October 9th, 2007:

It’s spectacular but not dangerous to anyone outside the refinery, county says

From Staff Reports
Article Last Updated: 10/09/2007 11:31:15 AM PDT

MARTINEZ – A mechanical shutdown at the big Shell Oil Co. refinery in Martinez caused excessive flaring _ flames shooting out a tall stack this morning, a Contra Costa Office of Emergency Services official says.

It’s not dangerous or harmful to anyone outside the refinery, Emergency Services Director Chris Boyer said.

“We have a very low level upset at the plant. It’s called a level one emergency. A wet gas compressor shut down causing excessive flaring,” Boyer said. read more

Shell Oil Paid Patton Boggs $100,000 to Lobby Federal Government in First Half of 2007

October 09, 2007: 04:33 PM EST

NEW YORK (Associated Press) – A U.S. unit of Royal Dutch Shell plc paid Patton Boggs LLP $100,000 to lobby the federal government in the first half of 2007, according to a recent disclosure form.

The firm lobbied on energy legislation, according to form posted online Aug. 12 by the Senate’s public records office.

Former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., is among those registered to lobby on behalf of Shell Oil Co. read more

Tuesday, October 09, 2007; Posted: 04:45 AM
 
BEIJING, Oct 09, 2007 (SinoCast via COMTEX) — RDS/A | charts | news | PowerRating — The world’s top-ranking oil supplier Royal Dutch Shell PLC so far has invested as much as USD 4 billion in China during the past two decades based on its belief of localization, business diversity, and environment protection.

Lately the international conglomerate was awarded as one of the most influential multinationals in China in 2006 for its great achievement made in this country during the past twenty years. read more

SHELL TO SEA TO PROTEST IN DUBLIN at Department of Natural Resources on Friday 12th on October at Lunchtime (12.45-2PM)
 
To coincide with the protest at the Shell refinery site in Bellanaboy County Mayo on Friday morning, there will be a lunchtime protest in Dublin at the Department of Natural Resources, Adelaide Road (Leeson Street End), between 12.45 and 2PM.
 
For further details contact [email protected] or phone 0871323369
 
There will also be protests in Belfast and other locations around the country on Friday October 12th
read more

EXTRACT: In the energy sector, three major European energy companies which have signed memorandums of understanding with Tehran – Total of France, Repsol of Spain and the Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell – have repeatedly delayed final decisions on billion-dollar investments in the South Pars gas field.

THE ARTICLE

LONDON, October 9 (IranMania) – While President Nicolas Sarkozy would like to take the lead on preventing Iran from getting the nuclear bomb, some of France’s neighbors and many of its own companies are skeptical of his initiative to impose tougher European sanctions outside a United Nations mandate, The International Herald Tribune reported. read more

By Toby Shute October 9, 2007

If ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) is a 10, OAO Gazprom (OTC BB: OGZPY) weighs in on the freaking huge scale at about an 8. The Russian giant supplies about one-third of Western Europe’s natural gas imports. It also accounts for roughly one-fifth of global production.

With more than 400,000 employees — about four times as many as BP (NYSE: BP) or Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A) (NYSE: RDS-B) — you’d think Gazprom would have the resources to release first-quarter earnings sometime earlier than October. This isn’t the result of a funky fiscal year — I’m talking about January through March. Oh, well — let’s take a look at how the firm was doing three quarters ago. read more

Tue Oct 9, 2007 2:01 PM BST
By Jackie Cowhig

LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s technology to turn coal into gas to fuel power plants could allow developing countries to meet surging energy demand without a matching rise in emissions, Shell executives said on Tuesday.

Power plants fuelled by gas made from coal using Shell’s proven technology could have 9 percent lower costs than conventional coal-fired boilers if both types of generation involve carbon capture and storage, the executives said. read more

October 09, 2007: 05:46 AM EST

MANILA -(Dow Jones)- Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp., a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Group (RDSA), may finally push through with a long-delayed initial public offering of its shares next year, an official said Tuesday. “There’s a good possibility for an IPO next year,” Shell Philippines Country Chairman Edgar Chua told reporters, citing the strength of the Philippine stock market, which hit a record high Monday.

