February 19th, 2007:

By John Donovan

We are delighted to report an excellent response to our recent article…

09/02/2007  Do you have grounds for a lawsuit against Shell?

We have had contact with potential plaintiffs, litigants/lawyers and various interested parties and sources located around the world, including the UK, The Hague, Amsterdam, Kuala Lumpur, New York and Houston.

Several hundred pages of documents, including copies of court papers served on Shell, have been supplied to us. 

We have put potential plaintiffs, existing litigants (and Shell insiders) into direct contact, so that they can exchange information, including similar fact evidence, and arrange to obtain/supply witness testimony. read more

02.19.07, 10:23 AM ET

LONDON (AFX) – Royal Dutch Shell PLC said chairman Jorma Ollila purchased 10,000 of its A shares on Feb 14 2007 at a price of 25.56 eur per share, bringing his total holding to 14,000.

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Related article: Financial Times: Directors deals

By Michael Tindaledirectorsdeals.com
Published: February 17 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 17 2007 02:00

Royal Dutch Shell directors remain active with shares this year so far trading sideways. Wim Kok and chief executive Jeroen Van der Veer invested £78,000 on Wednesday. This was the first discretionary by either man for 18 months. read more

Monday, February 19, 2007
By Roman Kupchinsky
 
February 19, 2007 (RFE/RL) — In recent years, Russia’s state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom has purchased oligarch Roman Abramovich’s oil major Sibneft and has forced the Royal Dutch Shell oil company into surrendering part of its ownership in the Sakhalin-2 project. But the gas giant wants more.

Gazprom recently announced that it plans to merge with a Russian coal supplier, the Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK). The merger, if approved by the federal antimonopoly watchdog, would create a holding company worth about $12 billion — by far the largest in Russia’s power sector — with Gazprom in majority control. read more

Decline in industrial world consumption and thorough routing of speculators could lead to $30 U.S. a barrel

Feb 19, 2007 04:30 AM
David Olive 

Jeff Rubin, excitable chief economist at CIBC World Markets, got the Cassandra treatment early this month after downgrading oil stocks because, in his view, governments are bent on “demand-destruction aimed at reducing oil consumption in an effort to abate greenhouse-gas emissions.” Nonsense, muttered the Street, which has seen Rubin’s scarems go awry before. read more

19:55 | 19/ 02/ 2007 

MOSCOW, February 19 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s economics ministry said Monday it forecasts growth in oil exports to 273 million metric tons (some 2 billion barrels) and natural gas exports to 221.6 billion cubic meters.

In 2006, Russia’s oil exports totaled 249.9 million tons (1.8 billion barrels) and natural gas exports 201.1 billion cu m.

The ministry said the gas exports forecast is based on “the demand of the European market, the beginning of LNG exports under the Sakhalin II project and Gazprom’s data.” read more

David Ignatius

MOSCOW — Think of the new Russia as a highway: People used to drive on the left side of the road; now, officially, they are supposed to drive on the right, but the changeover has been uncomfortable (especially for the authorities). So the country straddles the middle — which is understandable but also dangerous.
 
That’s a paradox of Vladimir Putin’s Russia that I have encountered in nearly every conversation here this past week. Russian officials insist they don’t want to go back to communism, and why would they? Moscow glitters like a Christmas package, with more neon per square mile than any city I know. But behind Moscow’s dazzling lights, the remnants of the old police state remain — and many order-loving Russians actually seem glad of it. read more

Headline: Death Toll Up to 6 in Blast 

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 7, 1988

LEAD: Workers wearing protective clothing and carrying oxygen tanks found three bodies in the hot, twisted ruins of a Shell Oil refinery in Norco, La., last night, raising the death toll from an explosion to six. One person was missing.

Workers wearing protective clothing and carrying oxygen tanks found three bodies in the hot, twisted ruins of a Shell Oil refinery in Norco, La., last night, raising the death toll from an explosion to six. One person was missing. read more

FEBRUARY 19, 2007

The Shell Ferrari advertisement is not going quite as well as had been planned. Motorsport News (Australia) last week reported that the world’s most expensive ad hit a hitch in Sydney.

Apparently, production crew and car, all flown in for the purpose were poised to start filming, when there was a last-second glitch in the local NSW-government approval. When it became apparent that the glitch could be overcome by a charitable donation, the producer called a halt, everyone packed up, and left. read more

Vanguard (Lagos)
February 19, 2007
Emma Arubi
Warri

SHELL Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Egwa Flow station in Warri South local government council area of Delta State was on Thursday gutted by fire when one of the oil Well Head’s went up in flames.

