March, 2007:

By George Onah
Posted to the Web: Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Port Harcourt—IN a renewed effort at reducing maternal and childhood mortality and morbidity the Shell Petroleum Development Company has embarked on major turn around maintenance and upgrading of 27 health facilities in the six Niger Delta states.

The rehabilitation and provision of health care infrastructure is part of the company’s community health care scheme which involves cottage hospitals and health centres and other medical outlets. read more

By Benoit Faucon
12:07am 03/14/2007

LONDON (MarketWatch) — A total of 37 workers for Royal Dutch Shell PLC, most of them contractors, lost their lives in 2006, one more than in 2005, as violence escalated in the Niger Delta, the company said in its annual report published Tuesday.

According to the annual report, two employees and 35 contractors lost their lives at work in 2006, with 17 of these deaths occurring in Nigeria. By contrast, three employees and 33 contractors lost their lives while working for Shell in 2005. read more

Gordon Hamilton, CanWest News Service

VANCOUVER — Most Canadian oil and gas companies have failed to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, putting themselves and their investors at risk of the kind of eco-campaigns that targetted forest companies or the multibillion-dollar lawsuits launched against tobacco companies, says a new sustainability report.

Head in the Oil Sands, a 25-page report by the $2.2-billion Ethical Funds Co., reveals only three of 50 publicly-traded oil and gas companies tracked by the fund have decreased greenhouse gas emissions while increasing production. read more

March 14, 2007
Carl Mortished, International Business Editor

Royal Dutch Shell and a group of Turkish companies have joined forces to bid for a licence to produce natural gas in Iraq and pipe it to the Turkish Mediterranean oil port of Ceyhan.

Talks have taken place with the Iraqi oil ministry regarding a plan to build a gas pipeline that would link Iraq to Turkey and join with Turkish projects to export Central Asian gas nto Europe.

The pipeline was discussed at a meeting last Friday in Istanbul between Iraqi, Turkish and US officials, according to Hilmi Guler, the Turkish Energy Minister. Shell’s partners are believed to include TPAO, the Turkish state oil company; Botas, Turkey’s pipeline operator, and Tekfen, a construction group. read more

EXTRACT: Shell, to cite the most high profile example, has already paid out $90 million to disgruntled investors for allegedly misstating reserves and is facing further litigation…

March 13, 2007
By Michael Herman

It seems curious that, at a time when the likes of President Bush, Michael Bloomberg and Eliot Spitzer are criticising America’s apparent obsession with class action law suits, we on the other side of the Atlantic seem to be adopting a more claimant-friendly attitude to litigation. read more

Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:44 PM BST

LAGOS, March 13 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile , Research) has gained access to the oil spill that forced it to close 187,000 barrels per day (bpd) output in Nigeria but had equipment seized by community youths, a company spokesman said on Tuesday.

The company is negotiating with youths in the Nembe Creek area of the Niger Delta to release the equipment and allow workers to carry out inspection and repairs to the trunk pipeline that feeds the Bonny export terminal. read more

(Media-Newswire.com) – Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asked Shell Oil Company President John Hofmeister during a face-to-face meeting today to drop his company’s proposal to build the Broadwater liquefied natural gas facility ( LNG ) in Long Island Sound. Shell is a partner in Broadwater with TransCanada.

“I urged Shell’s president today to abandon Broadwater,” Blumenthal said. “Natural gas is a clean effective fuel, but this location is worst case, worst place – an environmental atrocity and a tempting terrorist target. There are better, safer alternatives – areas in Maine and Massachusetts, as well as Virginia and Maryland, where Shell already has the right to build. read more

A woman who launched an £800,000 damages action over the death of her partner on a North Sea oil platform has settled out of court.

Jacqueline Ogilvie took out the civil case against oil giant Shell and services firm Wood Group following the death of technician Keith Moncrieff.

Mr Moncrieff, 45, and co-worker Sean McCue, 22, died after a gas release on Brent Bravo in September 2003.

Mrs Ogilvie, from Dundee, has agreed a “substantial” settlement.

Shell has already been fined £900,000 in court for health and safety breaches. read more

EXTRACT: Months of pressure last year on another vast hydrocarbon project in the Far East, Sakhalin-2, regarded by experts as the Kremlin’s drive to regain control of the country’s mineral resources, culminated in the purchase by state-controlled energy giant Gazprom of 50 percent plus one share in the project from Shell and two Japanese companies involved.

