March 5th, 2007:

MARCH 12, 2007  
GLOBAL BUSINESS

Harvard professor Michael Porter is helping to restructure the economy, but skepticism abounds

Mohamed Zeyani is a baby-faced 27-year-old with slicked-back hair. He is also a new phenomenon in Muammar al Qaddafi’s Libya—an entrepreneur. With his 25-year-old brother Ali, Zeyani opened the Al Sahab Training Center three years ago in the up-and-coming Bin Ashour district of Tripoli. The center is now teaching English, computers, and business skills to about 130 employees of local companies and multinationals such as Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY ) and Italian oil giant ENI. “We chose the field of education because we felt there was a big need,” Zeyani says as he looks in on classrooms crowded with women in head scarves and young men in suede jackets. His annual revenues have already doubled, to $1 million, and he’s thinking of setting up an executive MBA program. read more

Some environmentalists oppose wind farms, such as this one in the Mojave Desert in California, because they consider the projects to be eyesores planted on near-pristine landscapes. (Toby Melville/Reuters)

By John Donnelly, Globe Staff 

WASHINGTON — Two of the world’s leading oil producers have almost overnight joined some of the biggest players in wind power in the United States, accelerating a trend of large corporations investing in the rapidly growing alternative-energy field. read more

Mon, 05 Mar 2007

Royal Dutch Shell said on Monday a major oil spill in a production facility in southern Nigeria had reduced output by 187 000 barrels per day.

“There was a spill at Nembe Creek Trunk Line which led to a total output loss of 187 000 barrels per day. Ten flowstations were closed down to enable the company to effect necessary repairs,” a Shell official told AFP.

Cause of spill unknown

He said the spill occurred on Sunday and company’s engineers and experts had been sent to “assess and contain” its spread. He could not explain the cause of the spill. read more

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:31 

LONDON (AFX) – The UK Offshore Operators Association said it believes decommissioning liabilities may be hindering oil and gas investment in the North Sea.

A spokeswoman for the UKOOA, which unites the companies operating in the North Sea such as BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, said the current decommissioning laws are partly to blame for a dwindling number of North Sea deals as companies are put off investing in the region.
 
Corporate deals, where companies trade commercial North Sea assets, fell to 17 in 2006 from 29 the year before, while the value of the deals more than halved, the spokeswoman said. read more

By Sheila McNulty
Published: March 4 2007 22:03 | Last updated: March 4 2007 22:03

Susan Moore, BP’s regulatory affairs manager, finds herself at the centre of BP civil litigation arising from the Texas City refinery blast.

On January 26 2007, she admitted in a sworn deposition to deleting documents after plaintiffs’ lawyers subpoenaed her laptop on an anonymous tip that she had information useful in the lawsuits from those injured and killed in the refinery explosion. The lawyers are seeking all deleted documents from BP. read more

Integrated Marketing Campaign Sheds Light on Engine Gunk and Encourages Consumers to ‘Stop Gunky Build-Up’

Last Update: 9:34 AM ET Mar 5, 2007

HOUSTON, March 5, 2007 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Today Shell Oil Products US launched a $35 million integrated marketing campaign to let motorists know that “All Gasolines are not the Same.” The campaign entitled “Shell Passionate Experts” revolves around the company’s passion for what it does, its commitment to fuel quality testing and its desire to protect consumers from gunky engine build-up. The campaign gives consumers a first-hand look at the gunk that low-quality discount gasoline can leave behind on critical engine parts, such as intake valves and fuel injectors. read more

By Jim Polson

March 5 (Bloomberg) — Inter Pipeline Fund agreed to buy the Corridor pipeline system in Alberta from Kinder Morgan Inc. for C$275 million ($233 million) to become the largest shipper of bitumen from the province’s oil sands.

The Corridor system transports diluted bitumen, a heavy oil, from the Athabasca oil-sands project near Fort McMurray to a processing plant near Edmonton, the Calgary-based partnership said in a statement today. Inter Pipeline also will assume C$485 million of Corridor debt and, upon closing, an additional C$300 million borrowed to complete a $1.8 billion expansion scheduled for service in 2010. read more

By Robert Tuttle

March 5 (Bloomberg) — A power outage at Royal Dutch Shell Plc.’s refinery in Wilmington, California, caused the release of chemicals into the air early today, according to a report on a state-administered Web site.

