January 10th, 2008:

Posted By:Sharon Epperson

10 January 2007

Royal Dutch Shell execs have been talking about the impact of high oil prices on future energy projects–but the company continues to press on with plans despite headwinds facing the sector.

“Increasing supply is best way to affect the price,” says Shell Oil President John Hofmeister.

That’s what the company’s expansion plans for its Port Arthur, Texas refinery are all about. Last month, Motiva–Shell’s joint venture with and Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company–broke ground on the $7 billion project that will double the size of that refinery to 600,000 barrels per day. It’ll be the largest in the nation when it’s finished, perhaps by 2010. read more

By Nick Louth
January 10 2008

The start of a new round of price increases for domestic fuel has brought attention back to natural gas, the fuel we rely on for domestic heating and cooking and which powers more than a third of Britain’s electricity generation capacity.

Natural gas is relatively clean, adaptable, efficient and was until recently abundant in the North Sea. For years, Britain was entirely self-sufficient in gas.

All that is changing now.

First, gas output from the North Sea is in decline. Second, new supplies right across the globe are coming onstream slower than hoped. Finally, the global distribution of gas reserves has given an enormous power to an old adversary: Russia. read more

By Alexander Kwiatkowski

Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — Daily shipments of North Sea Brent crude, part of the price benchmark for almost two-thirds of the world’s oil, will fall by about 8 percent in February.

Tankers are set to load 184,552 barrels a day of Brent crude in February, down from 200,645 barrels a day scheduled for January, according to the loading program of field operator Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company. read more

10 January 2008, 9:01am

Investment bank Merrill Lynch slashed its fourth quarter profit forecast for BP by 25% on concerns about lower production, higher costs, and a whopping tax bill. 

At a time when punters expect profits to be gushing in at the exploration giant, due to record oil prices, the accident prone group looks set to reveal a far gloomier set of figures when it reports next month.

Merrill analyst Mark Iannotti said: ‘We cut our (fourth quarter earnings) estimates by 25% from £3bn to £2.24bn on higher than forecast field commissioning costs, weaker than expected marketing margins and higher tax.’ read more

County official calls for policy limiting foreign investment.

By Sarah Fulton | Special to The Morning Call
January 10, 2008

After a vote to internationally invest about $22 million of the Lehigh County employee retirement fund Wednesday, a county commissioner proposed developing a policy to prohibit investments that could benefit Iran.

Commissioner Dean Browning said he is concerned that some funds invested internationally on behalf of the county could support corporations that do business with Iran. read more

A Review of AEA’s Independent Environmental Consultant Final Report to Agency Lenders Regarding Sakhalin II Phase 2

Prepared by Pacific Environment and Sakhalin Environment Watch
November 7, 2007

EXTRACTS

At an October 8, 2007 Moscow press conference, SEIC announced that the “independent” Report gives Sakhalin II a “clean bill of health.” However, a review of the Report confirms that it is neither independent, nor does it give Sakhalin II a clean bill of health.

…the Report records systematic and chronic violations of policies and standards of international lenders and other standards. Furthermore, the Report documents how SEIC has subverted key environmental assessment processes relevant to international lenders in order to make the results of these assessments meaningless. Finally, the Report documents that if public international financing is provided to SEIC for Sakhalin II, SEIC would be in immediate default on contractual terms of the financing due to numerous material breaches of the international lenders’ policies and standards agreed to by SEIC. read more

10 January 2008 09:41

Royal Dutch Shell is on a collision course with trade union Amicus over redundancy packages for thousands of IT staff.

Personnel Today’s sister title Computer Weekly reports that Shell is to outsource more than 3,000 IT jobs worldwide to AT&T, EDS and T-systems as part of a plan to save £250m a year.

The move will affect about 300 people working in Shell’s IT operations in the UK.

Those affected are unhappy about being offered lower redundancy packages than other categories of employees. Shell is offering packages worth only £50,000 to IT staff instead of the standard £200,000 packages. read more

Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:27am EST

By Yaw Yan Chong

SINGAPORE, Jan 10 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) has delayed the restart of a 33,000 barrels per day (bpd) gasoline-making unit at its Singapore refinery by about two weeks, stretching the unplanned maintenance to over three months, industry sources said on Thursday.

The Long Residue Catalytic Cracker (LRCC) in the 500,000-bpd Bukom refinery, which had been shut following an outage in end-September, is now expected to restart by mid-January. read more

By Tom Bergin, Reuters
International Herald Tribune     
Wednesday, January 09, 2008 

Gazprom will find it hard to become a major player in Nigeria, making it unlikely that the Russian gas giant will rival Western oil companies’ dominance there or be able to divert Nigerian gas from European markets.

But if Gazprom redirected cash to foreign investment, gas supplies to Europe could be at risk, analysts warned.

Gazprom, which is state-controlled, said this week that it wanted a presence in Nigeria, and a Nigerian government official said the company had offered an initial investment of up to $2.5 billion. read more

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — Inpex Holdings Inc., Japan’s largest oil explorer, said the budget and schedule for its proposed Ichthys liquefied natural gas project in Australia are “under review,” signaling it may cost more and start later than planned.

The review means Inpex and its partner Total SA are “holding back” on a decision to start engineering and design work on the project, Sean Kildare, a Perth-based spokesman for the company, said today. The shares fell the most in almost five months. read more

By GABRIEL KAHN
January 10, 2008; Page A10

What was supposed to be a decisive meeting scheduled for Jan. 11 to resolve the long-running dispute between the government of Kazakhstan and a consortium of foreign oil companies developing the massive Kashagan field has been postponed, according to people close to the negotiations.

The heads of six foreign oil companies are now expected to meet with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Prime Minister Karim Massimov no sooner than Jan. 13. The reasons for the delay weren’t immediately clear. Already, the foreign oil companies and the Kazakh government have blown through three previous deadlines. Authorities have been feuding with the oil companies over how Kazakhstan should be compensated from the Kashagan field, which holds more than 13 billion barrels of recoverable reserves and is one of the largest new finds of the past 30 years. read more