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As Shell moves toward Arctic, industry decries regulations

Screen Shot 2015-06-17 at 11.28.52Article by Jennifer A. Dlouhy published June 16, 2015 by The Houston Chronicle

As Shell moves toward Arctic, industry decries regulations

Industry leaders and allies in Congress say red tape will discourage Arctic exploration

WASHINGTON – Even as Shell Oil Co. gets closer to drilling new exploratory wells in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, industry leaders and their congressional allies are insisting that the Obama administration’s planned Arctic drilling standards are so onerous and costly they will discourage others from following suit.

“Is the proposed rule intended to make exploration so expensive that it is not financially feasible to explore in our Arctic?” asked former Alaska state Sen. Drue Pearce, who headed the state Senate’s oil and gas committee. “If we want to have development in the Arctic as the president has called for, then we need to have standards that are economically feasible to allow them to go forward.” read more

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Shell-BG deal gets U.S. antitrust OK

Article by Jordan Blum published June 16, 2015 by The Houston Chronicle

Shell-BG deal gets U.S. antitrust OK

Federal Trade Commission decides to waive antitrust waiting period; other nations plan to examine deal

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Photo: Christophe Morin /GT

Royal Dutch Shell said Tuesday that its planned $70 billion acquisition of British gas giant BG Group has cleared its only hurdle with U.S. regulators.

The deal awaits scrutiny by other nations, but the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to waive an initial antitrust period was the only U.S. action required and the deal is still on track to close in early 2016, Shell said.

Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said Tuesday in a prepared statement that the early termination of the waiting period is a “clear demonstration of the good progress” being made. read more

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LNG industry faces short-term glut but long-term opportunity

Article by Chris Tomlinson published May 28, 2015 by The Houston Chronicle under the headline:

LNG industry faces short-term glut but long-term opportunity

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The Methane Nile Eagle liquefied natural gas (LNG) ship, part of of BG Group Plc’s core fleet of LNG vessels. Royal Dutch Shell Plc agreed to buy BG Group Plc for about 47 billion pounds ($70 billion) in cash and shares, the oil and gas industry’s biggest deal in at least a decade. 

What do you do when the supply of your commodity outstrips demand and depresses prices? You find new customers.

That’s exactly what natural gas producers and entrepreneurs are doing today, developing new technologies that could revolutionize global energy use. read more

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Shell lays out its Arctic plans

Screen Shot 2015-05-13 at 21.47.32Article by Jennifer A. Dlouhy published May 21, 2015 by The Houston Chronicle

Shell lays out its Arctic plans

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Photo: Jennifer A. Dlouhy/Houston Chronicle

SEATTLE – The executive leading Shell’s Arctic drilling program on Thursday outlined ambitions to drill new wells in the Chukchi Sea this summer, instead of returning to the one the company started three years ago.

Ann Pickard, Shell’s executive vice president of the Arctic, talked in depth to the Chronicle about the planned wells on a visit to the Transocean Polar Pioneer drilling rig.

While cranes heaved pipes, drilling fluids and other supplies onto the rig in the Port of Seattle, more than 1,400 miles away in Anchorage, some 400 people – boat captains, federal regulators and Shell officials – conducted a simulation to test how they would respond to an oil spill in the frigid Chukchi Sea. read more

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Protesters meet Arctic drill rig in Washington harbor

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Associated Press article published by The Houston Chronicle 17 April 2015

Protesters meet Arctic drill rig in Washington harbor

PORT ANGELES, Wash. (AP) — Protesters in kayaks greeted a rig that could be used for oil drilling in the Arctic as it arrived Friday in Washington state following a journey across the Pacific that included being boarded by Greenpeace activists.

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The 400-foot Polar Pioneer was due to be offloaded in Port Angeles, on the Olympic Peninsula, to have equipment installed.

About three dozen protesters took to the water, many of them in kayaks, as the rig arrived in the harbor at 7 a.m., the Peninsula Daily News reported (http://is.gd/hgRrhp ). read more

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Taylor: Will SEC give oil companies the green light on secrecy?

In the event that Shell and Eni’s handling of the deal is found to be in breach of U.S. anti-bribery laws, investors, who were not given the opportunity to assess these payments, could also be on the hook for penalties that could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

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By Simon Taylor | December 7, 2013

Lack of new disclosure rules for foreign government access puts investors at risk

Conspicuously missing from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s annual update on regulatory activity released last week is a rule requiring companies to disclose what they pay foreign governments for access to natural resources. The agency needs to put an immediate end to these secret payments if it is to do its job of protecting investors.

When the SEC proposed disclosure rules in August 2012 as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law, the American Petroleum Institute (which represents companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron) sued the SEC to keep their deals – and the public – in the dark. In July, a federal court supported the institute’s case and ordered the SEC to revise its original payment disclosure rule. The SEC needs to make the rewrite a top priority so that a new version of the rules is released in early 2014. read more

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Shell awards contract for worlds deepest floating production facility

Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 22.11.38 Posted on by Emily Pickrell

A Dutch offshore services company will provide a floating production platform for Royal Dutch Shell’s Stones field project in the Gulf of Mexico, which the companies say will be the deepest-water field served by such a vessel.

Shell will lease the Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel from  SBM Offshore for development of its Stones field, which is in 9,500 of water and approximately 200 miles offshore.

The companies did not disclose the value of the contract in their announcement Tuesday. read more

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An ancient desert, a modern sea, and lots of oil

HOUSTON — A drilling hunch with its roots in the Jurassic period is paying off for Royal Dutch Shell, with a potential 100 million-barrel oil find adding to its bounty in the Gulf of Mexico.

