October, 2006:

By John Donovan
Monday 30 October 2006

The comment below was posted on our Live Chat facility today.

“Guest 7262: I have heard enough of the spin you publish on your website on behalf of your friend “Dr” Huong. You are exploiting him to suit your own agenda. The rabid Huong left us with no option other than to use the courts. He was circulating wholly unfounded shockingly abusive allegations against named Shell managerial staff. It was our duty to protect the individuals he defamed. We had no other choice.” read more

October 30 2006 at 01:28AM  
By William Nsoyoh

Yenagoa, Nigeria – Protesters angry over a lack of jobs and aid took over an oil-pumping station run by Italian oil firm Agip in Nigeria’s volatile southern delta region, forcing the company to shut the flow of oil there, a Nigerian security official said on Sunday.

Scores of protesters from the Egbema-Ngalabiri community invaded Agip’s nearby Clough Creek facility just before midnight on Saturday and forced workers there to shut operations, Joshua Benamesia, a security aide of the Bayelsa state government in charge of the area, said. Agip is a subsidiary of Italian energy company, ENI SpA. read more

EXTRACT: On the land, the government produced bombs, mustard gas, nerve gas and chlorine gas. Shell Oil manufactured pesticides there. The arsenal became one of the nation’s most polluted sites.

THE ARTICLE

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 29, 2006

COMMERCE CITY – The home where Lucille Egli McIntyre grew up looks nothing like it did in 1942 – when the federal government seized the farm for the war effort.

The red brick laid by her father is covered with chicken wire and white stucco. read more

EXTRACT: The a list of investments of the two major pensions funds in companies that it said did business in Iran. They included firms such as China Petroleum and Chemical and Royal Dutch/Shell. Citing those links, the Republican campaign charged in a statement distributed to reporters: “Bob Casey is aiding and abetting terrorism and genocide.”

THE ARTICLE

Monday, October 30, 2006

By James O’Toole,

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum charged yesterday that state Treasurer Bob Casey has “been AWOL in the war on terrorism” by failing to ensure that state funds are not invested in firms with ties to nations linked to terrorism. read more

By: Drilling of the Brugden prospect has revived the region’s exploration efforts, Lloyds List
Published: Oct 30, 2006

AFTER a flurry of activity in the 1990s, offshore drilling around the Faroe Islands had been all but dormant until this summer when Norway’s Statoil group spudded an exploration well on its licence 006 on the Brugden prospect.

The well was drilled by the Stena Don drilling rig, a semi-submersible capable of drilling in harsh waters up to 1,640 ft in depth. The well results were mixed as it did not find new reserves, but did give indications of future drilling potential. read more

Published: Oct 30, 2006

DUBAI, Oct 30 Asia Pulse – All of a sudden, Canada has turned into the new frontier in non-OPEC oil and gas developments.

Russia has rumbled about taking over the huge Sakhalin II field whereas OPEC itself cut back production over 1.2 million barrels a day, due to which the demands on non-OPEC producing countries have increased even more.

New emphasis on have been put on friendlier non-OPEC countries due to this step. It has been agreed by Shell Canada and Western Oil Sands that they would invest billions into the planned expansion of its Athabasca oil sands project in order to bring production up to 100,000 barrels per day. read more

By Jeremy Grant and Kate Burgess: Published: October 30 2006 02:00 | Last updated: October 30 2006 02:00

In the world of US corporate governance, a gigantic tug-of-war has played out for decades between company boards and shareholders in the companies they run.

At issue is the ability of shareholders to get access to the proxy, which would give them a say in who is elected to company boards. Frustration has been mounting among large institutional shareholder groups over a Securities and Exchange rule – known as 14a-8 – blocking their access. read more

Sun Oct 29, 2006 12:19pm ET

NEW YORK, Oct 29 (Reuters) – Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNQ.TO: Quote, Profile, Research), one of North America’s largest independent oil and gas companies, could become a takeover target of a major oil company because of its large presence in the Alberta oil sands, one of the world’s most promising energy regions, according to Barron’s.

