Posts from ‘May, 2011’

Tuesday May 10, 2011

By GUY CHAZAN AND STEPHEN POWER

The White House is ratcheting up its involvement in a looming decision on whether to grant Royal Dutch Shell PLC permission to drill for oil off the coast of Alaska, raising the company’s hopes that it can secure the necessary permits for an expensive and controversial project.

In an interview, Shell’s U.S. president, Marvin Odum, said a meeting last week with senior Environmental Protection Agency officials and top energy aides to President Barack Obama left him more confident Shell would get all the permits it needs to start drilling in the Arctic seas off Alaska next year. The drilling plans have faced fierce opposition from environmental and some indigenous Alaskan groups and, a senior administration official noted, must still secure the approval of multiple federal agencies.

The White House’s increased attention to Shell comes as congressional Republicans and Democrats from oil-rich states are raising pressure on the administration to allow more domestic drilling. Amid turmoil in the Middle East, crude prices—and gasoline prices—have jumped in recent months.

At the same time, environmental groups and other Democrats in Congress want Mr. Obama to tighten regulation of deep-sea exploration in the wake of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill involving BP PLC.

One area that symbolizes the competing pressures is Alaska’s coastal waters. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska are thought to contain 25 billion barrels of oil and 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—the U.S.’s second-largest hydrocarbon reserves after the Gulf of Mexico.

But despite having invested $3.5 billion in its offshore Alaska exploration program, Shell has yet to drill a single well there. Its plans have been stymied by legal challenges and regulatory hurdles, which have only grown since BP’s deepwater-well blowout last year.

The latest setback came in December, when an air-quality permit that Shell had received from the Environmental Protection Agency for temporary exploration operations was invalidated by a panel of administrative-law judges at the U.S. agency. The judges ruled that the agency hadn’t adequately analyzed how nitrogen-dioxide emissions from Shell’s operations would affect people living on Alaska’s North Slope.

Shell reacted furiously, calling the delay to its Arctic program “frustrating,” “disappointing” and “irresponsible.” Members of Congress from Alaska have also blasted the decision.

Since then, Shell’s relations with regulators have improved, especially after last Wednesday’s White House meeting. Mr. Odum said it was attended by representatives of several of the federal agencies involved in the permitting process, including the EPA, and was “the strongest indication we’ve ever had of a coordinated government approach to start drilling in Alaska.”

He said Shell presented the dates by which it needs certainty on permits in order to move ahead with its 2012 drilling plans, and “the agencies are reflecting on their ability to meet those dates.”

“My confidence in the EPA delivering the permits has gone up considerably as a result [of the meeting],” Mr. Odum said.

An EPA spokesman said “we have worked with Shell to address the concerns raised by” the judges and that all of the relevant federal agencies “are ready to continue working with the company as they seek the appropriate permits for this project.”

A senior administration official who attended the May 4 meeting said the White House often meets with businesses or other groups that have questions or concerns about navigating the regulatory process. The meeting with Shell was convened to “facilitate the conversation” between the company and the government, she said. A decision on whether to grant Shell a new air permit will be made by the EPA, not the White House, she added. The EPA’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, testified before Congress in March that she expects the agency’s analysis of the project “will clearly show that there is no public health concern here.”

“We don’t prejudge or take a position on” Shell’s project,” the administration official said. But, she added, “we’re committed to increasing domestic oil and gas supply. This is a potential resource, and we’re going to look at it.”

Conservation groups worry about the devastation an oil spill could wreak on the pristine wilderness of the Arctic and say Shell lacks the ability to respond to an oil spill in such a remote and fragile location—a claim Shell denies.

“Shell doesn’t have its permits for the simple reason that its drilling plans don’t comply with the law,” said Rebecca Noblin, Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has challenged Shell’s proposed project. “All the attention Shell is trying to focus on EPA is really just a diversion from the fundamental issue that there is no oil-spill-response capability in the Arctic, and without that capacity there is no way for Shell to lawfully go forward with its plans.”

Mr. Odum said Shell has put in place an immediate-response capability, fully staffed and fully equipped, to deal with a 20,000 barrel-a-day spill in Alaska and also has state-of-the-art capping and containment systems on hand to cope with any discharge. The company has also emphasized that the reservoirs it is planning to drill in Alaska are in shallower waters—and at much lower pressures—than the BP well that blew out last year.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Rising prices has led to a sharp increase in shale gas extraction schemes

By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Shale gas drilling operations increase the risk of nearby drinking water becoming contaminated with methane, a study has suggested.

