September, 2007:

Vol. 12, No. 39  Week of September 30, 2007

Given the amount of research being done on Arctic oil spill response, Petroleum News asked Shell, a participant in the SINTEF Arctic oil spill response joint industry program, to comment on the viability of the techniques and technologies that the company has specified in its oil discharge prevention and contingency plan for its proposed Beaufort Sea drilling program off Alaska.

For example, Shell sees in-situ burning of spilled oil as a particularly valuable part of its arsenal of response tactics. But, has in-situ burning actually been demonstrated to work in Arctic waters or in sea ice? read more

Shell is the first company in over three years to openly absorb an entire month’s slate of Dubai crude cargoes, say traders

Published: Saturday, 29 September, 2007, 02:08 AM Doha Time 

SINGAPORE: European major Shell has purchased all available November-loading benchmark Dubai crude cargoes after an unprecedented buying spree on the partials market this month, traders and industry sources said yesterday.

On Thursday, US trader Phibro, declared physical delivery of a Dubai cargo to Shell after selling it 19 partial 25,000-barrel lots – the fourth such declaration. read more

Sakhalin-2 will not begin exporting oil and gas from the new terminals until the first half of next year due to construction and commissioning delays on Russia’s largest offshore project.

The Gazprom-led Sakhalin Energy Investment Co. continues to build and commission the oil and gas pipelines that run along the length of the east Russian island, but construction has been more complex than anticipated.

The consortium, which includes Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, has installed two new platforms and built two export terminals and offshore pipelines as part of the Sakhalin II project. read more

Friday, September 28, 2007
Business and Human Rights

The myth of Corporations’ commitments to Human Rights

“Shell supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and believes that business, as an integral part of society, can make an important contribution to furthering these rights”. Shell statement

“Business doesn’t have to choose between profits and principles, Royal Dutch/Shell Group Managing Director Jeroen van der Veer told the Globalisation, Ecology and Economy conference in the Netherlands today.” read more

The President’s summit shows a willingness to take global warming seriously. But don’t expect much more than that

by John Carey
September 28, 2007, 12:01AM EST

For President George W. Bush, climate change is one of those pesky issues that he would love to see just go away. International diplomats say that when the topic of global warming comes up, Bush appears annoyed and has expressed exasperation that the issue still garners so much attention. After all, the White House position has been consistent from the very start of Bush’s tenure: The U.S. will not require mandatory reductions in emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that scientists say are warming the Earth. Bush, the self-proclaimed decider, has decided. read more

Friday, September 28, 2007 1:04:30 PM  
BY T.V. FLOYD    

When young urban consumers are in the market for a new car, many turn to a popular website that has quickly gained a reputation for showcasing the latest vehicle releases.

For the past five years, AutomotiveRhythms.com has built a following of car buffs looking for transportation, ranging from economy vehicles to luxury wheels of steel.

With a few clicks of the mouse, anyone can experience this web portal, which is the brainchild of Kimatni Rawlins, 33, of Burtonsville, Maryland. read more

Written by Tom Whipple    
Thursday, 27 September 2007 

With every passing month, evidence peak world oil production has either passed or is getting very close becomes stronger.

Last week, the world peak oil conference in Ireland, heard that the best available data now suggests there may only be about 250 billion barrels of oil left to find rather than the generally accepted figure of 700 billion barrels put forth by the USCGS in 2000. Keep in mind that 250 billion barrels is only about eight years worth at our current 31 billion barrel per year rate of consumptions and that, should these billions of barrels actually be found, they will be extremely difficult to find and exploit. read more

28 Sep 2007    
 
A race is on to access the world’s remaining gas and oil reserves that is pitting new players in the global market against the tradition conglomerates from industrialized nations, according to a world body.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), says with crude oil prices staying well above $70 a barrel, traditional transnational corporations are losing bargaining power to oil-producing countries “eager to use climbing demand to capture a larger share of the rents.” read more

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, September 28, 2007
 
Stumble onto Chevron Corp.’s latest television ad and you might think you’re watching outtakes from “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The camera swoops low over oceans and freeways, glaciers and gleaming cities. A warm but solemn voice proclaims energy and the environment to be the greatest challenges of our time. The voice, however, soon takes off in a direction Al Gore’s global warming documentary never did. read more