As at Friday evening the company was still in dilemma as to how to contain the raging inferno whose immediate cause has not been disclosed.
 
A source in SPDC who would not want his name in print told Vanguard that three regulatory bodies have been invited to for a Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) to the flow station to determine the exact cause of the fire outbreak and recommend appropriate remedial action. read more

KHALID QAYUM
Bloomberg News

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan says it will proceed with plans to build a gas pipeline from Iran even if India pulls out of the project, because South Asia’s second-biggest economy expects its energy needs to more than double by 2020, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz says.

“Pakistan is committed to the Iran gas pipeline,” Mr. Aziz said in Islamabad yesterday at the opening of the third annual Pakistan Oil & Gas Conference that aims to solve energy needs in the South Asian country. “We have enough investors in Pakistan to build the infrastructure for gas import.” read more

By Carola Hoyos,Chief Energy Correspondent
Published: February 19 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 19 2007 02:00

All the world’s extra oil supply is likely to come from expensive and environmentally damaging unconventional sources within 15 years, according to a detailed study.

This will mean increasing reliance on hard-to-develop sources of energy such as the Canadian oil sands and Venezuela’s Orinoco tar belt.

A report from Wood Mackenzie, the Edinburgh-based consultancy, calculates that the world holds 3,600bn barrels of unconventional oil and gas that need a lot of energy to extract. read more

By Carola Hoyos in London
Published: February 19 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 19 2007 02:00

Miles from the nearest port, pipeline or airstrip, dense black oil emerges from a small stream near Bemolanga, in central Madagascar. Few people – even those in the energy industry – connect the Indian Ocean island with crude oil, but that will change in the next 15 years as the hunt for unconventional resources intensifies.

Extracting and refining unconventional oil and natural gas, such as the goo emerging in Madagascar, uses large amounts of energy. Nevertheless, from 2020 such extraction will be critical to the world’s economic health. read more

Simon Bowers
Monday February 19, 2007

Greenhouse gas emissions running into hundreds of millions of tonnes have not been disclosed by Britain’s biggest businesses, masking the full extent of the UK’s contribution to global warming, according to a report published today by Christian Aid.

Only 16 of Britain’s top 100 listed companies are meeting the government’s most elementary reporting guidelines on greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, almost 200m tonnes of CO2 is estimated to be missing from the annual reports of FTSE 100 companies. The figure is more than the entire annual emissions of Pakistan and Greece combined. read more

EXTRACT: As for the oil companies, they are still treating solar power as a fringe curiosity. “There is no silver bullet,” said Jeroen Van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive. “We have invested a bit in all forms of renewable energy ourselves and maybe we’ll find a winner one day. But the reality is that in twenty years time we’ll still be using more oil than now,” he said.

Might he be wrong?

THE ARTICLE

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 11:31pm GMT 18/02/2007 read more

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 19/02/2007

One of the most basic – and commonsensical – principles of foreign policy is that if you appease a nasty regime, it will get nastier. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is such a regime: an increasingly unsavoury, disruptive and anti-democratic member of the international community.

And yet every time it flexes its muscles – over its relations with its neighbours, or its attitude towards human rights, or now, with a $183 billion armaments programme, its military capability – it is met with a timorous response from a West addicted to Russia’s energy supplies. read more

February 19, 2007
Joe Bolger

Two government bodies are facing a stream of criticism over proposals to control the connection of offshore windfarms to the National Grid, The Times has learnt.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) have been accused of putting forward plans that could lead to “stagnation” in the development of offshore renewable energy projects and could ultimately result in insufficient capacity to transmit electricity generated offshore back to the mainland. read more

State panel wants Bruno disbarred
Monday, February 19, 2007
By Susan Finch
Staff writer

Starting with a federal class action lawsuit over the 1988 explosion at Shell Oil Co.’s Norco refinery, New Orleans lawyer Joe Bruno has specialized in representing mass-disaster victims, these days almost exclusively people who lost their homes to flooding after Hurricane Katrina.

Now, in an unexpected threat to one of the pillars of the local plaintiffs’ bar, Bruno suddenly finds himself facing a fight to salvage his own career. read more