THE ARTICLE

Created: 13.03.2007 12:28 MSK (GMT +3),

Russia’s environmental and technological watchdog has launched a routine probe into the Kharyaga oil field operated by France’s Total in northern Russia, the agency said on Tuesday, March 13. read more

EXTRACT: The campaign, modeled in part on the divestment strategy employed against South Africa during the apartheid era, may be a more effective way of punishing firms such as Royal Dutch Shell, Total..

THE ARTICLE

By ELI LAKE
Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 13, 2007

WASHINGTON — Nearly 80% of Americans would rather invest in mutual funds and other financial products that exclude companies that do business with state sponsors of terrorism, according to a new poll released today and obtained by The New York Sun. read more

Ethical Funds report evaluates how oil and gas companies are responding to climate change

VANCOUVER, March 13 /CNW/ – Canada’s oil and gas companies have failed to take action to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions, with only two Canadian companies responding appropriately to the risks presented by climate change, according to The Ethical Funds Company.

Despite the existence of global leaders in Canada’s oil patch, only Shell Canada and Suncor are well positioned to function in a more carbon-neutral environment reads the latest Sustainability Perspectives research paper from The Ethical Funds Company: “Head in the Oil Sands? Climate Change Risks in Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector.” The full paper can be viewed at www.ethicalfunds.com. read more

EXTRACT: AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr said the group will also press state pension funds in 10 states to sell their shares in companies doing business in Iran. AIPAC officials said U.S. pension firms have major investments in companies like the French oil giant Total and the British-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell.

THE ARTICLE

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published March 13, 2007
 
An influential pro-Israel lobby said yesterday it will expand its program to choke off new investment to Iran as a way to pressure the Islamic regime to give up its drive to acquire nuclear weapons. read more

Tue, March 13, 2007
By HANK DANISZEWSKI, SUN MEDIA
 
A proposed refinery for the Sarnia area should substantially boost Ontario’s refinery capacity and could ease the tight supply of gasoline, says a Shell Canada official.

Shell Canada has proposed a refinery project with a capacity for refining 150,000-250,000 barrels of heavy oil each day from the Alberta tar sands.

Last month a fire sidelined the Imperial Oil refinery at Nanticoke which normally refines about 118,000 barrels a day. The fire triggered temporary gas shortages in some areas and high prices across the province which still persist. read more

Published: Mar 13, 2007

NORSK Hydro and its partners in the Ormen Lange gas project off mid-Norway are set to invest NKr2.5bn ($405m) in a subsea compressions station to halve development costs, writes Martyn Wingrove.

The Norwegian group, plus Shell, ExxonMobil, Denmark’s Dong and state groups Statoil and Petoro have decided to proceed with a pilot plant at the Nyhamna processing plant near Molde.

The partners want to qualify the technology, supplied by Norwegian engineering contractors Aker Kvaerner and Aibel, before installing a four train gas compression system on the seabed in 860 m of water. read more

US major’s five-year plan for oil, gas and downstream projects should result in up to 5m boe per day output, writes Martyn Wingrove, Lloyds List
Published: Mar 13, 2007

US MAJOR ExxonMobil is planning to invest $20bn per annum over the next five years to develop a stream of new oil, gas and downstream projects.

The world’s largest publicly listed oil group has at least 20 upstream and liquefied natural gas projects in progress to start up by 2009, plus several more to undertake from 2010. read more

Published: Mar 13, 2007

The Philippines’ biggest oil companies on Tuesday appealed a Supreme Court order to relocate a sprawling oil depot from the capital, saying it would result in an immediate fuel shortage.

The court last week ordered the Manila city government to implement a zoning ordinance _ enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. _ that reclassified the area where the depot is as commercial rather than industrial.

The area is densely populated and just a couple of kilometers (miles) away from the Malacanang presidential palace, and residents have said they fear it could be a target for terrorists. read more

Lorna Siggins, Marine Correspondent
Published: Mar 13, 2007

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has agreed to hold an oral hearing into the licensing of the Corrib gas refinery in north Mayo.

Objectors to the preliminary licensing approval have been informed of the EPA’s decision, but a date has yet to be set for the hearing.

The EPA issued a preliminary integrated pollution prevention and control (IPCC) approval last January. Among the 12 appellants to the hearing are Corrib’s lead developer, Shell E&P Ireland, An Taisce, local priest Fr Michael Nallen, the Erris Inshore Fishermen’s Association, and members of the Shell to Sea campaign. read more

By Ed Crooks in London
Published: March 13 2007 02:00 | Last updated: March 13 2007 02:00

In the gold rush of today’s energy business, companies such as Halliburton are the modern equivalents of Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo.

