Posts under ‘Dow Jones Newswires’

Since becoming Shell’s chief executive last year, Peter Voser has announced divestment plans in the company’s refining and marketing branch. He wants to reduce Shell’s refining capacity by 15%, or around 600,000 barrels a day, over a three-year

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Nigerian militant group the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, launched a bomb attack on the Delta State government house in the city of Warri Monday.

Agence France-Presse reported at 1024 GMT that a blast had rocked a ceremony held to mark an amnesty for former rebel fighters in the city. It wasn’t clear if there were any casualties.

MEND e-mailed a warning of the attack at 1013 GMT, saying the first of three explosive devices planted in the government compound would be detonated at 1030 GMT. The group also threatened further attacks against oil infrastructure in the region, singling out facilities operated by France’s Total SA (TOT) as targets.

“Operatives of MEND today March 15, 2010, successfully breached the security at the Delta state government house in Warri and planted three explosive devices in and around this compound,” the MEND statement said. It warned the government house and the neighboring school should be evacuated before the first detonation, but didn’t say when the other devices would explode.

The bomb targeted a conference organized by Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper, which was being hosted in the government compound, the e-mail said.

By James Herron, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 (0)20 7842 9317; james.herron@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 15, 2010 07:02 ET (11:02 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

SOURCE ARTICLE

AMSTERDAM -(Dow Jones)- A lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) over oil leaks in Nigeria has been adjourned by a Dutch court, one of the plaintiffs said Wednesday, adding that the hearing should start this summer.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By James Herron
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

LONDON (Dow Jones)–Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) data containing the contact details of tens of thousands of employees, which the company said could compromise their personal safety, has been leaked to a blogger critical of the company, according to emails seen by Dow Jones Newswires.

The data, which includes mobile numbers and home postcodes of workers in dangerous locations like Port Harcourt, Nigeria, was leaked by a number of Shell staff to John Donovan, a blogger who is critical of the company and is a frequent recipient of leaks from within Shell.

Shell’s Niger Delta operations have been troubled by violence for several years. Attacks or sabotage on oil infrastructure in the region regularly disrupt production and employees are sometimes targeted.

Four expatriates working for a Shell Petroleum Development Co. contractor in Port Harcourt were kidnapped last month and later released unharmed. Two Nigerians were killed during the kidnapping.

“Some of the information is sensitive from the security point of view and in some cases personal safety could be compromised by its publication,” Shell’s Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer Richard Wiseman wrote in an email to Donovan. Wiseman asked Donovan not to publish the information on his Web site.

Donovan told Dow Jones Newswires he hasn’t yet decided whether to publish the data in full, but said he takes Wiseman’s warnings about safety of Shell employees seriously.

According to another email seen by Dow Jones Newswires, the data was leaked by a group of Shell employees in the U.K., the U.S. and the Netherlands who believe the company is abusing the environment and human rights in Nigeria.

Shell wasn’t immediately able to comment.

Shell has recently finished a major restructuring program during which many employees had to re-apply for their own jobs and 5,000 people were made redundant. Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser said there will be another 1,000 job cuts this year aimed at cutting costs by $1 billion and improving profitability.

Blog Web site: http://www.royaldutchshellplc.com

-By James Herron, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 (0)20 7842 9317; james.herron@dowjones.com

WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE

“Negotiations are going on with Shell,” Shashi Ruia, chairman of the diversified Indian conglomerate, said Thursday on the sidelines of a conference, declining to indicate when the talks would be completed. Essar Group, which controls Essar Oil Ltd. (500134.BY), is in talks to acquire Shell’s Stanlow refinery in the U.K. and the Anglo-Dutch company’s Heide and Harburg plants in Germany.

IBADAN, Nigeria (Dow Jones)–Shell Petroleum Development Co., or SPDC, has closed some production following the sabotage on its Trans-Ramos Pipeline in its western operations in Nigeria, a spokesman said Monday.

January 27, 2010: 08:08 AM ET

ABUJA, Nigeria -(Dow Jones)- Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) and Chevron Corp. ( CVX) will soon renew oil leases with the Nigerian government despite uncertainty caused by the absence of the country’s President, a senior government official said late Tuesday.

“Shell and Chevron have some outstanding issues they’re trying to resolve, but definitely the renewal is sure,” Emmanuel Egbogah, Special Adviser to the President on Petroleum Matters, said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. ” We’re quite confident that there’s not going to be a problem of non-renewal.”

Egbogah would not elaborate on the specific issues holding the renewals up, but said “they are not serious.”

Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua has been in Saudi Arabia receiving medical treatment since Nov. 23, but his absence has not affected renewal negotiations, Egbogah said.

Either way, “the president will be home soon,” said Egbogah.

ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM) signed a renewal deal for leases of four oil fields in December 2009, for 20 years with an option to renew.

-By Will Connors – +234-708-246-0459 – connors.will@gmail.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-27-10 0808ET
Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

SOURCE ARTICLE

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

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

JANUARY 25, 2010

By Hassan Hafidh

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

A consortium made up of Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) finalized a deal in Baghdad Monday to develop the West Qurna phase 1 oil field in southern Iraq, Iraqi oil officials said.

It represents the first time a U.S.-led group has been allowed into Iraq’s oil patch since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Exxon and Shell won the right to develop the field following the country’s first postwar licensing auction held last year. The license to develop the field wasn’t initially awarded in the auction in June, but a deal was reached following subsequent negotiations.

Under the terms of the 20-year-long deal, Exxon and Shell will be paid $1.90 for each extra barrel of oil they extract on top of current production at the field.

The Exxon team said it would boost production at the field to 2.325 million barrels a day, up from just 279,000 barrels a day currently. The field has estimated reserves of 8.7 billion barrels.

-By Hassan Hafidh, Dow Jones Newswires; +962 799 831 831; hassan.hafidh@dowjones.com

WSJ ARTICLE

Essar, which plans to have a refining capacity of one million barrels a day, is in talks to buy three European refineries from Royal Dutch Shell PLC. In July, Essar acquired a 50% stake in 80,000-barrel-a-day Mombasa- based Kenya Petroleum Refineries Ltd. from Shell, Chevron Corp. and BP PLC.