Posts under ‘Associated Press’

Associated Press, 03.19.10, 08:03 AM EDT

AMSTERDAM — Royal Dutch Shell PLC says it has made a significant discovery of oil 25,000 feet below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company says the deposits were found at the Appotmattox prospect in the Mississippi Canyon of the gulf, an area where other rich deposits were discovered last year.

Shell said in a statement Friday it found oil at 25,077 feet (7,217 meters), then drilled an appraisal sidetrack and found more at 25,950 feet (7,910 meters).

Shell operates and holds an 80 percent working interest in the prospect, with the Canadian-based Nexen Inc. ( NXY – news – people ) holding the remaining 20 percent.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press.

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Associated Press

03.10.10, 10:23 AM EST

AMSTERDAM — Royal Dutch Shell Plc said Wednesday it has stopped selling gasoline to Iran, the latest company to cease business with a country that is increasingly targeted by U.S.-encouraged sanctions.

Iran also angered the West when it delayed revelations that it was building a secret fortified plant as part of its nuclear program, which Tehran says is designed for peaceful purposes.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Associated Press, 03.03.10, 07:47 AM EST

LAGOS, Nigeria — Royal Dutch Shell PLC says unknown gunmen have attacked an oil flow station in the restive Niger Delta.

Tony Okonedo, a spokesman for the company said Wednesday that explosives planted at the Kokori flow station in the western half of the Delta detonated, damaging the unused station. Okonedo said no employees were in the area at the time of the detonation on Tuesday.

A previously unknown group later issued a statement to Nigerian newspapers claiming responsibility for the attack.

Militants in the Niger Delta have attacked pipelines, kidnapped petroleum company employees and fought government troops since January 2006. They demand that the federal government send more oil-industry funds to Nigeria’s southern region, which remains poor despite five decades of oil production.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Associated Press, 02.26.10, 12:52 PM EST

HOUSTON — Royal Dutch Shell PLC and IBM Corp. are teaming up to research how to extend the life of oil and natural gas fields.

IBM’s analytic and simulation experience will be melded with Shell’s subsurface and reservoir expertise to create a more efficient and accurate picture of how to tap the reserves, the companies said.

The two companies will reformulate and automate the task of reconciling different sets of data, including flow rates and pressure, time-lapse seismic data from subsurface rock formations and sound wave data from between wells.

The new reconciliation process should help save costs and will become part of Shell’s proprietary reservoir modeling tool kits.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

JANUARY 25, 2010, 9.32 A.M. ET

By MATTHEW CURTIN

These days, you have to corral an army of engineers in the desert to build an enormous factory to transform natural gas into a liquid to be used like oil. The capital cost of Royal Dutch Shell’s Pearl gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar is a cool $18 billion or more—10% of its market capitalization. Like Chevron’s Gorgon liquefied-natural-gas project offshore Australia, it shows what big integrated oil companies are capable of.

Associated PressShell has bumped up its exploration budget to $3 billion.

But have they neglected bread-and-butter exploration for lower-risk, lower-return engineering projects? Certainly, investors are unimpressed. A decade ago, the international oil companies, or IOCs, accounted for 79% of energy-sector market capitalization and nearly all its net income. Today the figures are 53% and 62%, according to Sanford C. Bernstein. Shell trades at a discount of 13% and 36% respectively to the 2010 forward price-to-earnings multiples at Petroleo Brasileiro and BG Group. But their estimated five-year average output growth is 5% and 9% compared with Shell’s 3%, around the IOC average.

If there is a premium on growth, why haven’t the IOCs spent more on exploration? The question is a little unfair. The majors are so big they spend billions simply replacing the barrels they produce. Geopolitics and resource nationalism have narrowed growth options.