Under the 1998 oil industry deregulation law, oil refiners had to list at least 10% of shareholdings on the Philippine Stock Exchange within three years of the passage of the law. read more

Tue Oct 9, 2007 11:30am BST
By Jonathan Leff

SINGAPORE, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) high-profile buying spree of Asia’s benchmark crudes last month is the clearest signal yet that the major has rediscovered its appetite for trading risk after a five-year hiatus.

Shell hoovered up over 10 million barrels of Dubai and Oman crude, the main benchmarks for Asian refiners, in what appeared to be the market’s biggest leveraged trading play in years, drawing flak from Asian refiners still haunted by past squeezes. read more

By Catherine Belton in Moscow
Updated: 2:11 a.m. ET Oct. 9, 2007

Sakhalin Energy will announce on Tuesday that an independent consultant hired by a group of international banks has given it a clean bill of health on ecological standards as it seeks to raise up to $6bn in loans for the vast oil and gas venture.

The venture, which aims to supply liquefied natural gas from the far east island of Sakhalin, has been dogged by allegations of environmental violations, claiming that its former operator, Royal Dutch Shell, was harming the feeding grounds of the endangered grey whale. read more

By Norma Cohen
Published: October 9 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 9 2007 03:00

When Shell UK, part of the Royal Dutch Shell oil group, said its pension scheme was so well-funded no contribution would be needed this year, it sent a frisson of excitement through the City.

The comeback of the contributions holiday – once the norm in large UK schemes – is of interest to corporations for whom the pension scheme has been little more than a large black hole.

Pensions experts are, however, quick to warn against a return to the days when companies reckoned they could make generous retirement promises at little cost to themselves. They say Shell UK is likely to be an isolated – perhaps even unique – case. read more

Published: October 8 2007 17:56 | Last updated: October 8 2007 17:56

The revelation of the FT’s 2007 power list continues with new entries from Shell Gas and Power, NYSE Euronext and Coca Cola.

16. Linda Cook

Rank in 2006: New entry
Position: Executive Director, Shell Gas and Power
Age: 49

Cook won a scholarship to study chemical engineering at the University of Kansas, but then she came across petroleum engineering, which had ”exactly the right combination of math, chemistry, geology, engineering and economics”. She was hooked. She has worked for Shell since university. After 18 years in exploration and production in the US, she moved to the Netherlands to be director of strategy and business development. read more

By Paul Betts
Published: October 9 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 9 2007 03:00

Fate can play funny tricks. Who would have thought of Paolo Scaroni, the former Pilkington boss now running Italy’s Eni oil group, locking horns again with Sir Richard “Dick” Evans, the former head of BAE Systems – and in Kazakhstan of all places?

Mr Scaroni and Sir Richard fell out famously three years ago when the Italian walked out of the BAE board, where he had been serving as a non-executive director. He was highly critical of the UK company’s track record on defence contracts and its dogged pursuit of a transatlantic merger. read more

By Isabel Gorst in Tbilisi and Guy Dinmore in Rome
Published: October 9 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 9 2007 03:00

Kazakhstan’s dispute with an Italian-led consortium over delays and cost overruns in developing the Kashagan oilfield can be resolved without rewriting the contract, President Nursultan Nazarbayev told Italy’s visiting prime minister yesterday.

Romano Prodi and Paolo Scaroni, the head of Eni which is 30 per cent owned by the Italian government and is the project operator, both pronounced themselves pleased with the outcome of discussions over the world’s most expensive oil project. read more

By MATT CHAMBERS
October 9, 2007; Page C9

NEW YORK — Crude oil futures slumped below $80 a barrel, a four-week low, as the dollar strengthened and as storm threats to U.S. Gulf of Mexico energy production diminished.

