February 15th, 2007:

Terry Macalister
Friday February 16, 2007

BP has offered to hand over a majority stake in Kovykta, one of Russia’s most exciting gas projects, to the state-owned Gazprom. The concession follows mounting pressure from the Kremlin similar to that which forced Shell to cede control over the Sakhalin-2 scheme.

The British company, whose Russian joint venture TNK-BP holds a 65% stake in Kovykta, was told last week by Russia’s resources ministry that it must put right violations by May or lose the operating licence for the eastern Siberian field. read more

February 16, 2007
Carl Mortished

An obscure Russian company with links to Anatoly Karpov, the former chess champion, has made a gas find in eastern Siberia that could have a dramatic impact on BP’s efforts to develop Kovykta, a giant gasfield that is the jewel in the crown of BP’s Russian joint venture, TNK-BP.

Petromir, a company founded by Mr Karpov in 1999, has registered a 1.2 trillion cubic metre gas find at Angaro-Lenskoye in the Irkutsk region only 100 kilometres from Kovykta. It is estimated to contain 1.9 trillion cubic metres of gas. read more

Martin Waller: City Diary
February 16, 2007

Eyebrows rose at the official dinner at the Grosvenor House to mark IP Week, the annual jamboree for the oil industry.

All the big oil companies take tables, but this year there was a conspicuous absentee. No sign of BP, the UK’s biggest company, which by coincidence, doubtless, is now emerging from its worst year ever. BP confirms that no one saw fit to book space.

Those with long memories recall that last year Lord Browne of Madingley, the BP chief executive, gave the keynote address and used it to rubbish Shell, then emerging from its missing reserves scandal. read more

February 15, 2007

From a press release issued by the Republicans of the Senate energy committee:

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, today announced that Matthew Letourneau will become Republican communications director for the committee effective March 5.

Letourneau, currently the deputy press secretary on Domenici’s personal staff, will replace Marnie Funk, who is leaving the committee to become Vice President of Communications/Washington for The Royal Dutch Shell Group. read more

By Bunny Nooryani

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) — Dansk Undergrunds Consortium, which accounts for more than 80 percent of Denmark’s petroleum output, said oil and condensate production fell 4.3 percent in January from a month earlier.

Production averaged 278,000 barrels a day in January, from 290,500 barrels a day a month earlier, Maersk Oil, which operates the venture, said on its Web site today. The group’s natural-gas output rose to 853 million standard cubic meters in January from 828 million cubic meters the previous month. read more

MOSCOW, Feb 15 (Reuters) – Russia told Exxon Mobil (XOM.N: Quote, Profile , Research) on Thursday it was still ruling out any automatic enlargement of the U.S. oil major’s Sakhalin-1 licence territory, just as the project has hit peak output and is seeking new reserves.

Moscow said it would put the adjacent deposits into an auction, despite their discovery by Exxon.

The resources ministry said in a statement that deputy minister Alexei Varlamov told the head of Exxon in Russia, Ben Haynes, “the ministry’s position was unchanged”. read more

Thursday, 15 February 2007
REUTERS

A drive by big oil-producing nations like Venezuela to renegotiate deals with international companies has already hurt global crude production, a trend that could worsen if foreign investment declines further.

In nations like Ecuador, Bolivia and major exporter Russia, soaring energy prices have emboldened governments to take a hard line on production contracts, many of which were struck in the 1990s when oil prices were below $20 a barrel.

That’s a far cry from the highs near $80 a barrel set last year that left billions of dollars of export revenue on the table for leaders like firebrand Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, who relies heavily on the country’s state-owned oil company to finance his leftwing social agenda. read more

By Upstream staff

US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman today gave a sobering view of tight energy supplies and reservoir access challenges around the world, and called on global leaders to act to remove the “unacceptable risk” to energy security.

Without naming them outright, Bodman took to task leaders in countries that have seized on their plentiful crude oil supplies as a way to further their national agendas.

In Venezuela, some of the world’s top oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and Statoil are facing a 1 May deadline to renegotiate deals in the Orinoco oil region or have their multibillion-dollar projects seized. read more

Thu Feb 15, 2007 7:24AM EST

LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research), the second biggest western oil major, has called for a global “cap and trade” system to cut carbon emissions and promote renewable energy resources and energy security.