A company spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

The refinery has the capacity to process 98,500 barrels of crude oil a day, according to U.S. Energy Department data.

Dow Jones Newswires reported on Feb. 28 that a gasoline- production unit at the plant will be shut March 1 for about five weeks of planned maintenance. read more

By Benoit Faucon
Last Update: 7:00 AM ET Mar 5, 2007

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Royal Dutch Shell PLC was told in November to improve safety on its Clipper 48 natural gas platform in the U.K. North Sea after failing to comply with its own maintenance strategy, according to a U.K. safety regulatory disclosure.

“Shell have failed to implement a suitably resourced maintenance regime to achieve compliance with their own maintenance strategy,” the Health and Safety Executive, or HSE, said in a filing dated Nov. 11, 2006. read more

Monday March 5, 5:02 am ET 
Shell Wins Permits to Explore for Gas Off Northwestern Australia

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Monday it had won two permits to explore in the oil- and gas-rich undersea region off northwestern Australia.

One of the permits, with Shell holding 50 percent equity and Nexus Energy Ltd. holding the other 50 percent, would allow or geological studies, the drilling of exploration wells and acquisition of seismic data in the Eastern Browse Basin, Shell Development Australia said in a statement. read more

By Abdulla Fardan

March 5 (Bloomberg) — Saudi Aramco Shell Refinery Co., in Jubail, Saudi Arabia will start a maintenance program for some of its units from tomorrow, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said.

The 305,000-barrels-a-day joint venture known as Sasref will close the second crude distillation complex along with associated secondary plants, including a visbreaker, a hydrocraker and thermal cracking units, the agency said, citing Mohamed al-Omair, the company president. The refinery has two crude distillation units, according to its Web site. read more

SHAWN MCCARTHY

MOSCOW — The gleaming, 300-metre tower that would rise to dominate the historic czarist city of St. Petersburg is a testament to the power and influence of its owner, Russia’s state-owned energy company OAO Gazprom.

There’s been opposition to the skyscraper development by local residents, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organ (UNESCO) has threatened to withdraw the designation of “world heritage site” from the city if Gazprom proceeds — but Gazprom is undeterred. That’s because it has clout that goes far beyond its status as Russia’s largest corporation. read more

LONDON:

The Iraqi cabinet’s recent endorsement of a legal framework for the oil sector removed a key hurdle to foreign investment, but Western oil companies do not expect Baghdad to lure them with giveaway terms.

A consensus has formed on what future oil contracts should look like, oil executives say – despite a backdrop of bickering between Baghdad and the Kurdish authority over control of oil revenues and whether a national oil company should oversee contract negotiations.

Contracts are now expected to be based on formats that set tight limits on the foreign investor’s upside. read more

EXTRACT: The Army leased parts of the plant to Shell Chemical Co., a division of Shell Oil that manufactured herbicides and insecticides. The Army ceased chemical weapons production in 1969, but Shell continued until 1982. Unaware of the poisoned soil, the prairie dogs, burrowing owls, snakes and golden eagles began to repossess the 27-square mile site. It sometimes killed them. Rachel Carson’s 1962 best-seller, Silent Spring, first focused national attention on the arsenal. A 12,000-foot well was dug to bury the poisons, but that created a new nightmare. The Colorado Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sued the Army, trying to force a cleanup. The Army in turn sued Shell, which countersued. read more

Iran is holding fire on ordering LNG tankers until it has cemented upstream deals, putting at risk its target of ordering ten vessels by 2010, reported Bloomberg. Iran plans to export 80m tonnes of LNG by 2012 but it has yet to confirm any purchasing agreements. Meanwhile, firms such as Total and Royal Dutch Shell have delayed investment decisions in LNG projects due to the country’s ongoing nuclear controversy.

http://www.ameinfo.com/112609.html

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:01:54 

Germany’s largest natural gas provider E.ON AG reportedly reached an agreement with Iran for annual delivery of 2.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

The deal would need the approval of the German government, Focus Magazine reports.

According to the report, E.ON has already submitted a copy of the agreement to the German government and members of the Chancellor’s cabinet, as well as the Foreign Ministry and the Economy Ministry.

