June 27th, 2006:

From Asia Pulse
Published: Jun 28, 2006

PERTH, June 28 Asia Pulse – China has commissioned its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, receiving LNG from Australia’s North West Shelf joint venture.

The North West Shelf joint venture, which is operated by Woodside Petroleum Ltd (ASX:WPL), is the first international supplier of LNG into China and joint venture president Peter Cleary said it was the beginning of a 25-year relationship.

“We would like to congratulate our Chinese customers on the safe and successful commissioning of their new LNG facilities in the Guangdong province,” he said in China today. read more

From The Financial Times
By Carola Hoyos in London

Published: June 28 2006 03:00 | Last updated: June 28 2006 03:00

Iraq was yesterday poised to restart its critical northern oil exports after a nine-month interruption caused by pipeline sabotage.

The country’s marketing company this week sold several batches of oil from its storage tanks at the Turkish port of Ceyhan, the end point of its northern export route, freeing up room for new supplies to be pumped from the fields.

Though shipping brokers were optimistic, they cautioned that the 600-mile pipeline was still vulnerable to attack and that the flow could prove temporary. read more

From Upstreamonline
By Upstream staff

Supermajor Shell’s Sakhalin II operating company, Sakhalin Energy, has installed Russia’s first offshore gas platform on the Lunskoye field in the Sea of Okhotsk, north-east of Russia’s Sakhalin Island.

The successful mating of the Lunskoye-A’s 21,800-tonne topsides with the four legs of the concrete gravity-base structure (CGBS) placed on the seabed last season broke the world record for a “floatover” operation, Shell said.

The procedure involved floating the purpose-built barge carrying the facility between the CGBS legs, then ballasting it down to lower the topsides onto the legs. Leg mating units, each weighing 130 tonnes, were pre-installed in each leg to centre the topsides and help absorb shock. read more

From Upstreamonline
By Upstream staff

27 June 2006

Technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon capture and offshore wind, needs government support to make it competitive, Graeme Sweeney, the head of Shell International Renewables, part of Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell, said today.

The debate about where to source future energy is an increasingly hot topic as countries such as Britain, the US and China plan to build new power plant, and concerns about energy security and the threat of climate change grow, Reuters reported. read more

From Rigzone
Tuesday, June 27, 2006 

Shell Canada says that as of 1:01 a.m. on June 27, 2006, approximately 4,319,949 additional common shares of BlackRock Ventures Inc. (TSX: BVI) have been validly deposited to the offer by BR Oil Sands Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shell Canada, to acquire all of the common shares of BlackRock (including common shares issuable upon the exercise or surrender of any options or conversion of any convertible debentures).

BR Oil Sands Corporation has taken up these additional shares, which,together with those shares previously taken up, represent approximately 98% of the common shares of BlackRock on a fully- diluted basis. BR Oil Sands Corporation will pay for these additional shares today by providing the depositary with sufficient funds for transmittal to the holders of these shares. read more

From allAfrica.com
Lagos

In the first half of this year an average of more than four hostages have been seized monthly in the Niger Delta, an unprecedented rate of kidnappings since the first stirrings of violent protest in the early 1990s in the region that produces most of Nigeria’s oil.

The two Filipino hostages freed on Sunday by armed militants in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta brought to 29 the number of oil workers seized and released since January in the increasingly volatile region. read more

MSNBC/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Clears House committee, faces likely filibuster in the Senate

Updated: 11:18 a.m. ET June 27, 2006

Legislation that would end a quarter-century ban on drilling in most of the Outer Continental Shelf advanced in the House on Wednesday. The measure would allow oil and gas development in restricted offshore waters unless a state prohibited it.

The House Resources Committee approved the legislation in 29-9 vote, and its sponsors say it has a good chance of being approved by the full House read more

From The Mayo News
By Michael Duffy

JUNE 29 is a date that will be forever etched in the memories of five men from north Mayo whose collective name, the Rossport Five, is now part of the vernacular across the country.

Tomorrow (Thursday) is the first anniversary of the day when Michael Ó Seighin, Willie Corduff, Vincent McGrath, Philip McGrath and Brendan Philbin were first incarcerated in Cloverhill Prison and this week they have denied reports that there is ‘a split in the camp’.

