysis conducted by the Pew Environmental group in evaluating the Shell plan and the requirements for Arctic response plans generally,” it adds.

The White House-created commission is exploring the “root causes” of the BP spill and offshore drilling policy reforms. It is slated to submit a final report to the White House in January. The draft “working paper” is meant to inform the commission’s report.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Beaufort Sea plan includes improved oil spill response system

By TOM FOWLER Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

Oct. 6, 2010, 10:08PM

* Shell seeks permit to drill single well in Beaufort Sea

* Not seeking permits to drill in more remote Chukchi Sea

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) has scaled back its plans to drill offshore the Alaska coast in 2011 and now plans only a single well for the Beaufort Sea.

Shell, which has spent $3.5 billion in preparation for the drilling, is not seeking federal permits to drill in the more remote Chukchi Sea, where it had originally planned three wells.

Unresolved litigation about the validity of Chukchi Sea leases makes it impractical to plan for drilling next year in that lightly explored region, which lies off northwestern Alaska, said Pete Slaiby, the company’s vice president for Alaska.

“We’ve got, I think, clearer sailing in the Beaufort Sea,” he told reporters at an Anchorage news conference.

The pending litigation includes a case in a Washington, D.C. appeals court in which the entire five-year Alaska leasing program was ruled improper, and a separate case in U.S. District Court in Anchorage in which the judge ruled that MMS had failed to do sufficient environmental review before selling leases in the Chukchi in 2008.

Any further exploration work in the Chukchi is on hold until the Department of Interior remedies what the courts characterized as deficiencies in pre-sale environmental work.

The litigation was launched by environmentalists and Alaska Natives who argued that oil drilling in Arctic waters poses risks of oil spills and habitat disruptions that were never adequately studied.

New drilling had also been on hold in Arctic waters because a policy announced by the Obama administration in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In concert with a moratorium on new deepwater Gulf of Mexico drilling, the administration announced that it was temporarily delaying any permits for offshore Arctic drilling until environmental issues were better studies.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — the successor agency to the Minerals Management Service — has 30 days to respond to the application, according to statute, Slaiby said.

(Editing by Bill Rigby and Lisa Shumaker)

REUTERS ARTICLE

Following my email correspondence with a U.S. intelligence source, and clearance obtained by that source from U.S. Dept. of Defense government attorneys, that source was authorized to confirm that an investigation directed at Shell USA was indeed initiated by the US Department of the Navy, Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).

The following brief historical account has been assembled from records made available to Federal law enforcement and other agencies over a period of almost 15 years. It catalogs a series of events associated with Shell Oil USA’s (alleged) attempt to gain control of a former employee’s intellectual property. A number of other individuals, including attorneys, also (allegedly) assisted Shell USA in this endeavor.

Unclassified US Federal records show those patent applications were classified by US military authorities. Hence the involvement of U.S. investigative authorities when the former Shell USA employee became aware, as a result of a tip-off from a former Shell USA colleague, and later confirmed by Mr. Matt Waldrop, of the law firm Vethan & Waldrop, a contract intellectual property law firm employed by Shell USA, of a Shell USA industrial espionage operation targeting his (classified) intellectual property. Shell USA was supposedly one of Vethan & Waldrop’s major industrial clients and the stated role of that law firm, and Mr. Waldrop, was to advise Shell USA and to assist Shell USA legal counsel in preparing civil litigation against this former employee.

For instance, the same week that Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg boasted of assurances from Royal Dutch Shell that the company would not invest in Iran, the British press reported that Shell had increased its import of Iranian crude oil and paid $1.5 billion to Tehran. Royal Dutch Shell, it could be argued, essentially just pumped $1.5 billion into the lifeblood of Iran’s coffers, which could be used to finance its nuclear-weapons program and support its terror subsidiaries, Hamas and Hezbollah. Why is the U.S State Department issuing public relations statements for a company that is turning the U.S. sanctions strategy into a theater of the absurd?

October 5, 2010

By Benjamin Weinthal

Berlin — Pres. Barack Obama chose last week to sanction the Swiss-based Naftiran Intertrade (NICO) energy-trading company for violating the recently enhanced U.S Iran Sanctions Act, which bars significant investments in Iran’s energy and gas sectors.

Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are well-versed in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, yet they are failing to apply its core ideas to their Iran policy. Alinsky, after all, took to heart Frederick Douglass’s imperative: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department’s meek approach toward sanctions enforcement was on display in the handling of NICO, a subsidiary of Iran’s national oil company, which has no economic presence in the United States.

Sanction enforcement ought to replicate contract enforcement. Legislation, like a contractual agreement, is worthless unless there is aggressive enforcement. But according to Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “Critical questions concerning the big companies’ involvement with Iran remain unanswered. The heavy lifting remains undone.”

For instance, the same week that Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg boasted of assurances from Royal Dutch Shell that the company would not invest in Iran, the British press reported that Shell had increased its import of Iranian crude oil and paid $1.5 billion to Tehran. Royal Dutch Shell, it could be argued, essentially just pumped $1.5 billion into the lifeblood of Iran’s coffers, which could be used to finance its nuclear-weapons program and support its terror subsidiaries, Hamas and Hezbollah. Why is the U.S State Department issuing public relations statements for a company that is turning the U.S. sanctions strategy into a theater of the absurd?

There is no shortage of Swiss, Chinese, and Russian companies circumventing — and possibly violating — U.S sanctions against Iran. Take the example of the Swiss, who are bending over backwards to curry favor with Iran’s clerical rulers. Switzerland’s massive energy giant EGL has refused to terminate its estimated €18-27 billion gas contract with Iran.