But John Langille, a Canadian Natural vice chairman, said selling isn’t on the horizon.

“We want to continue to grow our company into a very strong independent,” he told Barron’s in the newspaper’s Oct. 30 edition. “Selling to someone else is not part of our game plan.” read more

Monday, October 30, 2006. Issue 3529. Page 7.
By Miriam Elder
Staff Writer

Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev struck a conciliatory note with Shell’s Sakhalin-2 project Friday, saying he was not seeking to shut it down and acknowledging that the operator had made some progress in cleaning up environmental damage.

“Our job isn’t to punish the company, but to see that they continue working properly,” Trutnev told foreign news media at a briefing in Moscow after a three-day tour that took him to Sakhalin. read more

Oil baron… Europe’s future supplies of oil and gas rely on the negotiating skills of Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell

Sunday 29 October 2006

By William Rees-Mogg

What are the greatest problems facing the world? Perhaps one should put global warming first; that is largely being caused by mankind’s unquenchable appetite for carbon energy, particularly the hydrocarbons of oil and gas. Perhaps the second great anxiety should be the threat of war, or the actual war in the Middle East.
That has tribal, religious and economic causes, but the economic issue is oil. read more

(Sakhalin)

Russia has a new weapon with which to bully the West: its vast energy reserves. As the world’s biggest supplier of oil and gas, the Kremlin is determined that industrial muscle will succeed where Marxism failed. When a 32-year-old KGB agent called Vladimir Putin was invited to attend the Red Banner Institute in Moscow, one of the Soviet Union’s elite spy colleges, he couldn’t believe his luck.

It was 1984 and the young but deeply ambitious Putin was soon being groomed as a specialist in economic and technological espionage. His teachers were still revelling in a now long-forgotten victory over America: gas was flowing from a brand new Russian pipeline to Western Germany, earning much needed hard cash, despite a lengthy campaign by President Ronald Reagan to block its construction with sanctions. read more

DOMINIC O’CONNELL
Agenda
Sunday 29 October 2006

AFTER a difficult few years, there were finally reasons for smiles at Shell last week. Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive, unveiled a record set of results with a flourish — it seems difficult to conceive of a company having net income of $7 billion in a single quarter, but that’s what Shell announced.

But it’s never that easy in the oil business. Just as Van der Veer was setting hearts a-flutter with his big numbers, there were worrying noises coming out of Russia. read more

Sunday October 29, 2006

Schemes that calculate your CO2 emissions so you can pay into green projects may not always do what they claim, writes Jessica Bown 
 
COMPANIES are capitalising on consumers’ guilt about climate change with schemes that offer to offset your carbon emissions, but experts say there are better ways to go green — and save money in the process.

Carbon offsetting, where you put a small amount of money towards environmental projects to offset your carbon emissions, has become big business, worth an estimated £60m a year, compared with £20m in 2005. 
 
Firms such as BP, Shell, British Airways and Land Rover all offer websites that calculate how much carbon your activities emit and then tell you how much you should contribute to green-energy projects. However, these schemes are unregulated, so consumers have little comeback if the money is not used in the way they hoped and a sizeable chunk of any donation goes towards their overheads. read more

Sunday October 29, 2006

The international giants are in trouble, with reserves shrinking, taxes and costs rising, and producing nations reneging on deals or nationalising their assets. The answer to their problems could be massive mergers, writes Oliver Morgan

Multinational oil companies are having a tough time. Crude prices are falling, maintaining production is a struggle, yet taxes set by the world’s resource-rich nations are rising – as are costs. Topping it all is a rising trend of energy nationalism stretching round the globe. read more

By Jason Bush

Oleg Mitvol, head of Russia’s EPA, is targeting the Sakhalin II oilfield and making enemies—possibly even in the Kremlin.

He’s fast becoming one of Russia’s best-known public figures. His face is regularly on television, the pages of newspapers, and the covers of magazines. Now, his activities are making waves internationally, causing one of the biggest stirs to affect foreign investors in Russia for years. Not bad going for the deputy head of a small government agency that, until a few months ago, very few people had heard of, even in Russia. read more