A migrant worker cuts sugar cane for a plantation near Piracicaba, Brazil, that supplies Costa Pinto, a sugar and ethanol mill owned by Cosan, the world’s biggest ethanol exporter, in May, 2007. Photographer: Claudio Perez/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg News

By Michael Smith and Carlos Caminada

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) — Manuel Rodrigues da Silva stoops over, wielding a machete to slice through bamboolike sugar cane stalks in a field that stretches to the horizon in southeastern Brazil. Dressed in a frayed T-shirt and dirt-coated blue work pants, he perspires in the 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat. read more

By Leora Moldofsky in Sydney
Published: September 28 2007 03:00 | Last updated: September 28 2007 03:00

Australia’s Woodside Petroleum has begun to dispose of its underperforming African asset interests with the announcement yesterday of the sale of its assets in Mauritania to the Malaysian state-owned group Petronas.

Woodside said it had sold its 47.4 per cent stake in the Chinguetti project to Petroliam Nasional Berhad for $418m. The A$990m ($871m) project, off the coast of Mauritania, is also operated by Woodside. read more

By DAVID WINNING
September 28, 2007

BEIJING — U.S. oil major ConocoPhillips is offering its Chuan Zhong block in China’s Sichuan province to potential buyers in a rare sale of a Chinese onshore oil and natural-gas asset by a foreign company.

The Chuan Zhong block, which covers an area of 118 hectares in southern China and includes the Ba Jiao Chang gas field, produced an average of 10.3 million cubic feet of natural gas a day in 2006.

By disposing of the Chuan Zhong block, ConocoPhillips will be able to focus more resources on the offshore Peng Lai field in northern China’s Bohai Bay, which is China’s largest oil discovery by a foreign company to date. read more

By Dinakar Sethuraman

Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s liquefied natural gas import terminal in India may receive at least three cargoes of the fuel this month and next, according to transmissions from ships captured by AISLive on Bloomberg.

Simaisma, owned by Greece’s Anangel Shipping Enterprises SA, reached the Hazira terminal on India’s west coast yesterday and Seri Angkasa, owned by Malaysia’s MISC Bhd., will reach the terminal on Oct. 21. Nigeria LNG Ltd.’s Bayelsa tanker reached the 2.5 million metric tons-a-year import terminal on Sept. 19, according to the data. read more

27 Sep 2007 

On September 27, 2007 JSC Tatneft (Tatneft) and Shell Exploration Company (RF) B.V. (Shell) concluded Agreement on Principles of Strategic Partnership. The agreement was signed by General Director of Tatneft Shafagat F. Takhautdinov and Shell Country Chairman in Russia Chris Finlayson in the presence of R.N. Minnikhanov, Prime Minister of Tatarstan and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tatneft. 

Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will devise a program for heavy oil development in Tatarstan. They will conduct a feasibility study and assess technologies for extraction and processing (upgrading) of heavy oil, which is part of existing exploration and production licenses held by Tatneft. read more

A new film, “A Crude Awakening”, leaves out too many inconvenient truths

By Derek Brower, journalist

OIL IS a finite resource, so the more of it the world’s energy companies extract, the less will remain. On that, everyone agrees. One day, we will reach the mathematical peak of the world’s reserves. When that day will be – or if it has already passed – is a question that continues to divide opinion.

“A Crude Awakening” claims to be a documentary about Peak Oil, as the theory is known, and follows the success of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006), another movie for the green generation. In “A Crude Awakening” investigation and exposition of the facts are both casualties of the rhetoric, which seeks to tell us one big thing: the world has reached peak oil and civilization as we know it is about to end. The remaining 83 minutes want to scare viewers into accepting the dark prophecy. read more

Thu Sep 27, 2007 2:26 PM BST

MOSCOW, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell and Tatneft signed on Thursday a deal which can strengthen the oil major’s position in Russia’s energy sector and help Tatneft tap hard-to-extract oil.

Under the agreement, the two companies will jointly develop vast heavy bitumen oil deposits in the Volga region of Tatarstan, the home-base of Tatneft.

“(The companies) will conduct a feasibility study and assess technologies for extraction and processing (upgrading) of heavy oil, which is part of existing exploration and production licenses held by Tatneft,” the companies said in a statement. read more