July 3rd, 2007:

By Stephen Voss

July 3 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s two largest oil companies, are seeking buyers for stakes in several North Sea discoveries, a Schlumberger Ltd. oil-services marketing Web site said.

Shell and Exxon plan to sell equity in 13 central North Sea blocks, including the Puffin Deep gas-condensate discovery with oil-in-place reserves of 65 million barrels of oil equivalent, and seven other undeveloped discoveries with total in-place reserves of 400 million barrels of oil equivalent, the site said. Those seven are Puffin Shallow, Seagull, Aragorn, Commander, Curlew A, Stella and Harrier Shallow. read more

July 3, 2007

Former Group Auditor of Shell International, Bill Campbell, blows the whistle on an alleged policy by Royal Dutch Shell management of putting oil production before the safety of Shell offshore employees.

Today, The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “Chairman Works to Recast Shell”. The story is focused on Jorma Ollila, the Chairman of the world’s second largest company, the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The article highlights his role “as keeping a hawkish eye on Shell’s corporate culture. That means making sure environmental and safety issues get the attention they deserve…” read more

EXTRACT: “…Shell, after being expelled from the Sakhalin-2 project, expressed deep satisfaction of Russia’s investment climate at the recent St. Petersburg economic forum, and BP appreciated Gazprom’s kindness after being bought out of the stalled Kovykta project rather cheaply..

By Pavel K. Baev
Tuesday, July 3, 2007

It has never been clear during the last few weeks whether there is a point to the informal July 1-2 meeting between Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin at Kennebunkport, Maine. U.S.-Russian relations have certainly deteriorated since the start of this year, and the rhetoric, particularly from the Kremlin, has turned bitter and even hostile, so a relaxed conversation could help in clearing the atmosphere (Vremya novostei, July 2). There is nothing personal, however, in the antagonistic trend, which is driven by deepening political incompatibility. The two leaders have managed to remain on reasonably friendly terms since their first meeting in Ljubljana in June 2001, when Bush described Putin as “straightforward and trustworthy.” Much accumulated political evidence has shown since that these two qualities are not among Putin’s political talents and skills, but Bush is understandably reluctant to give up on rescuing diplomacy from self-propelling mutual accusations and other “misunderstandings.” read more

Posted on Jul 3rd, 2007 with stocks: BP, RDS.A

BP and Royal Dutch Shell are said to be in merger talks that would create a £250 billion oil giant, according to the Times of London. “The City is awash with talk that Britain’s two largest oil companies have engaged financial advisors to discuss terms for a so-called friendly merger that could result in £2.5 billion of cost savings for the enlarged group,” it wrote. It says BP, under previous CEO Lord Browne, was thought to have approached Shell last year, and that those plans have now been rekindled under current CEO Tony Hayward. According to website This is Money, company advisors and executives are involved in ’round the clock’ negotiations. It says the combined entity would produce over 70% more oil and gas than industry leader ExxonMobil. BP shares are up 2% over the past three days, while Royal Dutch Shell shares have gained 4.5% over the same stretch. read more

Option update 7-3-07: Royal Dutch Shell volatility flat
Posted Jul 3rd 2007 10:30AM by Paul Foster
Filed under: Before the bell, Rumors, Apple Inc (AAPL), Research in Motion (RIMM), BP p.l.c. ADS (BP), Options, Oil

Royal Dutch Shell(NYSE:RDS) volatility flat as BP is mentioned as M&A partner. RDS is recently up .56 to $83.95. The Daily Mail is reporting that BP and RDS are in merger talks. RDS over all option implied volatility of 17 is near its 26-week average according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional risk. read more

Posted: 03-07-2007 , 13:26 GMT

Shell, a leading player in the global energy and petrochemicals industry, has announced that it has invested more than USD 273 million in the worldwide development of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) program in 2006, reflecting the company’s strong commitment to being proactively involved at a community level.

Shell presented its successful CSR initiatives at the 4th Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Summit, which was organized by IIR in association with Shell, when it was held recently at Dubai’s Dusit Hotel from June 24 – 28, 2007. The event gathered 41 high-profile speakers from different countries in three interactive workshops and 23 powerful strategy sessions. read more

Two oil giants refuse to become minor partners as Venezuela’s Chavez seizes assets.

THE MOTLEY FOOL  
By Rich Duprey: Updated: 5:26 a.m. ET July 3, 2007

This is the danger of doing business with governments with little commitment to free enterprise: You risk losing all of your financial interests in your operations.

ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) found that out the hard way, when they walked away from multibillion-dollar investments in oil-rich Venezuela rather than give in to President Hugo Chavez’s demand to cede further control. read more

Article Last Updated: 07/02/2007 10:00:33 PM EDT

Three recent environmental reports demonstrate the harsh reality that Long Island Sound remains an endangered waterway that will continue to take billions of dollars to clean up.

To our mind, those are three more good reasons why federal regulators need to reject development of an industrial use of the Sound — namely creation of a floating liquefied natural gas terminal on the New York side of the Sound about 11 miles off the Branford shore.