Chief Executive Jeroen Van der Veer, speaking late on Wednesday at an industry dinner, said such a system would reward companies that invested large sums to capture and store carbon dioxide (CO2).

“The best news would be to get more cap and trade schemes around the world and merge them post 2012 (when the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions expires),” van der Veer told Reuters after making his speech. read more

By Ian McKinnon

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) — EnCana Corp., Canada’s largest natural-gas producer, said fourth-quarter profit plunged 72 percent on lower gas prices and a smaller gain from assets sales than a year earlier.

Net income fell to $663 million, or 82 cents a share, from $2.37 billion, or $2.71, a year earlier, the Calgary-based company said today in a statement distributed on PR Newswire. Sales after royalties fell 38 percent to $3.68 billion.

Chief Executive Officer Randy Eresman, 48, is selling assets to focus on production from North American gas wells and oil- sands projects in northern Alberta. An oil-sands venture with ConocoPhillips that started in January added refining to the company’s production business. read more

Posted on Thu, Feb. 15, 2007
BY DAVID VOGEL

Sustainable firms. Green businesses. Socially responsible corporations. A growing number of magazines, activist groups and Web sites publish such lists, suggesting that one can distinguish the good companies from the bad.

The claim that such distinctions are possible is likewise central to ethical mutual funds, indexes and stock-rating services that recommend “responsible” investing — with some even asserting that “better” firms have superior financial performance. read more

EXTRACT: …Total is not interested in buying the French refinery operations being sold by Royal Dutch Shell (nyse: RDSA – news – people ), Margerie said.

PARIS (AFX) – Christophe de Margerie, the new chief executive of Total, said the group’s Upstream oil production activities are unlikely to maintain their current profitability, due to higher taxes in oil producing countries and cost increases.

But although the Upstream division will not maintain the 35.5 pct return on capital employed in 2006, Margerie said the company will continue generating a return on capital of at least 20 pct. read more

By  Anne-Sylvaine Chassany    

PARIS (Dow Jones Newswires): French oil major Total SA (TOT) expects to be able to make a decision to start drilling in the South Pars gas field “in the next months”, Yves-Louis Darricarrere, the company’s chief of exploration and production told reporters Wednesday.

The technical and the commercial discussions are in progress, Darricarrere said during a press conference on the company’s full-year earnings.

Total will weigh geopolitical risks of investing there once these talks are completed, he said. read more

Tanya Cariina Hsu, [email protected]
 
Shocking in its passivity, the world is quietly watching to see what the United States will do about Iran. No one is willing to take affirmative action, draw the line, and say no; the US takes this as tacit approval to go full steam ahead in moving to its next step toward its conquest of the Middle East and its energy resources, in order to control the world’s economic supply. The war has never been about weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, or bringing democracy to a people who would greet the “liberators” with flowers. Prior to the “New Pearl Harbor” of Sept. 11, 2001, the US already had attack plans drawn up and ready for a bombing campaign in Afghanistan. The neoconservatives were merely the Bush cheerleading team, touting the wars freely across the media, in personal readiness of the increased military spending to come their way via massive defense contract commissions, especially linked to the seemingly ever-threatened Israel. read more

By  Brian Baskin          

HOUSTON (Dow Jones Newswires): Good project managers in the oil industry may be like rock stars, but they’re becoming just as rare.

As an aging generation of workers retires, industry experts say the resulting shortfall in skilled labor could lead to an increase in delays and problems on mega oil and gas projects.

The industry suffers from an “if we can problem,” said David Hobbs, an analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, speaking at the consultancy’s annual conference, referring to chronic delays plaguing mega-projects around the world. read more

E&E Daily     

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wants to attach language to the Interior Departments’s fiscal 2008 spending bill that would help the federal government recoup almost $10 billion in oil and natural gas lease royalties.