Providing services to oil companies has been an even better business than finding and producing oil in recent years. Since the start of 2003, ExxonMobil’s shares have roughly doubled; those of Royal Dutch Shell, now the runner-up among Western oil majors, have risen about 40 per cent. read more

BREEZY TALK
The Texas Wind Powers
A Big Energy Gamble
Shell, Others, Pile In
Despite Regulatory Risk;
Poke Arnold’s ‘Rib Eye’
By JEFFREY BALL
March 13, 2007; Page A1

SILVERTON, Texas — Deep in the heart of Texas, multinational giants are gambling on a new supply of energy. The prize isn’t oil. It’s wind.

In this pancake-flat country, where the wind blows so relentlessly that the sagebrush and mesquite are permanently bent, Royal Dutch Shell Group, BP PLC and a wind-development company owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are racing to lease vast expanses of ranchland. In a bet on wind power’s long-term viability, they’re planning to erect what would be some of the biggest wind farms in the world, with thousands of wind turbines costing some $2 million apiece. read more

Posted by WSJ.com Staff

The Financial Times writes that the world’s oil industry is dominated by a new group of “Seven Sisters,” a reference to the old lineup of oil giants that dominated the world before OPEC rose to prominence: Esso (now Exxon Mobil), BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Mobil (now part of Exxon Mobil), Gulf Oil (now split between BP and Chevron) and Texaco (now also part of Chevron).

The new Seven, per the FT, are Saudi Aramco, Russia’s Gazprom, CNPC of China (parent of PetroChina), NIOC of Iran, Venezuela’s PDVSA, Brazil’s Petrobras and Petronas of Malaysia. read more

EXTRACT: The elusive firm Hakluyt–founded by former MI6 operatives and legendary for doing business over port and cigars in London’s Tony White’s club–has also seen its share of lawsuits. Shell Oil and EADS , the company that brought us the Airbus A380, are said to be among its most loyal clients.

The Article

By Ilana Ozernoy
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 03.13.07

Wal-Mart gets lots of bad press, but usually it’s about how the company treats wage laborers, not about how it treats the press. Yet, last week, CEO H. Lee Scott found himself calling an executive at The New York Times to apologize for having spied on their employees. In an effort to ferret out the source of a leak of embarrassing company memos, a Wal-Mart employee apparently intercepted text messages and telephone calls of other employees. Now, FBI investigators are on the case, and the Wal-Mart employee caught snooping was sacked (which may just be a token measure making him Wal-Mart’s Lynndie England). If this latest fiasco is anything like what happened at Hewlett-Packard last year–when Chairwoman Patricia Dunn resigned after it came to light that she hired spies to investigate a boardroom leak to the press–more heads are sure to roll. read more

By ANTONIA JUHASZ: Op-Ed Contributor
Published: March 13, 2007
San Francisco

TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.

Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back. read more

Sir, The absurdity of the Tory proposal to “ration” air travel is that any such restriction on aviation fuel consumption will soon be overtaken by the event of oil depletion (“Growing costs ‘put Shetland oilfield plans in jeopardy’,” Business, March 12 ). This reports aligns you with the often scorned “peak oilers” club in heralding the rising costs of upstream oil production. Ominously, ExxonMobil, Shell and BP have opted to buy back their shares rather than increase exploration and development expenditure to augment their falling “booked” oil reserves. For nonOpec companies the peak in oil production was passed in 2005. read more

13 Mar 2007
SHANNON TEOH

Who doesn’t want to find the perfect company and work there happily ever after? Shell’s Gourami Business Challenge provides its participants and SHANNON TEOH an intimate look at how things would be if you were an employee in just such a company.

SET for life — isn’t that everyone’s dream? And short of coming up with an idea like clickable icons on a computer screen, or striking the lottery — including the rather morbid wish for an inheritance — how does someone achieve that fantasy of a retirement spent playing golf and going on cruises? read more

Daily Trust (Abuja)
March 12, 2007
Adenlanwa Bamgboye
Lagos

Royal Dutch Shell Plc says a team of investigators has gained access to an oil spill in Nembe Creek in the Niger Delta.

The team consists of experts and engineers from the company and the Nigerian government, said a Shell spokeswoman.
 
“The investigation team has gone in to find out the cause of the spill and the extent of the damage. They’ve gained access (to the site),” she said.
 