According to an article in today’s Washington Post, the General Accounting Office has highlighted companies from China, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore that are supplying gas to Iran. The lack of refinery capability in Iran is one of the principal forms of Western leverage. By selling gas to the Iranians, these energy firms are severely undercutting efforts to isolate Iran. The GAO writes: “The companies include subsidiaries of Sinopec and PetroChina, which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Another is a Beijing-based state-owned oil firm called Zhuhai Zhenrong, which has an office in Tehran and is one of four companies allowed to import oil to China.”

It is more than striking that the U.S. State Department decided to not trigger investigations into Chinese, Russian, and European companies that may be violating Iran sanctions. The result is business as usual for sanction busters, and giant question marks over whether the Obama administration is genuinely prepared to confront Iran. Iran’s regime will not abandon its nuclear weaponry and end its repression of the pro-democracy movement unless painful demands are placed on it. Obama and Clinton should embrace Alinsky 101 and punish those companies contributing to Iran’s energy sector.

— Benjamin Weinthal is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Date: Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Source: CNSNews.com

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that 16 foreign oil companies, including BP Global, may have violated U.S. sanctions on doing business with Iran. The companies, according to the GAO, sold or are selling gasoline to Iran, which is punishable under U.S. law.

The report, based on a GAO survey of thousands of publicly available energy industry and other publications, found that 16 firms had sold refined petroleum products – things such as gasoline and fuel oil – to Iran from January 2009 to June 2010.

Among those firms, three, including BP global, had contracts with the federal government.

“This report highlights open source information that, following further investigation by the State Department, could contribute to the identification of persons or firms whose activities may be sanctionable,” the report states.

Among those 16 companies, five are still selling petroleum products to Iran. Those firms, two from China, one from Singapore, and one from the United Arab Emirates did not offer any indication, publicly or to the GAO, that they had stopped selling oil products to Iran.

The GAO found that three different firms – Russia’s Lukoil, Malayasia’s Petronas, and Kuwait’s IPG – had also sold petroleum products to Iran during the January 2009 to June 2010 time period. These three firms, however, appear to have ended gasoline and fuel sales to Iran ahead of the passage of the latest round of U.S. sanctions.

IPG was the only firm among the three to contact the GAO and tell the agency it had made fuel sales to Iran. None of the firms told GAO whether or not they had ended fuel sales to Iran.

Seven other firms were identified by the GAO as having sold fuel to Iran during the January 2009 to June 2010 period but had confirmed that they had stopped ahead of the most recent sanctions resolution. Those firms, including Royal Dutch Shell and France’s Total, confirmed that they had sold fuel to Iran in 2009 and 2010, but told the GAO that they had ended the sales.

Only one of the 16 firms identified by the GAO – BP Global – disputed the agency’s findings. The GAO found that BP had sold fuel to Iran in both 2009 and 2010, according to some of the open sources it examined. Other sources indicated that BP had stopped selling fuel to Iran in 2008.

Among the 16 firms identified by the GAO, three had contracts with the federal government in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the time during which they were selling fuel to Iran. One of those firms, the state oil company of the UAE, was also on the list of firms that are probably still selling fuel to Iran.

Another firm, France’s Total, had sold fuel to Iran while it had $131 million in federal defense contracts but told the GAO it had stopped the fuel sales in May 2010.

The third firm, BP Global, had the largest contracts with the federal government. Valued at a combined $2.2 million over fiscal years 2009 and 2010, BP supplied large amounts of jet and turbine fuel to the Defense Department.

Source Article

By John Donovan

We are in high level email correspondence with Royal Dutch Shell regarding extraordinary – some might say sensational – information confirmed by the U.S. Dept of Defense. The correspondence has not been productive thus far as Shell officials are playing peek-a-boo and pass the parcel. We intend to publish the information tomorrow unless we receive a request from Shell today providing an indication of when we can expect a substantive response. Shell has no need to play for time. We will delay publication to give Shell further time to investigate provided a clear indication is given of when we can expect a substantive response. By coincidence or otherwise, our website has, for some unknown reason, crashed several times in the last 24 hours. We have had 28 notifications of “technical problems” with our website (hosted on a dedicated server) within the last 15 hours. If we have further problems, or disappear from the Internet altogether, you can draw your own conclusions on what might have happened. In an episode of the intrigue we have come to expect from Shell, it managed to close down royaldutchshellplc.com  once before, fortunately only briefly. That was after Shell’s failed attempt in 2005 to seize the domain name.

In March 2007, Shell set up a counter-measures team to take us on. One Shell internal email marked “Legally Privileged and Confidential” contained an admittance that Shell was on the back foot as a result of our activities and threatened a “demonstration that we won’t tolerate the Donovans approach any longer?” Lots of huffing and puffing, but the only action by Shell since then has all been of the sinister cowardly variety, via Shell in-house and external spooks.

UPDATE: WE WILL PUBLISH AN ARTICLE ABOUT SHELL INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE AT 7.01pm EDT TONIGHT/00.01  UK TIME ON 7 OCTOBER.

THE LAWYER

Royal Dutch Shell hires Debevoise silk as next legal chief

5 October 2010 | By Luke McLeod-Roberts

Royal Dutch Shell has appointed a new legal director to take over from incumbent Beat Hess, who retires in January 2011.

Peter Rees QC joins from the London office of US firm Debevoise & Plimpton, where he is a partner in the dispute resolution group.

Debevoise European chair of litigation Lord Goldsmith QC said: “Peter leaves the litigation department immeasurably stronger than when he joined. We’ll miss him but we’ll be continuing to build on the work he has so successfully done.”

This comes after The Lawyer reported that managing counsel, exploration and production for Shell UK David Isenegger is leaving the company’s Aberdeen office to become general counsel at Centrica Energy (13 September 2010).

Isenegger takes over from Peter Roberts, who left to join Ashurst earlier this year.

SOURCE ARTICLE