Long-term contracts of this nature require approval from the German Federal Office of Economics and Export Control. read more

By Ray Massey
5 March 2007

Millions of motorists will pay more for petrol this week in the wake of the tainted fuel chaos. 
 
PUMPED-UP PRICES: The cost of filling up has risen in parts of the country not affected by tainted fuel supplies

Wholesale prices have surged as Asda, Tesco and Morrisons seek new supplies to replace the petrol that put thousands of cars out of action.

Oil giants have been accused of cashing in with instant rises at the pumps of up to 3p a litre.

It means motorists throughout the country are paying for a problem which mostly affected the South-East of England. The AA said they should be rightly furious if they were ‘being ripped off through profiteering’ by the oil companies. read more

(Bill Campbell, former Group Auditor, Shell International.)

(More ammunition for Dr John Huong’s defence against Shell’s defamation action)

*Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer issues Letter of Censure to Malcolm Brinded, Executive Director of Shell EP

Introductory comments by John Alfred Donovan: 5 March 2007

On 1 March 2007 I sent an email to Terry Macalister at The Guardian newspaper bringing his attention to developments relating to Shell’s safety record in its North Sea operations. On 5 March, The Guardian newspaper published an article under the headline: “Shell safety record in North Sea takes a hammering”. read more

Iraq’s oil industry has been crippled to almost nonexistence by violence, sabotage and corruption. Now an “oil law” has been approved by the Iraqi cabinet and will go before the parliament this month, says Christian Parenti.

Iraq’s postwar oil bonanza remains a mirage. The country has the second- or third-largest reserves in the world, making petroleum the heart and vast bulk of its economy. Thus in March 2003 did Paul Wolfowitz assure Congress that Iraq would “finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” American planners predicted that Iraq’s oil production would triple to a feverish 6 million barrels per day by 2010. read more

By Sheila McNulty in Houston
Published: March 4 2007 22:03 | Last updated: March 4 2007 22:03

BP successfully lobbied against tighter environmental controls by regulators in Texas, saving $150m in monitoring and equipment upgrades prior to the fatal refinery explosion in 2005, internal documents show.

The proposed controls would have forced BP to invest in upgrading the exhaust system on the unit that exploded to include a flare. The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) said the upgrade would have prevented – or at least mitigated – the blast that killed 15 and injured 500. read more

RDSB:LN: Royal Dutch Shell PLC
By Marcel van de Hoef and Martijn van der Starre

March 5 (Bloomberg) —

Dutch stocks:

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA NA): Chief Executive Officer Jeroen van der Veer is considering more opportunities in Russia to add to the Sakhalin-2 project, newspaper AD reported him as saying in an interview. Europe’s largest oil company will “certainly” invite a Russian partner to join any future project in the country, he was reported as saying. Shares fell 61 cents, or 2.4 percent, to 24.45 euros. read more

By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: March 5, 2007

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The Kern River oil field, discovered in 1899, was revived when Chevron engineers here started injecting high-pressured steam to pump out more oil. The field, whose production had slumped to 10,000 barrels a day in the 1960s, now has a daily output of 85,000 barrels.
 
In Indonesia, Chevron has applied the same technology to the giant Duri oil field, discovered in 1941, boosting production there to more than 200,000 barrels a day, up from 65,000 barrels in the mid-1980s. read more

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

March 5 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the world’s second-biggest oil company by market value, won two exploration permits off the northwestern coast of Australia as it intensifies a search for natural gas supplies for LNG production.

A venture between Shell and Nexus Energy Ltd. won a permit in the Eastern Browse Basin, while a Chevron Corp.-led venture including Shell and Exxon Mobil Corp. won a permit in the Carnarvon Basin, Shell’s Australian unit said today in an e- mailed statement. read more

· Oil group given repeated warnings about rigs
· Critics fear neglect as end of commercial life nears

Terry Macalister
Monday March 5, 2007

Shell has been repeatedly warned by the Health and Safety Executive about the poor state of its North Sea platforms, according to information obtained by the Guardian.

The company’s dismal record undermines Shell’s public commitment to improve its performance after a fatal explosion on the Brent field in the North Sea in 2003 and raises further concerns about Britain’s ageing oil and gas equipment. read more