Let’s make one point clear: The studies are aimed at the environmental quality of Long Island Sound and not the controversial, first-of-its-kind Broadwater terminal, a joint effort of Shell Oil and TransCanada Corp. read more

Posted: 03 Jul 2007

Last month, the oil company BP, reported that there were sufficient oil reserves to meet current demands for another 40 years. It said there was no need to be concerned about global scarcity, despite cutting its estimates for proven reserves for the first time in 16 years. These claims have since been hotly disputed.

In its annual Statistical Review, BP said there were still enough oil discoveries to be exploited to meet the world’s current production levels until 2050. However, the group admitted that total worldwide proven reserves, ready to be extracted, had fallen by one billion barrels to 1.208 trillion. Norway and Mexico both faced falling estimates. read more

(SITE An aerial photograph of the gas terminal at Bellanaboy. Approximately 450,000 tonnes of peat have been removed from the site since 2005. Pic Jan Pesch

By Olof Gill: Tuesday, 03 July 2007 

The Irish environmental organisation, An Taisce, has lodged an objection with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), informing them of their concerns over the proposed location of the Corrib gas terminal at Bellanaboy.

Following a recent hearing, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently considering Shell E&P Ireland’s application for an integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) licence for the terminal project. read more

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Sibir Energy plc announces that the crude oil production rate at its Salym fields now exceeds 80,000 barrels per day (bopd), a new record for the company. The Salym fields are located in western Siberia and are operated by Salym Petroleum Development NV (SPD, Sibir’s 50:50 joint venture with Shell).

The new SPD production record brings Sibir’s 50% share of production at Salym to over 41,000 bopd. Combined with production from Sibir subsidiary, Magma, at the Yuzhnoye fields in Western Siberia, Sibir’s total daily production now exceeds 48,000 bopd. read more

By Dinakar Sethuraman

July 3 (Bloomberg) — Australia’s government allowed Woodside Petroleum Ltd. to proceed with the proposed Pluto liquefied natural gas project as planned by giving companies permission to move indigenous rock drawings.

The government demarcated 1 percent of the Dampier Archipelago, including the Burrup Peninsula, in Western Australia for development and kept the rest of the area as a national heritage site, Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s minister for environment and water resources, said in a statement today on the ministry’s Web site. read more

Tue Jul 3, 2007 9:00AM EDT
By Ajay Kamalakaran

SAKHALIN, Russia (Reuters) – Noise from a Russian gas field in the Pacific Ocean is driving the endangered grey whale away from one of its few feeding grounds, says the WWF environmental group.

The grey whale is one of the largest and oldest mammals on earth — it can grow larger than a city bus and the species is thought to be 30 million years old.

But environmentalists say there are only 100 grey whales left off the Asian Pacific coast, with another 300 off the North American coast. Now construction work at a Russian gas project is forcing them away from their natural habitat. read more

03 July 200703 July 2007

On April 11th 2007, Royal Dutch Shell plc (“Shell”) and a group of 51 European investors from 9 European countries with total shareholdings in Shell of over 1 billion shares, agreed to a settlement of approximately $450 million (£229 million) following claims by the investors that Shell had overstated its proven oil and gas reserves in the period 1997-2003. The unusual settlement (“the Dutch Settlement”) is subject to final approval (in respect of affected European and other “non U.S. persons”) by the Amsterdam Court of Appeals, a process which is likely to take 1-2 years. Compensation under the Dutch settlement is likely to be paid out some years later. read more

AFRICAN-AMERICAN FIRM’S COMPROMISED CONNECTIONS

The United States has an unexpected ally in the commercial war that it is fighting in Africa against China and the old colonial powers. Andrew Young, a former mayor of Atlanta and associate of Martin Luther King, founded GoodWorks International to promote economic links between the US and Africa, Nigeria in particular. He hasn’t hesitated to exploit his African roots and forge links with dubious companies.

By Jean-Christophe Servant

On 19 December 2006, four months before the end of Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term as president of Nigeria, 850 movers and shakers gathered in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York to bid him farewell. It was a chance for the former army general, a convert to “democrazy”, to be among dear friends, including the sponsors of the evening of celebration and tribute: the three leading investors in Nigeria’s oil industry, Chevron, Exxon and Shell Nigeria. read more

Posted By: Brynn Galindo
Posted 7/2/07

BAKERSFIELD – A program to clean up groundwater contaminated by an MTBE spill at the Flying J Refinery years ago will resume in about a month.

The system pulling the now-banned gasoline additive from the groundwater was shutdown two years ago when Shell Oil sold the refinery to Flying J.

State officials said Shell has been slow in building an incineration plant at the refinery to burn off the MTBE vapors extracted from the soil and groundwater.

Shell said it’s waiting on PG&E to provide a separate power source for the project. read more

From Kingsley Nwezeh in Asaba, 07.03.2007

Dutch Oil giant, Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, yesterday announced the resumption of full scale oil exploration and production in Niger Delta region  after the multi-national firm left area following spate of hostage taking of its staff and youth restiveness that disrupted operations in the region.