It takes a big discovery to move the needle. Shell more than doubled its exploration budget to $1.4 billion between 2004 and 2008 when it represented 3% of net cash from operations. But contrast that with the 16% of net cash from operations spent by the smaller BG, which has made exciting finds offshore Brazil, alongside Petrobras, and in West Africa. That is why Bernstein analyst Neil McMahon questions whether IOC executives have sufficiently examined the merits of exploration over one-off engineering marvels. Facilities like Pearl have to be built on giant, long-life gas fields, which are rare.

Intriguingly, Shell, scaling back development of its high-cost Canadian tar-sands operation, has bumped up its exploration budget to $3 billion, around 10% of capital spending. But could it spend even more? With their huge upfront cost sunk in 2011, Shell’s two Qatar projects will generate $4 billion a year in cash flow. They will be nicely geared to any rise in oil prices at a modest unit cost of $6 per barrel of oil equivalent. Few IOCs may be as well placed as Shell to take on more exploration risk.

Write to Matthew Curtin at matthew.curtin@dowjones.com

WSJ ARTICLE

Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser said his company looks “forward to a good cooperation with the government,” but he refused to say how much money will be spent on the project.

BAGHDAD (AP) – Iraq has finalized a deal with a consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell to develop one of Iraq’s mammoth oil fields in the south.

Shell and partner Malaysia’s state-run Petronas won the right to develop the 12.5 billion barrel field last month during Iraq’s second postwar bidding round.

The companies will be paid $1.39 per barrel produced. They plan to raise production at the Majnoon field from the current 45,900 barrels per day to 1.8 million barrels per day over 10 years.

The 20-year deal was inked Sunday during a ceremony at Iraq’s Oil Ministry in Baghdad.

The deal is one of seven agreements awarded in a December round that offered 15 oil fields up for bid. The other deals are expected to be finalized this month.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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December 11, 2009 By The Associated Press SINAN SALAHEDDIN (Associated Press Writer)

BAGHDAD (AP) — A consortium led by European oil giant Shell has won the rights to develop Iraq’s giant Majnoon oil field, an almost 13 billion barrel behemoth that is the largest on offer in the country’s second international oil auction.

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said Friday that Shell and Malaysia’s state-run oil company, Petronas, beat out another consortium grouping France’s…

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Dutch Nigerians hold a banner supporting compensation claims by Nigerian farmers against oil-company Shell

ASSOCIATED PRESS

3 December 2009

THE HAGUE — Oil giant Anglo-Dutch Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary went on trial before a civil court here Thursday for a pipeline leak in 2005 alleged to have caused widespread environmental and social damage.

“The crude oil which poured for days from the pipeline damaged the environment, destroyed crops and made fishing impossible,” said Michel Uiterwaal, lawyer for the Friends of the Earth Netherlands and for two Nigerian villagers, who jointly brought the case.

Shell’s lawyer, Jan de Bie Leuveling Tjeenk, stated that the leak in July 2005 near the village of Oruma in southwest Nigeria amounted to “about 400 barrels” and had a “limited impact” on the environment.

Furthermore, the leak was not the outcome of bad pipeline maintenance by Shell, as the plaintiffs contended, but of sabotage, he added.

The oil group also challenged the competence of the court to judge a case concerning its subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria.

“There’s no reason to try this case in the Netherlands,” Shell spokesman Andre Romeyn told AFP after the hearing. “The affair concerns events that happened in Nigeria and a Nigerian company.”

Uiterwaal contested this argument, declaring that “the policy of the group, notably on environmental issues, is decided at headquarters.”

The court must first rule on its competence to try the affair and announced that it will declare on December 30 whether it proceeds with the case.

Shell faces two other cases brought by Nigerian villagers in the Netherlands. They are demanding better maintenance of the pipelines, steps to clean up polluted land and financial compensation for the economic damage they say they have sustained.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

AP SOURCE ARTICLE

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The Dutch government approved a pilot project Wednesday to pump carbon dioxide into depleted gas fields beneath a town of 43,000 people as a way of reducing emissions blamed for global warming.