October 2nd, 2006:

Monday October 2nd, 2006 / 22h33 
 
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (AP)–A convoy of workers for Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) was attacked while being accompanied by a military escort in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta, Bisi Ojediran, a company spokesman in Lagos, said Monday.

Ojediran said he could not confirm any casualties. Oil company convoys usually travel with a military escort in the dangerous delta region.

It was not immediately clear if the Shell convoy was attacked in the same incident as one in which dozens of militants sank two military patrol boats, killing five soldiers. The incident, which occurred in the same area, also left nine others missing, an army spokesman said. read more

EXTRACT: Information: Western Gray Whales are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Thought to be extinct as recently as 1972, this remnant subpopulation living in the north-western Pacific Ocean includes only 20-25 reproductively active females. Its only known feeding grounds lie along the coast of Sakhalin Island where existing and planned large-scale gas and oil activities represent a potentially serious threat to the population’s survival.

THE ARTICLE read more

Issue #1209(75), Tuesday, October 3, 2006
By Konstantin Sonin
 
Two leading financial newspapers, the Financial Times and The Economist, wrote last month that the “environmental attack” on Shell, the main stakeholder in the Sakhalin-2 project, had been brought about by Russia’s desire to bring foreigners to the negotiating table. This was a logical conclusion.Both newspapers also wrote that the government’s response was misguided, but here they missed the mark. Of course, both the method of initiating negotiations — using the Prosecutor General’s Office — and the decision to have Gazprom manage the state’s (future) share in the project are bad news. But the government’s intention is correct. The time has come to renegotiate its production sharing agreements. read more

By: DAN UDOH, AP Worldstream
Published: Oct 03, 2006

Dozens of militants sank two military patrol boats in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta in an attack that killed five soldiers and left nine others missing, an army spokesman said.

Maj. Sagir Musa said 15 soldiers were on a routine boat patrol in a delta outlet in Nigeria’s Rivers state when 70 militants attacked on Monday, sinking two military boats. One of the soldiers managed to escape and raise the alarm, he said.

A convoy of workers for Royal Dutch Shell PLC was attacked while being accompanied by a military escort in the same area, said Bisi Ojediran, a company spokesman in Lagos. It was not immediately clear if the Shell convoy was attacked in the same incident. read more

By: First Mariner oil is planned for 2009 while Barbara and Phyllis fields may involve a joint project, writes Martyn Wingrove, Lloyds List
Published: Oct 03, 2006

CHEVRON and Shell could be installing fixed production platforms on two central North Sea projects in the next two years as oil companies push forward with oil and gas developments.

US oil major Chevron is planning to develop the Mariner heavy oil field in UK block 9’11 by the end of 2009 with a fixed platform and tanker loading facilities. read more

Published: Oct 03, 2006

SAKHALIN Energy will charter two crude oil tankers from Primorsk Shipping Corp to cover shipments from its new terminal in Aniva Bay, writes Martyn Wingrove .

The Shell-led consortium has signed an agreement with Prisco covering a five year time charter of the two 2004-built vessels Sakhalin Island and Governor Farkhutdinov.

These two 108,000 dwt tankers will be transporting crude from the southern tip of Sakhalin Island to Asian markets from the fourth quarter of 2007 if the Sakhalin II project starts on time. read more

By: Tom Shiel, Irish Times
Published: Oct 02, 2006

A large force of gardaI is being mobilised to force entry this week to the Corrib gas terminal site in Co Mayo which has been blockaded by protesters for more than a year.

Picketers who successfully thwarted an attempt by gardaI to gain entry for about 80 workers to the proposed terminal area at Bellanaboy on Tuesday last, have since been maintaining a round the clock vigil at the main entrance to the site.

But they have been warned by Supt Joseph Gannon, officer in charge of the Belmullet Garda District, that the law of the land must be upheld and the safe passage of work crews onto the site will be facilitated by the security forces. read more

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 2, 2006
Filed at 7:56 a.m. ET

MOSCOW (AP) — The chief engineer at a Siberian subsidiary of oil company BP’s Russian joint venture was found shot dead over the weekend, the RIA Novosti agency reported Monday.

The company had been informed of the killing of Enver Ziganshin, according to a spokeswoman for TNK-BP, which controls the subsidiary Rusia-Petroleum. But she declined to provide further comment.

No one was available to comment at Rusia-Petroleum’s headquarters, which are located in Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia. Ziganshin, 49, was found by his wife in a sauna Saturday and he had been shot three times including once in the head, RIA-Novosti said, citing a representative for local police. read more

02 Oct 2006 16:49:50 GMT

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria, Oct 2 (Reuters) – Militants attacked an oil pumping station operated by Royal Dutch Shell in southern Nigeria on Monday, killing five soldiers who were guarding it, an industry source in the Niger Delta said.

A spokesman for Shell in Nigeria said the company was checking on reports of an attack on the facility, located in the Cawthorne Channel in Rivers State, but no details were available yet.