Researchers found, on average, methane concentrations 17 times above normal in samples taken near drilling sites.

Growing demand for energy has led to a sharp increase in shale gas extraction around the globe, prompting concerns about the impact of the technology.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We found surprising levels of methane in home-owners’ wells that were close to natural gas wells, ” co-author Rob Jackson, Nicholas Professor of Global Change at Duke University, North Carolina, explained.

“We found that within a kilometre of an active gas well, you were much more likely to have high methane concentrations,” he told BBC News.

The team from Duke University collected samples from 68 private water wells in the north-eastern states of Pennsylvania and New York.

Fire water

“We found some extremely high concentrations of methane: 64 milligrams of methane per litre of drinking water, compared with a normal level of one milligram or lower,” Professor Jackson observed.

“That sort of concentration is up at a level where people worry about an explosion hazard.”

Videos are available on the web that appear to show people setting fire to water pouring out of a tap, and Professor Jackson said that he had witnessed such an spectacle himself.

He agreed that the main concern at present was not from drinking the water, but from the risk of an explosion.

However, he added that the team were calling for a medical review of chronic, low-level exposure to methane.

“I could not find any peer reviewed literature on the health effects of low level methane on people,” He observed.

Professor Jackson said that the simplest explanation of how the gas ended up in people’s water supplies was down to “leaky gas well casings”.

“If there are cracks or imperfections in the gas well, especially in the vertical section nearer the surface, then methane and possibly fracking fluid/waters,” he said.

“That is the simplest and most likely explanation.

“There are other possibilities; some people have proposed that methane can migrate to the surface through fissures that are opened in process of fracturing the rock. To me, that is less likely.”

Professor Jackson was keen to point out that the study’s drinking water samples revealed no evidence of contamination from fracking fluids, of which about five million gallons are used to unlock the gas in each well.

As well as the PNAS study, the team has also published a paper outlining a number of research recommendations, highlighting areas they feel needs to be done in order to gain a stronger scientific insight into the impact of the technique.

These include:

• Initiate a medical review of the health effects of methane
• Construct a national database of methane and other chemical attributes in drinking water
• Evaluate the mechanisms of methane contamination in drinking water
• Refine estimates for greenhouse gas emissions of methane associated with shale gas extraction
• Systematically sample drinking water wells and deep formation waters
• Study disposal of waste waters from hydraulic fracturing and shale gas extraction

In the UK, MPs are expected to publish a report shortly that considers the impact of shale gas extraction and what role it can play in terms of delivering future energy security.

The Energy and Climate Change Select Committee inquiry will also assess what are the risks and hazards associated with drilling for shale gas?

The combination of rising energy prices and concern about future energy supplies has seen the technology being embraced by nations around the globe.

“Ten years ago, people did not really know about this source of gas,” said Professor Jackson.

“The boom in the United States started in the Barnett Shale (found in Texas, and considered to be the largest onshore gas reserve in the US) and it has only been in recent years that we have realised how much gas is out there and economically available.

“it is the combination of energy economics and the emergence of new drilling and fracturing technologies that have made it cheap enough to do.”

Professor Jackson said he had witnessed contaminated water being set alight

SOURCE BBC NEWS ARTICLE

RELATED

• Shale gas may be worse than coal 12 APRIL 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
• Shale gas: an energy saviour? 21 DECEMBER 2010, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
• US energy alternative: Shale gas 21 DECEMBER 2010, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
• UK shale plans target cheap gas 01 APRIL 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
• Can Europe benefit from shale gas? 20 JANUARY 2011, BUSINESS

• Duke University
• Energy and Climate Change Select Committee
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

• UK urged to halt shale gas tests 17 JANUARY 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

By John Donovan

We have recently received information from Shell in response to our 2011 SAR application under the Data Protection Act.

It always contains some surprises, and this time is no exception.

Unbeknown to us, Shell engaged in email correspondence in September/October 2010 with an unknown third party, a business owner, on the subject of Shell paying us a large sum to stop our campaigning focused on Shell.

The correspondence is reproduced below in chronological order, with the first email dated 25 Sept 2010. Identification information other than our surname and web domain name has been redacted by Shell.

We have good reason to believe that the person responding for Shell was Mr Richard Wiseman, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer, Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Mr Wiseman retired a couple of months ago.

We have no idea of the identity of the person who contacted Shell. We assume that it must be someone who impressed Mr Wiseman, or he would not have engaged in the correspondence.