Signs that Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigerian oil production is set to increase also weighed on prices in quiet trading during the Columbus Day holiday in the U.S.

The front-month November light, sweet crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $2.20, or 2.7%, to $79.02 a barrel.
 
In a sign that Shell is set to pump more oil in Nigeria, the oil company lifted force majeure yesterday on its Forcados oil export terminal. A “force majeure” clause allows a party to get out of contractual obligations due to an extraordinary event beyond its control, such as war or hurricanes. read more

By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 1:20am BST 09/10/2007
  
Toasting success: but Gazprom forecasts sales to Europe will fall
 
The world’s biggest supplier of natural gas, Gazprom, has posted a bigger-than-expected rise in first-quarter profits on the back of higher energy prices and a one-off accounting gain.

However, analysts said that the Russian energy giant was unlikely to be able to continue the performance for the rest of the year, as Gazprom forecast yesterday that its exports to Europe would fall due to unseasonably warm weather. read more

BS Reporter / Bangalore October 09, 2007 
 
UK-based Shell Group’s charity arm aims to sell 10 million clean cooking stoves in 5 countries in the next 5 yrs. 
 
Shell Foundation, the charity arm of UK-based Shell Group, has joined hands with Envirofit International, a leading environmental NGO in the US, to fight indoor air pollution globally. Initially, the focus of the partnership will be on India. 
 
Indoor air pollution (IAP) is caused by smoke generated by traditional fires and stoves used mostly in developing countries including India, according to the foundation. 
 
According to an estimate by the World Health Organisation (WHO), IAP affects more than 50 per cent of the world’s population and claims the lives of 1.5 million people a year worldwide. 
 
India alone accounts for around 500,000 IAP-related deaths every year. WHO estimates that pollution levels in rural Indian kitchens are 30 times higher than the recommended levels. 
 
According to the partnership, Envirofit will be tasked with handling the scale-up and spin off of the Shell Foundation’s Breathing Space programme, which was founded to achieve global reductions in IAP. 
 
This new partnership, which aims at investing $25 million over a five-year period, is part of the foundation’s mission to see 10 million clean cooking stoves sold in five countries over the next five years. 
 
The Shell Foundation is providing Envirofit with investment and organisational support to form an independent global entity. In turn, Envirofit will design, develop, market and distribute clean cooking stoves that are engineered to emit significantly less toxic emissions and use less fuel. 
 
“With half the world’s population still cooking on wood, dung and other biomass burning stoves, the only way we are going to make a significant long-term impact and achieve the scale needed is by getting the private sector involved,” Shell Foundation Director Kurt Hoffman said. 
 
The Shell Foundation took up the issue of indoor air pollution in 2002, when it started nine pilot projects in seven countries. 
 
Hoffman said, “Without the valuable lessons learnt from these pilots, we would not have been in a position to spin off the programme.”
www.shellfoundation.org
 
http://www.business-standard.com/economy/storypage.php?leftnm=3&subLeft=2&chklogin=N&autono=300666&tab=r  read more

By JOHN WILEN – 11 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Energy futures fell in quiet holiday trading Monday as investors, questioning whether oil will keep surging to new highs, decided to cash in some of their recent profits.

Selling picked up momentum after Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced it would boost production at a Nigerian oil platform shuttered by violence last year. But trading volumes were low as many traders were off for Columbus Day and a national holiday in Japan.

“It’s the old Monday (routine) … a little bit of liquidation,” said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service. read more

By Sophia Kishkovsky Published: October 8, 2007

MOSCOW: An environmental impact report produced for potential lenders to the Sakhalin-2 oil and natural gas development project in Russia’s Far East gave an overall green light, with some reservations, to the project.

The report, to be released Tuesday, is important for the viability of the $20 billion project because it allows for a series of multibillion-dollar loans to be exercised.

Sakhalin-2 has been tangled in controversy for years, and the Russian government has cited environmental issues as a reason to exert economic control. read more