02.10.2006, 19.37
 
MOSCOW, October 2 (Itar-Tass) — The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry will conduct no talks with the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Limited – the operator of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project – before the end of the comprehensive probe into compliance with law enforcement legislation on October 25, the ministry’s press-service has said.

“At the Sakhalin Energy’s request there was a meeting of the Natural Resources Ministry international cooperation department’s chief, Igor Maidanov with company representatives on Monday,” the ministry said. read more

A disastrous leak. A deadly explosion. CEO John Browne must turn his troubled oil giant around, but time is running out.

By Nelson Schwartz, Fortune senior writer
October 2 2006: 10:06 AM EDT

(Fortune Magazine) — “This is where it all started,” says BP Prudhoe Bay field manager Kemp Copeland, pointing to a rust-colored steel pipe snaking its way across the bleak Alaska tundra 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Normally this line carries 100,000 barrels of oil a day, the first step in a journey that takes crude from America’s biggest oilfield to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and then on to the port of Valdez, where it is loaded into supertankers bound for the West Coast and millions of gas-hungry drivers. read more

Oct. 02, 2006

In respect of Russia, the rhetoric of Japan was reconciliatory during the whole past week, signaling Tokyo is paving the way for the first meeting of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

In part that relates to Russia, the speech that the new PM of Japan Shinzo Abe delivered to the parliament past Friday was clearly positive and equally vague, as if he attempted to leave some space for maneuver at the future negotiations with Russia’s president. read more

(Article published by The Wall Street Journal hours before news broke of the apparent assassination in Siberia of a top TNK-BP official.)

October 2, 2006

Apart from the rough-and-ready tactics, it could prove a good match. Russian gas giant Gazprom has finally said openly that it wants to buy out BP’s local partners in its Russian operation, TNK-BP. BP has first refusal over that 50% stake, which has a market value of about $20 billion. Yet it probably will have little choice but to defer to Gazprom. read more

14:32 | 02/ 10/ 2006
 
IRKUTSK, October 2 (RIA Novosti) – A top manager with Rusia Petroleum [RTS: PTRL], a TNK-BP subsidiary, has been killed in Siberia, a spokesman for local police said Monday.

The representative in the Irkutsk Region said chief engineer Enver Ziganshin, 49, was found dead by his wife in a sauna at about midnight on Saturday. He had been shot three times, including once in the head.

Last week, Rusia Petroleum was singled out by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, which warned the company that its license could be revoked if it failed to address environmental protection concerns and other problems. read more

Linda Cook, Chief Executive Shell Gas & Power

(Shell Insider Comment: Linda Cook, cited in the article below as receiving more than £1 million per annum, is the head of Shell Gas and Power, the division of Shell which signed the Sakhalin II agreement against the wishes of Exploration and Production)

THE ARTICLE

02.10.06  

Boardroom pay has exploded by almost 30 per cent, more than seven times the rate for ordinary workers.

A survey today showed top company directors’ pay packages soaring to record levels with the increase the biggest for many years. read more

September 29, 2006
Oil Trip: Nigeria, Chad, Liberia
By EMIRA WOODS

It is almost impossible to imagine, as we sit in a well-lit, fully functioning gas station on Main Street, USA, that a community blessed with oil riches under its soil could look as impoverished as Yenagoa in the Nigerian state of Bayelsa.

Yenagoa is the site of one of Nigeria’s first oil wells, built in pre-independence 1956 . Yet as in many communities in Nigeria’s oil rich Delta region, most people of Yenagoa live in mud huts. Some reside only a few feet away from the oil wells. But they lack electricity and indoor toilets. They have no hospitals, no running water, and no schools. And there is unemployment too. Oil companies like Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil bring in foreign workers for even the most menial jobs. read more

Monday, October 02, 2006 
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
 
It always comes back to oil. The continuing misguided interventions in the Middle East by the United States and the United Kingdom have their roots deep in the Arabian sand. Ever since Winston Churchill led the conversion of Britain’s navy from coal to oil at the start of the last century, the Western powers have meddled incessantly in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries to keep the oil flowing, toppling governments and taking sides in wars in the supposed “great game” of energy resources. But the game is almost over, because the old approaches are obviously failing. read more

AFP JOURNAL INTERNET – Mon 02 Oct, 08:11 AM

A worker cleans the lettering on a Shell gas station in Kuala Lumpur. Oil prices have climbed above 63 dollars in Asian trade after moves by Venezuela and Nigeria to cut output added to concerns that OPEC as a whole could trim production to defend the 60 dollars level, dealers said.

(AFP JOURNAL INTERNET)

By Dario Thuburn
 
NOGLIKI, Russia (AFP) – The only thing that the rich oil and gas reserves just off the sandy shores of Russia’s Sakhalin Island have done for Tatyana Kuklik is spoil her fish.