Basically the person suggested that Shell should pay us £250,000 to get rid of us.

THE EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE

From:
Sent: 25 September 2010 09:47
To:
Subject: The Donovans

Dear

I have no connections to Shell or the Donovan’s. An insomnia induced, web browsing session led me to the dispute between the two of you. I have no comment regarding the events, other than to say I can see that it has taken up a lot of resources between the two protagonists. If I were in Shell’s position I would offer the Donovan’s £250,000 to leave the world of Shell behind them and to get on with their lives.

Their website www.rovaldutchshellplc.com ranks 6th on Google! That is all.

Kind regards

RESPONSE FROM SHELL

On 9 Oct 2010, at 07:19,xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    > wrote:

Dear

Thank you for your thoughts. I think that inadvertently you are suggesting we respond to blackmail. Apart from the ethical considerations, what we do the next time it happened?

Regards

Royal Dutch Shell plc Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA
Registered in England and Wales number 4366849 Registered Office: Shell  Centre, London, SE 1
Headquarters: Carel van Bylandtlaan 30, 2596 HR The Hague, The Netherlands

Tel:Fax:
Mobile:
Email:
Internet: http://www.shell.com

RESPONSE FROM BUSINESS OWNER

From:
Sent:    09 October 2010 09:51
To:
Subject:    Re: The Donovan’s

Dear

I can’t see how it could be construed as blackmail. The Donovan’s have already published information about Shell and will continue to do so. I am suggesting a legal agreement between the protagonists which would result in The Donovans transferring ownership of all their websites to Shell and agreeing not to publish anything in the future in return for a sum of money.

I own a successful business and the last thing I would want is a determined, disgruntled customer/supplier, hell bent on making my life difficult.

You must think I’m a complete weirdo or have some connection to the Donovan’s. Truth is I went to a wine tasting in Bury St Edmunds and really liked the building it was in, when I got home I googled the address. It turned out to be the former offices of Don Marketing.

Having spent 8 hours of my life reading all about the battles between the two of you I felt I might as well write to you and tell you what I would do.

Regards

Sent from my iPhone

RESPONSE FROM SHELL

On 9 Oct 2010, at 10:17, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    > wrote:

Mr

As you know the conflict between Shell and the Donovans goes back many years. I would prefer not to go into the details of why an arrangement of the sort you suggest would not work in practice with these individuals.

Regards

Royal Dutch Shell plc Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA
Registered in England and Wales number 4366849 Registered Office: Shell Centre, London, SE1
Headquarters: Carel van Bylandtlaan 30, 2596 HR The Hague, The Netherlands

Tel
Fax:
Mobile:
Email:
Internet: http://www.shell.com

RESPONSE

From:
Sent:    0-9 October 2010 10.29
To:
Subject:    Re: The Donovan’s

Dear

I guess if it were that simple, it would have been resolved many years ago.

[ hope you'll excuse my intrusion.

Regards

Sent from my iPhone

EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE ENDS

Shell used the word blackmail and also implied that we could not be trusted to keep to any such agreement.

Both charges are entirely without foundation.

Shell has settled several High Court actions we brought against the company for breach of contract. Shell subsequently broke the peace treaty settlement signed in 1999 and as a consequence, we served legal notice on Shell that it had repudiated that agreement. Shell took no legal action denying that this was the case. All of this is documented. It is Shell that has a “breach of contact” track record and cannot be trusted to honour agreements.

All of our campaigning activities against Shell are entirely non-commercial and always have been. There is no income from our activities. We have not approached Shell suggesting that they should pay us anything to cease campaigning and will never do so. We have never asked anyone else to approach Shell on our behalf and will never do so.  Hence any suggestion of blackmail is also unfair and untrue.

We were approached by a businessman some years ago seeking our permission for him to contact Shell with the aim of negotiating a deal with the same objective, on the basis of him receiving a fee of some kind. We declined his offer.

We are aware from previous Shell internal documents supplied to us in response to a SAR application that someone at Shell raised the prospect of trying to “engage with the Donovans, to try to bring them onside or get them to tone down their anti Shell stance?”

A retired senior Shell manager, a Dutchman, approached us in 2007 and again in 2011 asking if we had any objections to him trying to act as a peacemaker between the parties. He had approached Shell on the same basis, an offer to act as an unpaid intermediary out of the best of intentions – blessed are the peacemakers. He met with me in the UK and with Shell directors at The Hague.  The last I heard from those discussions is that the Royal Dutch Shell Company Secretary and General Counsel Corporate, Michiel Brandjes, who is now designated as our main contact with Shell, says that I get on well with him, which is perfectly true. I have even received Christmas greetings from him.