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By Emily Pickrell, Houston Chronicle : July 3, 2013 : Updated: July 3, 2013 7:20pm

HOUSTON — A drilling hunch with its roots in the Jurassic period is paying off for Royal Dutch Shell, with a potential 100 million-barrel oil find adding to its bounty in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shell said Wednesday that its Vicksburg exploratory well encountered an estimated 500 feet of net oil pay. The well is 5 miles from the company’s Appomattox site, where Shell already has found 500 million barrels of potentially recoverable resources.

“This is a Jurassic-age reservoir that is more than 160 million years old that was deposited as desert dunes and now is sitting beneath the floor of the Gulf of Mexico,” said Mark Shuster, executive vice president of Shell Upstream Americas Exploration. read more

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Shell’s Olympus platform prepares for Gulf journey

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Posted on by Emily Pickrell

INGLESIDE — Royal Dutch Shell is about to move a mountain, towing its new state-of-the-art Olympus platform for duty in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep water.

The Olympus, designed to operate in water depths of 3,000 to 5,000 feet, will be Shell’s sixth tension leg platform in the Gulf. The company escorted a group of journalists on a tour of the platform Wednesday.

The platform — towering 406 feet from the base of the hull to the top of the derrick — is docked at the Ingleside, Texas shipyard near Corpus Christi and will leave in about a month to work at the Mars B project 130 miles south of New Orleans. Earlier this year, the hull made an 18,000-mile, two-month trek from South Korea to Ingleside. read more

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Shell will be under closer watch

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Government’s report on Arctic woes too mild, activists argue

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy | March 14, 2013

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Thursday vowed to keep a closer watch on all areas of Shell’s Arctic drilling operations – from deployment to demobilization – before allowing the company to hunt for oil in the region again.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar delivered the promise as administration officials wrapped up a probe of blunders surrounding Shell’s hunt for oil in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas last year, including the out-of-control drift of a drillship, violations of federal pollution permits and the grounding of Shell’s Kulluk rig on an Alaskan island. read more

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Shell opening new Arctic frontier

Posted on October 11, 2012 at 3:42 am by Jennifer A. Dlouhy

Donald LeCourt, Shell Alaska’s wells HSE team leader, and other workers take a helicopter ride to the Noble Discoverer during a crew change on Oct. 9, 2012. In preparation for the hour-long flights over frigid Arctic waters, crew members must complete helicopter underwater escape training and don one-piece Mustang Survival immersion suits filled with foam for insulation and buoyancy. (Photo: Jennifer A. Dlouhy / The Houston Chronicle) (Jennifer A. Dlouhy) read more

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Motiva may restart Port Arthur unit in December

Posted on October 5, 2012 at 4:00 pm by Bloomberg

Motiva Enterprises plans to restart a damaged 325,000-barrel-a-day crude unit at its Port Arthur refinery as early as the first week in December, according to people familiar with refinery operations.

Motiva expects to complete repairs on the unit this month and conduct test runs and pressure checks in November, said the people, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak for the refinery.

Motiva said on July 19 that it expected to restart the crude unit early in 2013. The restart has been accelerated because of steady progress in the repairs, the people said. read more

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Shell sues Greenpeace to stop Artic protests

COMMENT BY A REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR

SHELL’S MADNESS…

Has anyone thought about the implications of a 500m exclusion zone around Shell property in Holland?
 
This would prevent Greenpeace members from entering a large proportion of the Hague, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, from using motorways and most major roads, or from going near any of the thousands of Shell locations which cover the country, such as refineries,  filling stations, oil and gas wells and production facilities.
 
Is Shell planning to publish a map showing the thousands of no-go areas implied?  The widely used Shell road map of Holland might provide a good starting point of the area “off limits” to Greenpeace members! read more

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Shell gets OK from Feds to drill in Beaufort Sea

The Kulluk conical drilling rig is docked in the Vigor shipyard in Seattle, where it has undergone refurbishments meant to ready the 1980s-era conical drilling rig for Arctic drilling this summer. (Jennifer A. Dlouhy / The Houston Chronicle)

Posted on September 20, 2012 at 1:50 pm by Jennifer A. Dlouhy

Although federal regulators today gave Shell the green light to begin initial drilling operations in the Beaufort Sea, that work will wait until native Alaskans finish their fall hunt of the bowhead whale migrating through the area. read more

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Interior chief says Shell equipment behind Arctic drilling delays

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy: Updated 9:48 p.m., Monday, August 13, 2012

WASHINGTON – Neither thick Arctic ice nor government red tape is holding back Shell’s plans to search for oil in waters north of Alaska this summer, a top Obama administration official said Monday.

Instead, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters, the delays are Shell’s own making.

A key oil spill containment system and the barge carrying it have not cleared a required Coast Guard inspection or been tested in front of federal drilling safety regulators. Instead, the 36-year-old Arctic Challenger barge has been docked and undergoing renovations in Bellingham, Wash. read more

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Activists fire volley at Shell over coral in Arctic

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy: Published 09:56 p.m., Monday, July 30, 2012

WASHINGTON – Environmental activists are keeping the pressure on Shell Oil Co. as it inches closer to launching exploratory drilling in Arctic waters north of Alaska.

Greenpeace activists and marine biologists conducting research in the area documented thick accumulations of soft coral in the Chukchi Sea near an area where Shell plans exploratory oil drilling.

Greenpeace scientists documented the sea raspberry coral during a recent research submarine dive in the Arctic waters north of Alaska. They took samples and photos of the species, known as Gersemia rubiformis, during the research mission and published the images on their website. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.