“The fish isn’t the same. It smells of oil,” said Kuklik, as she cut roe from Siberian salmon on Plastun Spit — an expanse of far eastern wilderness lined with ramshackle wooden fishermen’s huts along the water’s edge.

Kuklik is a Nivkh, an ethnic group numbering some 2,000 people that has lived off fishing for hundreds of years on the edge of the tundra on this remote island seven time zones east of Moscow. read more

Russian oil grab ‘puts western supplies at risk’: BP and Shell face bids, says energy expert New UN body may be needed to police markets
By: TERRY MACALISTER, The Guardian – United Kingdom
Published: Oct 02, 2006

A former government adviser has warned it is “only a matter of time” before BP or Shell faces a bid from a Russian state-owned group such as Gazprom which could threaten western oil supplies.

Professor Peter Odell, an energy economist, says ExxonMobil is also vulnerable to a Chinese takeover as the large UK and American stock-listed oil groups lose their influence in global markets. read more

October 02, 2006
From Leo Lewis in Tokyo
 
SHINZO ABE, the staunch nationalist who came to power as Japan’s Prime Minister promising a more internationally assertive country, will use the crisis over the Sakhalin-2 oil project in Russia’s far east to show that a newly aggressive Tokyo is ready to get tough with Moscow, government insiders say.

Russia’s decision to cancel Sakhalin-2, supposedly on environmental grounds, comes as Japan’s new Prime Minister struggles to stamp his authority on a political world redefined by Junichiro Koizumi, his radical predecessor. 
 
Mr Abe has been criticised as inexperienced and narrow-minded in the field of foreign relations, and the Sakhalin issue is an early test that he cannot afford to fail. read more

October 02, 2006
By Martin Waller
 
BP AND Shell are among 47 companies that Libya has qualified to compete in its latest round of oil and gas licensing since the lifting of sanctions, the state-owned National Oil Corp (NOC) said over the weekend. 
 
The NOC reported on its website that applications had been received from 70 companies interested in possible exploration and production-sharing agreements.

Libya wants to attract foreign investment to help it to increase its oil output capacity from about 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) to more than 3.0 million bpd by 2010 or 2012. read more

(Dick Benschop and Liang Kok Siang)

Monday October 2, 2006

By GOH EE KOON

IN the race to find newer forms of alternative fuel and related byproducts, one of the companies in the Shell Malaysia group is establishing itself as a pioneer in a high-value niche product market.

Shell MDS (M) Sdn Bhd, a part of the gas and power sector of Shell companies in Malaysia, manufactures specialty products at its Bintulu, Sarawak facility by using gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology.  

While the majority of Shell’s activities in Malaysia are centred on exploration, the group still takes notice of this division due to its high potential for development and expansion in the future. read more

Published October 2, 2006

Almost 450 Shell and Motiva employees and their families participated in the annual Texas “Adopt-a-Beach Day” cleanup effort Sept. 23. The Texas program, coordinated annually by the Texas General Land Office, is aligned with “International Coastal Cleanup Day,” which draws tens of thousands of volunteers each September in 90 countries around the world.

Shell Oil Company, which has participated in the beach cleanup since 2000, is the largest corporate sponsor for this year’s effort in Texas. Shell and its affiliate Motiva Enterprises also will have the largest volunteer team in the state. Clad in bright yellow T-shirts with the Shell logo, employees and their families ranging in age from toddlers to retirees joined in the cleanup effort. read more

LONDON (MarketWatch) — The World Conservation Union, or IUCN, is convening a new scientific panel to monitor the impact of the Sakhalin II offshore oil and gas project on the endangered Western Gray Whale population, the organization said in a statement Monday.

The Russian Far Eastern project, led by Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN), has come under the spotlight recently after a Russian watchdog said it was withdrawing an environmental license because of alleged ecological violations.

The international, independent panel will provide ongoing impartial advice to companies developing oil and gas reserves in the whale’s summer feeding grounds, focusing on Sakhalin II. read more

Sunday October 1st, 2006 / 2h16 
 
LONDON -(Dow Jones)- The World Conservation Union, or IUCN, is convening a new scientific panel to monitor the impact of the Sakhalin II offshore oil and gas project on the endangered Western Gray Whale population, the organization said in a statement Monday.

The Russian Far Eastern project, led by Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN), has come under the spotlight recently after a Russian watchdog said it was withdrawing an environmental license because of alleged ecological violations. read more

(Workers constructing Sakhalin Energy’s LNG plant near Korsakov on the southern tip of Sakhalin Island on Friday.)

Monday, October 2, 2006. Issue 3509. Page 1.
By Miriam Elder
Staff Writer  
Marina Lystseva / Itar-Tass
 
KORSAKOV, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk — The concrete tanks and metal cranes of Sakhalin-2 rise incongruously from the forested shores of Sakhalin Island. Workers scurry around the sprawling plant putting the finishing touches to a project that will seek to harness the vast hydrocarbon riches that lie beneath the island’s northern waters. read more