Under the circumstances, why would anyone, including The Sunday Times, be under the impression that we have any animosity towards Shell?

The Guardian: 92-year-old’s website leaves oil giant Shell-shocked: 26 October 2009

PDF Version of Guardian article

RELATED ARTICLES

SANTA BARBARA NEWS PRESS: Gripe Sites are all the rage now: 7 February 2009

BUSINESS NEW EUROPE: Shell gets stuck in a Sakhalin blog-mire January 2007

Since the 1990′s, Royal Dutch Shell has been at war with the Donovan family: The Times City Diary 22 September 2007

Online revolutionaries: Sunday Telegraph 9 September 2007

Pressure on Shell over safety of platforms: Saturday 8 September 2007

Prospect Magazine: Shell’s Colchester headache: 12 September 2007

Shell on back foot as ‘gripe site’ alleges safety concerns: Daily Mail 1 September 2007

Nikkei BP (Japan): Gripe sites are becoming more powerful: 13 November 2007

AN ATTEMPT by Royal Dutch Shell to claim the website royaldutchshellplc.com…: The Times 16 August 2005

Hostile Domain: The Times City Diary Tuesday June 21 2005

Shell Wages Legal Fight Over Web Domain Name: The Wall Street Journal Thursday 2 June 2005

one world trust Accountability in Action Newsletter July 2007: Royaldutchshellplc.com – The power of a website: 27 July 2007

By Mike Di Paola – May 9, 2011 5:01 AM GMT+0100

When Hilton Kelley takes me to see the Port Arthur, Texas, housing project where he was born, it isn’t to complain about the usual eyesores. There’s no graffiti, no broken windows, no trash on the ground.

“People care about the neighborhood,” Kelley says.

The problem is next-door. Adjacent to the property are oil and gas refineries, petrochemical plants and toxic-waste incinerators. Companies such as Chevron Phillips Chemical Co., Shell Oil Co. and Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) have been part of the Port Arthur skyline for decades.

“Almost every day we’re getting some weird odor oozing through the community,” he says.

Bad as it is, though, it would be a lot worse if Kelley hadn’t come back after years away from his hometown and decided to fight the filth. His efforts won him the Goldman Environmental Prize last month, along with its $150,000 award.

Kelley, now 50, left Port Arthur in 1979 to join the military. “The Village People really sold me on the Navy,” he laughs before adding, “I love my country. I love my hometown, and my community.”

After leaving the service, he found some acting work in Oakland, including a job as a stand-in for Mykelti Williamson in the television series “Midnight Caller.”

In 2000, he returned to Port Arthur for Mardi Gras celebrations and was appalled at what had become of the old neighborhood.

“I found myself walking around wondering, ‘What happened? Why did all the stores close? Where did all the people go? Why was our community falling apart?’”

Industrial Neighbors

The culprits at that time were eight major petrochemical and hazardous-waste facilities, all planted right up against the largely black neighborhoods on the west side of the tracks.

“I believe we have been targeted because we are low-income here, and the people don’t have a loud voice.”

Kelley provided the voice. He launched the nonprofit Community in Power and Development Association Inc. and, with assistance from the environmental justice group Global Community Monitor, started training residents on testing air samples using simple equipment.

The noxious odors were correlated with serious health problems. Jefferson County, where Port Arthur is located, has significantly higher rates of cancer and other illnesses than the rest of Texas.

Kelley has also brought the message of environmental injustice to a wider audience. In 2002, he testified before the U.S. Senate on behalf of poor communities. He has spoken on the issue at Shell’s annual meetings, in London and The Hague — as a shareholder, having purchased a single share of stock to secure the right to a microphone.

‘Good Neighbor’

In 2006, he helped negotiate a “good neighbor” agreement with Motiva Enterprises LLC, a joint venture of Shell and Saudi Refining, requiring, among other things, that the refinery assist local residents with health-care coverage. The deal also set up a $3.5 million fund for community development.

That year he also led a campaign to block Veolia Corp.’s bid to import and incinerate 20,000 tons of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, at its toxic-waste facility in Port Arthur.

These and other accomplishments won him the Goldman Prize. When asked how he plans to spend the $150,000 award, he laughs.

