May 4th, 2007:

Daily Trust (Abuja)
May 4, 2007

The Shell Petroleum Development Company has expressed concern about a fire that has continued to burn at Yorla-16, one of its non-producing wells in Ogoni land.

The company says it confirmed the fire during an over-fly on 25th April and immediately informed the Rivers State Government, the Department of Petroleum Resources and other relevant agencies.
 
A statement signed by the company’s External Affairs Director, Mrs Allison Madueke and made available to Business Trust yesterday said SPDC mobilised its Fire and Well Services teams to determine how to secure the well and fight the fire. Representatives from the DPR and Federal and State Ministries of Environment were also notified, and the combined team is ready to move to Yorla-16 as soon as access is secured. read more

Published: Friday, 4 May, 2007
 
LONDON: Oil prices eased yesterday after Nigerian militants freed several foreign workers seized from an offshore oilfield in the Opec nation, easing fears the conflict would interrupt production.

London Brent crude, currently seen as the most representative of global oil prices, traded 37¢ lower at $65.88 a barrel after falling as low as $65.57 earlier. US crude fell 48¢ to $63.20.

Prices had risen earlier in the session after gunmen took 18 foreign workers in three attacks in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said later it had freed eight of the workers. read more

Fri May 4, 2007 4:20 PM BST
By Tom Ashby

LAGOS (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell is inching back to Nigerian oilfields shut for over a year by militant attacks, but restoring lost output will take several months and may be set back by more violence, industry sources said on Friday.

Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile , Research) pulled thousands of workers out of the western Niger Delta in February 2006 forcing a cut in oil production of 600,000 barrels per day (bpd), or one fifth of Nigeria’s total capacity. read more

2007-5-4  
 
TO roll out the barrel is a traditional celebratory term – and China is certainly doing that.

The country’s newly found oil field in Bohai Bay has a reserve of one billion tons, or about 7.35 billion barrels, the largest discovery in the nation for more than four decades, the China National Petroleum Corporation announced yesterday.

Premier Wen Jiabao said he was very excited to learn about the new oil discovery and expressed his congratulation to workers as he showed up at the drill platform on the Labor Day holiday. read more

By Sam Fleming
Friday 4 May 2007

ROYAL Dutch Shell’s Peter Voser repeatedly refused to comment on the turmoil afflicting his closest rival as he unveiled his firm’s first-quarter earnings yesterday.

‘I am not qualified to give advice to BP,’ the finance director tersely told reporters on a conference call.

But the contrast between the two companies’ recent fortunes is stark.

Shell has beaten analysts’ earnings expectations for the past five quarters in a row.

Yesterday the Anglo-Dutch firm reported a 14pc jump in first-quarter profit to £3.5bn, thanks to higher oil refining margins. read more

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 4, 2007

AMSTERDAM, — Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s biggest oil company, said Thursday that its first-quarter earnings rose 5.7 percent, despite falling oil prices and declining profit at its production and refining arms.

Net income rose to $7.28 billion, from $6.89 billion a year earlier, while sales fell 3.3 percent, to $73.5 billion.

The improvement in Shell’s results was mainly a result of the good performance of the stock market. The company’s corporate financing arm reported earnings of $801 million, up from $227 million last year. read more

AMONG the details of the Lord Browne case was the claim that his boyfriend, Jeff Chevalier, used the BP boss’s laptop.

While Browne denies any improper conduct relating to BP, and an internal inquiry cleared him to that effect, a story is doing the rounds that the computer contained details of Shell’s oil reserves — not so improbable, as Browne was said to be keen for the two companies to explore a merger.

The tale has Shell not best pleased that such sensitive material could have reached a third party. (Published: May 03, 2007) read more

Published: May 4 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 4 2007 03:00

That’s five in a row. With its latest set of quarterly results, Royal Dutch Shell has beaten expectations once again. It had a favourable tailwind at the tax line as well as one-off gains at the corporate level. Even after stripping out the latter, however, Shell beat consensus forecasts for net income of $5.7bn handily. In spite of a 40 per cent year-on-year jump in capital expenditure, free cash flow from operations was a healthy $5.8bn. read more

By Chris Flood
Published: May 4 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 4 2007 03:00

Further violence in Nigeria ensured a highly volatile session for oil prices yesterday.

Crude spiked initially on news that militants had kidnapped up to 20 foreign workers in three attacks in the Niger Delta. Prices then retreated after eight of the kidnapped workers were released safely.

Having risen as high as $66.98 in the session, ICE June Brent fell 50 cents to $65.75 a barrel while Nymex June West Texas Intermediate slipped 73 cents to $62.95 a barrel. read more

By Ed Crooks andChris Hughes
Published: May 4 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 4 2007 03:00

Royal Dutch Shell has sent teams into the turbulent Niger Delta in recent months to assess the state of its facilities, raising the prospect that it will be able to re-start production after more than a year.

Peter Voser, Shell’s chief financial officer, said there had been “some improvement in the security situation” in the Delta and the company hoped to restart production there gradually later in the year – if it was safe to do so. However, 20 oil workers were kidnapped by armed men yesterday in Nigeria, although some were later released, emphasising the volatility of the region. read more

By MARY JACOBY
May 4, 2007; Page A9

BRUSSELS — The arrest in the U.S. of eight non-American executives involved in an alleged price-fixing scheme shows how the U.S.’s tough criminal laws against cartels can add teeth to European investigations.

Executives from companies in the United Kingdom, France and Italy were arrested in Houston Wednesday in connection with an alleged international cartel for industrial rubber hose, the Justice Department said. An alleged conspirator from Japan was arrested in San Francisco. read more

EXTRACT: Mr. Weglein himself heads a seismic research program called M-OSRP, launched in 2001, that is sponsored by several international oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell PLC, BP PLC, Italy’s Eni and Petrobras.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working with Shell in a similar, nonexclusive initiative launched last year, and Shell is also involved in projects of this kind with Stanford University and the Netherland’s Delft University, one of the leading institutions in seismic imaging. read more

Refining, Chemicals
Record Higher Margins
Offsetting Weak Output
By BENOÎT FAUCON
May 4, 2007; Page B5

LONDON — Royal Dutch Shell PLC said first-quarter net profit rose 5.6%, as higher refining and chemical margins more than offset the continued impact of Nigerian unrest and lower oil prices.

The rising profit underscores the merits of being an integrated oil major, as refining and chemical margins make up for lower crude-oil output and prices. The trend was also apparent in quarterly results from Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp.
 
Shell, the world’s second-largest nongovernment-controlled oil company by market capitalization after Exxon Mobil, said net income rose to $7.28 billion from $6.89 billion a year earlier. Revenue fell 3.3% to $73.48 billion from $75.96 billion. read more