The company lamented the spate of illegal oil bunkering which still threatens its return at its operational base the  cost the management put at  tens of millions of dollars since early part of 2006 when the firm deserted Delta state. read more

By Michael J. Economides  (More by this author)

07/03/2007

Two decades of Pax Americana are coming to a screeching hold. Starting with Ronald Reagan, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire, the world was supposed to enter a new era of democracy, freedom and free enterprise, as far away from what everybody thought was the stifling state control.

Fat chance.

What started it all were very low oil prices, precipitated by Ronald Reagan in the mid 1980’s by persuading Saudi Arabia to flood the market. This caused the internal fractures of the Soviet Union, whose economy was then entirely dependent on oil and gas for any hard currency, to crash. The same oil and gas prices have now made a full circle, giving Russia and others, a newly found bravado, enough to again cover their other deficiencies. read more

Yesterday’s trading: Oil merger in pipeline
Geoff Foster,
3 July 2007, 8:24am

Red hot rumours suggest that top corporate financiers, financial advisers and executives of BP and Royal Dutch Shell are currently involved in round the clock discussions centred on finalising terms for a ‘friendly’ merger which many industry analysts believe would make a great deal of sense.

The oil industry invented mergers and acquisitions and a marriage between BP and Shell could possibly signal that the peak of the global takeover boom has been reached. read more

Posted : Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:58:01 GMT
Author : Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights 
 
SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Refiner Tesoro is putting warning decals on its gas station pumps, including dozens of Shell stations, warning that consumers may not get all the energy they paid for in a gallon of gasoline, according to industry reports today. Instead of a warning on the pumps, Tesoro should sell gasoline that is compensated for high temperatures that cause the fuel to have less energy per gallon, said the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. read more

Martyn Wingrove, Lloyds List
Published: Jul 03, 2007

NORSK Hydro and Shell have started the next phase of developing the deepwater Ormen Lange gas field off Norway by chartering drilling and subsea construction vessels.

Both companies are preparing to increase natural gas and condensate production from the Norwegian Sea from 2010 by developing the southern portion of the giant field.

Hydro’s partner Norske Shell has awarded a $810m contract to Oslo-listed rig group Seadrill for the use of its drillship West Navigator for four years. read more

By Mike Scott, Financial Times
Published: Jul 02, 2007

NONFINANCIAL RISKS

The oil and gas companies bestride the world, the biggest and most profitable companies on the planet acting as a law unto themselves as their products fuel the global economy. This is a common perception of the sector but the energy companies do not have it all their own way. In the 1960s, the oil majors had access to 85 per cent of the world’s oil reserves – now they have access to only 16 per cent as governments assert control over their national assets. The contrast between the list of the world’s biggest oil companies by revenue and by access to reserves (barrels of oil equivalent) is striking. Exxon- Mobil may be the biggest and most profitable company but it ranks only 16th in terms of reserves, well below the likes of Gazprom, Lukoil and Petrochina, according to Petrostrategies, the consultancy. “There has been a resurgence in oil nationalism, partly because of the high oil price and partly because oilproducing countries now feel more comfortable taking control of projects,” says Keith Morris, oil and gas analyst at Evolution Securities. “Ten years ago, for example, Russia was flat on its back and needed western companies – now there is plenty of money around and they are better able to cope on their own.” This has led to companies such as Shell and BP coming under pressure to sell assets in Russia to domestic companies, with Gazprom a notable beneficiary of this trend. In fact, says Elizabeth Eaton, portfolio manager, emerging markets equities at Credit Suisse, there are many opportunities in Russia and Kazakhstan, but “we believe that the best way to access this growth is by purchasing domestic companies rather than global names”. read more

July 3, 2007

Business in brief

BP and Shell are thought to have revived plans for a merger to create an oil giant with a market value of £250 billion. The City is awash with talk that Britain’s two largest oil companies have engaged financial advisors to discuss terms for a so-called friendly merger that could result in £2.5 billlion of cost savings for the enlarged group.

BP while under Lord Browne, former chief executive, is said to have approached Shell last year about a deal. Those plans are thought to have been reheated under the leadership of Tony Hayward, BP’s new chief executive. Royal Dutch’s A-shares rose 33p to £20.67p, while its B-shares gained 26p to 21.09. (James Rossiter) read more

Ollila Looks to Apply Spirit of Innovation He Promoted at Nokia
By GUY CHAZAN and CHIP CUMMINS
July 3, 2007; Page A6

THE HAGUE — One company makes mobile phones, the other pumps crude. But for a year now, they have had one thing in common — high-tech pioneer Jorma Ollila.

In his former job as chief executive of Nokia Corp., Mr. Ollila turned a sluggish Finnish conglomerate into an icon of innovation. Now he is hoping to work some of his magic on Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant he joined as chairman last year.
 
Mr. Ollila’s appointment captures Shell’s efforts to recast itself as a high-tech company. He says he sees his role as working with CEO Jeroen van der Veer to put technology “at the top of Shell’s agenda.” read more

http://beta.silobreaker.com/DocumentReader.aspx?Item=5_736499201