May 27th, 2007:

May 27, 2007, 10:32AM
By JOHN PORRETTO
Associated Press

If you think gasoline prices are high now, consider the eye-popping possibilities if another monster storm pummels the Gulf of Mexico this hurricane season, the way Katrina and Rita battered the petroleum-rich waters in 2005.

The petroleum industry has spent nearly two years trying to repair the damage from those historic Gulf hurricanes, rebuilding the complex web of platforms, pipelines and refineries in a region that produces roughly 25 percent of the nation’s oil and 15 percent of its natural gas. read more

Sunday 27 May 2007

LAGOS (Reuters) – Britain has advised its citizens against all travel to Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta because of the high risk of kidnapping and armed robbery, the government said on its Web site.

More than 180 foreign nationals, mostly oil workers, have been kidnapped in the region since the beginning of last year, including 30 Britons, it said. One British hostage was killed by the security forces last year in a botched attempt to free him.

“We advise against all travel to the Niger Delta,” the Foreign Office said, adding that it would be “reckless” to go there without taking professional security advice and using “fully protected” transport. read more

(CHUCK COOK / NNS: Brent Holmes, left, and Steve Dollison unhook a basket from a crane during a rigging class. Shell Oil Co. is working hard to attract young workers as aging employees retire. It trains workers at the company’s Robert Training Center northwest of New Orleans.)

The great crew change is coming.

By KATE STEVENS
Sunday, May 27, 2007 – Page updated at 02:01 AM

And executives in the oil and natural-gas industry can only hope they’re ready for the departure of thousands of aging employees who will retire over the next decade after years working onshore and aboard offshore rigs. read more

May 27, 2007
By CHRIS CONWAY

THE 1950s are considered the golden age of the automobile. Sales climbed. Fins, after-burner taillights and other jet-age accoutrements appeared on family cars. Drive-in restaurants, movies and even churches and funeral parlors became part of the landscape.

And Americans were taking to the road as never before. To help them on their way (and into its gas stations), Shell Oil published a 238-page how-to book, “Traveling by Car: A Family Planning Guide to Better Vacations.” While much of the advice is predictably dated, much, from Carol Lane, Shell’s director of women’s travel, remains surprisingly timely. read more

EXTRACT: Foreign investors have also felt the backlash. Having successfully reduced Shell’s stake in the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas field, Moscow now seems intent on doing the same to BP, which has a substantial interest in the Kovykta gas field. As before, the tactic is to accuse the foreign company of violating the terms of its licence. All that remains to be decided is how much of its stake in Kovykta BP will have to yield up to Gazprom.

THE ARTICLE

By Niall Ferguson
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 27/05/2007 read more

Sunday, May 27, 2007 (New Delhi):

ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas arm of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), plans to acquire Royal Dutch/Shell’s 33 per cent stake in a deep-sea gas field off Egypt for $160 million and bring the fuel in liquefied form (LNG) to India.

Code-named ‘Project Wonder’, the North East Mediterranean Deepwater Concession in the Egypt Mediterranean Sea, has Shell as operator with 100 per cent stake and is estimated to hold close to 10 Trillion cubic feet of gas reserves. read more

May 27, 2007

The oil giant could face the same fate as Shell at Sakhalin as Russia tries to take back control of its natural gasDominic O’Connell

IN the summer of 2003 Vladimir Putin made the first state visit to Britain by a Russian leader since Tsar Alexander II came to see Queen Victoria in 1874.

Putin’s trip was as much about business as diplomacy. One of the highlights was the signing – in the gilded splendour of Lancaster House, a 19th-century mansion in St James’s, London – of an $8 billion (£4 billion) investment by BP in the Russian oil and gas industry. The deal had been brokered by Lord Browne, then BP’s chief executive, with extensive help from Tony Blair. read more

EXTRACT:  …the takeovers of Shell, BP and other assets hardly represent transactions at market prices. Putin takes his inspiration from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather rather than Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and makes potential sellers offers they just can’t refuse.

THE ARTICLE

May 27, 2007
American Account
Irwin Stelzer

WHAT do Mikhaïl Khodorkovsky, Mikhaïl Gutseriev, and John Browne have in common? They all thought their desire for profits from Russia’s vast oil and gas reserves trumped Vladimir Putin’s lust for power. Khodorkovsky now languishes in a Siberian jail, and when released will be rearrested and charged with crimes that will get him another 28 years in prison. Gutseriev, head of the mid-sized oil company Russneft, was recently charged with “large-scale tax evasion” and conducting illegal activities as part of an “organised group” – the same charges laid against Khodorkovsky. It seems that the Kremlin deputy chief of staff, Igor Sechin, the former KGB agent who heads state-owned Rosneft, which took over Khodorkovsky’s Yukos oil company, “is extremely ambitious in regard to these [Russneft’s] assets”, according to press reports. read more