She could not say how long the probe will take and how soon Shell can restore lost production. The leak was found on the Nembe Creek area in the Niger Delta on Sunday, forcing Shell to shut down production of 187,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. read more

US class action lawyer Michael Hausfeld was quoted at the weekend as stating: “Deutsche Telekom, Parmalat, Royal Dutch Shell, they have shown that corporate fraud is not only endemic in the US…”

The Sunday Times: Deutsche Telekom, Parmalat, Royal Dutch Shell have shown corporate fraud is not only endemic in the US

He was able to freely make this statement without fear of a libel action from Shell because Shell management did indeed engage in an outright fraud in respect of the reserves scandal. read more

12-Mar-07

Veteran Shell marketer Raoul Pinnell is retiring at the end of the month after ten years with the oil giant.

Pinnell, who is chairman of Shell Brands International, says he will return to the UK from Switzerland and concentrate on a number of non-executive roles.

Shell moved Pinnell, who was previously vice-president of global marketing and communications, to his current role three years ago when it set up Shell Brands International to oversee its global brands and trademarks (MW May 6, 2004). read more

15:01 | 12/ 03/ 2007 

MOSCOW, March 12 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow Region prosecutors denied they were questioning an environmental regulator Monday.

A spokesperson for the environmental watchdog said earlier Monday that regional prosecutors were questioning Oleg Mitvol, the deputy head of the Federal Service for the Oversight of Natural Resources, as part of a slander suit filed by Moscow Region Governor Boris Gromov.

“Mitvol has neither been questioned nor summoned to the Moscow Region Prosecutor’s Office or district offices in the region,” the press service of the regional prosecutor’s office said. read more

EXTRACT: “…six months ago most observers would have been shocked at the extent of the concessions wrung from the foreign consortium operating Sakhalin-2. Nor has there been much of a downside for Russia as a result of this behaviour: Shell’s bruising experience seems not to have deterred others from seeking greater exposure to the energy sector, as ConocoPhillips’ recent bid to participate in the Shtokman project with Gazprom demonstrates. In this climate, it should not be a surprise if sooner or later one foreign company with a coveted asset loses everything. BP must hope that day has not yet arrived. read more

12 March 2007 (Reuters)

Turkish companies and Royal Dutch Shell have set up a consortium to bid for a gas production licence in Iraq and build a pipeline to Turkey’s energy hub of Ceyhan, an industry source said on Friday.

“There is a joint venture that has been set up to that end among TPAO (state-owned Turkish Petroleum Inc), Shell, (state pipeline operator) Botas and (Turkish firm) Tekfen,” the source told Reuters at an energy conference in Istanbul.

The pipeline would run parallel to an existing oil pipeline from Iraq’s Kirkuk to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. read more

BY Prof. John Pepper Clark, Vanguard (Nigeria): EXTRACT FROM ARTICLE

Shell, the principal player, for instance, in its deliberate policy of divide-and-rule, continues to prowl the Niger-Delta, waving wads of memoranda of understanding as meaningless as the treaties that the Royal Niger Company earlier signed with the people.

Natives of such places as Letugbene, Agoro and Agge, often cannot follow the legalese of the small print where the clauses that matter are embedded. At the same time, Shell in the same Ekeremo Local Government Area, refuses to sign an MOU with the entire community whose capital is Amatu, the ancient settlement on the overside of Letugbene, where the River Dodo, a principal distributary of the Niger, enters the Atlantic Ocean. read more

EXTRACT: Take the recent Rossport crisis, where the Government found it could not exert leverage over Shell. Why? Because they had given everything away to Shell.”

THE ARTICLE

Kitty Holland,
Published: Mar 12, 2007

Discontent and alienation in society are not being represented by mainstream political parties, a conference of left-wing groups was told in Dublin at the weekend. Marxism 2007 was held over three days, and heard calls for alternative approaches to bringing about change in society. read more

Published: March 11 2007 19:05 | Last updated: March 11 2007 19:05

Jeroen Van der Veer, Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive, likes to talk about how he is building a “new energy infrastructure”.

To take a cynical view, that is fancy talk for investing a huge amount in high-cost sources of oil, and trusting that the market will be strong enough for it to pay off. Shell invested $23bn last year; a larger sum than that spent by ExxonMobil, which produced more than 20 per cent more oil and gas. Much of that was not in traditional projects, drilling wells and letting the oil flow out of the ground, but in Canada’s oil sands, liquefied natural gas – where Shell is the leading international oil company – and converting natural gas to liquid road fuel. read more

By Carola Hoyos
Published: March 11 2007 19:05 | Last updated: March 11 2007 19:05

Even those who only follow the oil industry casually, will know the above reference is steeped in history.