“I’m going take a vacation,” he says, but adds that he plans to devote more time to the hands-on part of his work than to raising money, which has been all-consuming.

After a tour of the neighborhood, he takes me to Kelley’s Kitchen, the soul-food diner he owns and occasionally uses as a meeting place for the nonstop organizing.

‘I Give a Damn’

“What made me take up the fight is that I care,” he says, stroking a goatee that has gone from pepper to salt in the past 10 years. “I like to say I give a damn.”

This is good for the community, and it ought to inspire other depressed places that have become dumping grounds for the refuse of the industrial age. It is possible to effect change by giving a damn and making noise.

“I was very naive when I came back to Port Arthur. I thought I would be here two or three years, get the job done and then I’d be back to the Bay Area,” Kelley says wistfully, but with pride. “I don’t see this work ending anytime soon.”

(Mike Di Paola writes on preservation and the environment for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Mike Di Paola at mdipaola@nyc.rr.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff in New York at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.

SOURCE ARTICLE

By John Donovan

ADDED TO OUR ARTICLE: Shell embedded spies in host governments of Nigeria, Dubai and Iraq

Shell’s concern at our activities was plain from a Shell internal email dated 15 July 2009.

Extract…

“…says he has about a dozen high level executive who regularly feed him inside infor. For example, he broke XXXXXX reorg plans in May. Is this worrying? are you trying to root out who these people are?

(The missing name was “Vosers”.)

The person who authored the email seems to agree that Shell insider information supplied to us has cost the company “many billions in lost revenue.”

It asks “… are you doing anything to get the website shut down?

The Niger Delta has few major roads and many villages lack electricity and clean water

6 May 2011 Last updated at 16:02

The oil giant Shell has lost its appeal against a ruling that it is not the rightful owner of land where it runs Nigeria’s biggest oil export terminal.

Three years ago, a lower court said the oil firm should pay rent to the local community for Bonny Terminal, but Shell says it bought the land outright.

Shell says it will appeal to the Supreme Court against the judgement.

Few residents of the Niger Delta, home to Nigeria’s oil industry, have benefited from the area’s oil wealth.

“Justice Ekembi Eko upheld that [original] judgement and said that Shell failed to convince the court that they have the certificate of occupancy on the land,” Reuters news agency quotes Emmanuel Asido, one of the lawyers representing the community elders, as saying.

Shell spokesman Precious Okolobo said: “We believe the judgement is wrong.”

The Niger Delta has few major roads and many villages lack electricity and clean water.

Communities have repeatedly claimed that international oil firms fail to respect their rights and contaminate their land with oil spills, though the companies dispute this.

Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer, but attacks by militants on oil installations led to a sharp fall in output during the last decade.

Last year, a government amnesty led thousands of fighters to lay down their weapons.

SOURCE ARTICLE

By Katarzyna Klimasinska – May 5, 2011 9:25 PM GMT+0100

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) would spill no more than 9,468 barrels a day in case of a blowout at proposed wells off Alaska’s Arctic coast, according to drilling plan filed with U.S. regulators.

Shell, blocked since 2007 from developing its Alaska leases, is seeking U.S. approval to drill as many as four wells in the Beaufort Sea — two in 2012 and two in 2013. The volume the wells would discharge in a worst case varies, depending on the well, the Hague-based company said in a plan obtained today.

Shell pledged to deploy skimming vessels to limit a spill in the remote region that is home to polar bears and beluga whales, and use a capping dome to shut a ruptured well. The company’s Alaska campaign is portrayed by industry and environmentalists as a first test for regulators outside the Gulf of Mexico, where exploration resumed under new restrictions after BP Plc (BP/)’s spill last year, the biggest off the U.S. coast.

“Shell has designed their response program based upon a regional capability of responding to an increasing range of spill volumes,” the company said in the plan.

Shell provided two estimates for the worst-case discharge in the report, citing either 9,468 barrels or 9,648 barrels. Kelly op de Weegh, a company spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that 9,468 barrels is correct.

BP’s failed Macondo well in the Gulf spilled as much as 62,000 barrels a day after a April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, the U.S. said on Aug. 2.

Responding to a spill is the chief concern in the Arctic “because of the challenging conditions” such as ice and high seas and where “you don’t have an immediate Coast Guard presence,” Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said in an April 15 interview at Bloomberg’s office in Washington.

– Editors: Steve Geimann, Larry Liebert

To contact the reporter on this story: Katarzyna Klimasinska in Washington at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net

SOURCE ARTICLE