At issue are leases the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service issued in 1998 and 1999 to companies drilling for oil and gas deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The leases granted royalty “relief” to the companies as a way to encourage drilling in hard-to-reach domestic areas, so long as prices for the commodities remained low. read more

Ma. Ceres P. Doyo,
Published: Feb 15, 2007

WHEN CNN REPORTER JEFF KOINANGA GOT near the place where he was supposed to meet with his interviewee Jomo Gbomo, spokesman of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), his boat was surrounded by boatloads of armed men. Men in black, wearing bonnets, brandishing big firearms and shooting into the air, prancing, dancing. This was enough to sow terror in the heart of even the most hardened of journalists.

I couldnt help recalling my own foray into the wilderness of Samar with a bunch of journalists. Using a motorized banca, we went through a heavily canopied river from the banks of which emerged heavily armed rebels who would lead us further into the wilderness and into the heart of a guerrilla movement. Into Tarzan territory, I called it. But we werent supposed to be frightened. Our hosts made sure of that. read more

By Peggy Hollinger in Paris
Published: February 15 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 15 2007 02:00

Thierry Desmarest yesterday ended his 12-year term as executive chairman of Total, the French oil major, by announcing record annual profits and boosting medium-term forecasts for production growth to one of the highest rates in the industry.

Mr Desmarest, who yesterday stepped up to become chairman of the supervisory board, said that production growth to 2010 would exceed 5 per cent, up from previous forecasts of 4 per cent. read more

By Russell Hotten, Industry Editor
Last Updated: 12:28am GMT 15/02/2007

BP faces a huge loss in revenues from its joint venture in Russia after the state-owned energy group Gazprom demanded to take a 75pc interest in one of the world’s largest gas fields.

The Kovykta gas project, controlled via TNK-BP, a 50-50 joint venture between the UK company and other investors, is one of Russia’s prize energy assets and has the potential to be a major earner.

Gazprom was known to want a role in the project, but its insistence in recent negotiations that it wanted 75pc is much higher than expected. One analyst said: “The fate of TNK-BP’s Kovykta project is currently extremely uncertain.” read more

Richard Childress Racing

HOUSTON — Just in time for the 2007 Nextel Cup Season and to support a new relationship, Shell Oil Company announces an integrated marketing platform aimed at raising its brand profile with NASCAR fans on and off the track. NASCAR’s 75 million fans are sure to take notice that Shell has made its way back into the world of NASCAR through a relationship with one of the best teams in motorsports, Richard Childress Racing (RCR), and fan favorite, Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 29 Shell-Pennzoil car. read more

Published: Thursday, 15 February, 2007, 08:52 AM Doha Time 
Business Reporter

DOHA: The foundation stone for the world’s largest gas-to-liquids plant – Pearl GTL – will be laid at Ras Laffan on February 22.

Pearl GTL is a fully integrated gas to liquids project being developed by State of Qatar and Shell under a Development and Production Sharing Agreement (DPSA).

The Pearl GTL will produce some 140,000 barrels per day of GTL and 120,000bpd of condensate, liquefied petroleum gas and ethane in two trains. The production from the first GTL train is slated for 2010, with the start up of the second train scheduled a year later, Brown said.  read more

By: Richard Orange

ROYAL DUTCH Shell, the energy giant, risks permanently losing some of its oil production in Nigeria amid growing anti-Western sentiment in the build-up to April’s presidential election.

The two leading presidential candidates, Major General Muhammadu Buhari and Umar Musa Yar’Adua, are considering nationalising oil fields in the Niger Delta should they come to power.

The Business has learnt that MD Yusuf, a powerful Nigerian political figure backing the Yar’Adua political campaign, has established links with the government of Hugo Chavez, the rabidly anti-Western Venezuelan president. Chavez has forcefully renegotiated the terms on which international oil companies operate in his country. read more

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) — Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s second-largest oil and gas producer, said an “unprecedented tightness” in the liquefied natural gas market is boosting costs and making it more difficult to develop projects on schedule.

Global trade in LNG may reach 370 million metric tons by 2015 from about 145 million in 2005, “nearly trebling in only 10 years,” Don Voelte, managing director of Perth-based Woodside, said in a speech delivered in Houston. Worldwide LNG demand could outstrip supply by as much as 20 million tons a year in 2008-2015, he said. read more