A report in last weekend’s issue of The Sunday Times suggested that the ‘five’ had become ‘four’ after Brendan Philbin decided to ‘pursue his case against Shell through a separate legal strategy’, but Dr Mark Garavan, spokesman for the Shell to Sea group, denied this, stating that Mr Philbin was ‘still very much in touch with what is going on but the other four men are, for the most part, conducting the negotiations’. read more

From New Europe News

Gazprom and Shell are planning to build a plant to process 12 billion cubic metres of gas a year according to gas-to-liquid (GTL) technology near Nadym, Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Ryazanov said at the Renaissance Capital annual investors’ conference last Monday.

Implementing the project could become one of the ways to resolve problems with using low-pressure gas in the region, he said. Ryazanov told reporters later that the economics of the said project is dependent on transport tariffs for railway freight. Gazprom held talks recently with Russian Railways (RZD) on favourable tariffs for the long-term, or “at least for the project’s recoupment period,” he said. Investment in the project could be USD seven-eight billion, Ryazanov said. read more

From The Associated Press

“Iraq certainly is a country with incredible resources”

Iraq’s instability has kept foreign oil companies from investing in reconstruction, compounding what officials see as a litany of woes confronting the country’s once-dominant oil sector–from corruption to poorly maintained fields.

While the world’s thirst for oil grows, untapped Iraqi reserves and current production that still has not reached prewar levels remain a problem with no imminent solution. read more

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Severe Shortage
Of Skilled Workers
Boosts Job Prospects
By BENOIT FAUCON and NAHED AL-ALI
June 26, 2006

LONDON — Twenty years ago, it’s unlikely that Diana Leo, a middle-aged woman with business and engineering degrees, would have been found running an oil rig in the North Sea.

But in 2004, Ms. Leo, a native of Denmark’s Faroe Islands, became installations manager for the Nelson platform, a Royal Dutch Shell PLC facility 175 kilometers off the Scottish coast that produces 44,000 barrels of oil and 445,000 cubic meters of natural gas each day. She has overall responsibility for the platform, taking care of safety and making sure cost and production targets are met. read more

6/27/2006
Source: Reuters

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia • Russia’s first giant natural gas platform has been installed off the island of Sakhalin in the far east of the country, a consortium led by energy group Royal Dutch Shell announced yesterday.

David Grier, executive director of the Shell-led Sakhalin Energy consortium, said the completion of the Lounskaya 2 platform meant Sakhalin Energy was on course to begin delivering gas to clients in the Asia-Pacific region in 2008.

The construction, which weighs 22,000 tonnes and was built by South Korean group Samsung, was transported on a giant Chinese-made barge. It was installed 15km off the island of Sakhalin, where the sea is 48 metres deep. The gas extracted by the platform will be transported to the north of Sakhalin then taken south to be liquefied. read more

From Reuters

Mon Jun 26, 2006 8:25pm ET

HOUSTON, June 26 (Reuters) – A unit at Shell Oil Products U.S. 156,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in the Los Angeles suburb of Wilmington, California, was flaring on Monday afternoon because of a breakdown, according to reports filed with state and local public safety agencies.

A refinery spokeswoman declined to discuss the situation at the refinery.

One report said the flaring may have been caused by a crack in a weld on the unit.

Terry Macalister
Tuesday June 27, 2006
The Guardian

Russian group insists there is plenty of interest in its controversial listing

Rosneft swept aside mounting concerns about its controversial float on the London stock market yesterday and unveiled a premium price for its share sale, which would value Russia’s state-owned oil group at up to $80bn (£44bn).

A 500-page outline prospectus from Rosneft admitted that potential investors faced at least four serious cases of litigation and arbitration as well as political risks from policy shifts or other “instability” in Russia. read more

From BLOOMBERG

June 27 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the world’s third-largest oil company, may sell the remaining liquefied natural gas from its Russian Sakhalin-2 project to buyers in Asia, said John Chadwick, Shell’s top gas executive in Asia.

Sakhalin, located close to Japan in Russia’s Far East, now has 90 percent of its LNG under contract and will soon sign agreements for the remaining 10 percent, Chadwick, 49, said in a June 22 interview. Shell last month agreed to sell as much as 420,000 metric tons of LNG a year to Tohoku Electric Power. read more