Coined by an angry Enrico Mattei, founder of Italy’s energy group Eni, after World War II, the “Seven Sisters” were: Standard Oil of New Jersey, Royal Dutch Shell, Anglo Persian Oil Company, Standard Oil of New York, Standard Oil of California, Gulf Oil and Texaco. Together, they controlled the vast majority of the world’s oil production and refining at the birth of the modern oil age.* read more

By Carola Hoyos
Published: March 11 2007 19:05 | Last updated: March 11 2007 19:05

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, this year signed a law that allows Pdvsa to seize control of the $30bn Orinoco Belt heavy crude oil projects from a handful of the world’s biggest international energy groups. By doing so he accelerated the speed with which he has turned Pdvsa from a foreigner-friendly national oil company of competent technocrats into a pawn of his nationalist agenda.

Though in technical and managerial terms it is a shell of a company, Pdvsa is still hugely influential, not least to the fortunes of international oil groups such as Repsol of Spain, ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil of the US and Total of France, to name but a few. read more

Financial Times: Petronas

Published: March 11 2007 19:05 | Last updated: March 11 2007 19:05

Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil company, has been described as the role model that other NOCs would like to follow. Solidly placed in the second division of oil companies worldwide, it is one of the top three exporters of liquefied natural gas, which has been one of the fastest-growing energy markets of the decade.

However, it has yet to realise its full potential. For a while, it looked as though Petronas would exploit that strength to build a global position to match the grandeur of its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, once – by some standards – the world’s tallest building. In 2003 it spent $1.74bn on assets in Egypt, and appeared to be on the verge of a determined move to break out of Asia and into the American and European markets. read more

By Ed Crooks
Published: March 11 2007 19:05 | Last updated: March 11 2007 19:05

When PetroChina last year became the world’s third-biggest listed energy company by market value, it was a stark illustration of how the world energy order had changed. A company from an emerging economy that is a significant net importer of oil has emerged to challenge ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP.

All three of China’s leading oil companies have been making ambitious international moves. CNOOC, the offshore oil company, caused uproar in 2005 when it bid for Unocal of the US. Sinopec, which has traditionally been stronger in downstream activities, created almost as much interest when it joined of a consortium that bid $2.2bn for exploration licences off the coast of Angola, one of the world’s most important sources of new oil supplies. But China National Petroleum Corporation, with its 88 per cent owned listed subsidiary PetroChina, is bigger than either of them, and has a wider international reach. read more

Published: March 11 2007 19:05 | Last updated: March 11 2007 19:05

BP’s reputation has plunged in the past two years as a result of a string of problems in the US. Those included investigations of its oil and gas trading activities, oil leaks in Alaska caused by pipeline corrosion, long delays in Thunder Horse, one of its most ambitious projects, and above all the explosion at its Texas City refinery in 2005 that killed 15 people.

The investigations and law suits that followed those deaths, in what was the worst industrial accident in the US for a decade, hang over the company, and will continue to do so for a long time to come. read more

By Carola Hoyos
Published: March 12 2007 02:00 | Last updated: March 12 2007 02:00

When an angry Enrico Mattei coined the phrase “the seven sisters” to describe the Anglo-Saxon companies that controlled the Middle East’s oil after the second world war, the founder of Italy’s modern energy industry could not have imagined the profound shift in power that would occur barely half a century later.

As oil prices have trebled over the past four years, a new group of oil and gas companies has risen to prominence. They have consolidated their power as aggressive resource holders and seekers and pushed the world’s biggest listed energy groups, which emerged out of the original seven sisters – ExxonMobil and Chevron of the US and Europe’s BP and Royal Dutch Shell – on to the sidelines and into an existential crisis. read more

Published: March 12 2007 02:00 | Last updated: March 12 2007 02:00

With 25 per cent of the world’s oil reserves and the capacity to produce nearly triple the amount of any other group, Saudi Aramco is the world’s most successful national oil company. The House of Saud dictates energy policy but leaves day-to-day strategy to the capable technocrats who run it.

Saudi Aramco is investing $50bn (£26bn, €38bn) over 15-20 years but its biggest fields are ageing.

Gazprom

No other company keeps Europe, and increasingly Asia, on tenterhooks more than Gazprom. As a tool of the Kremlin, it has been involved in a gas dispute with Ukraine and a debate with Japan and China over competing pipelines from Siberia as well as the grab of Royal Dutch Shell’s majority stake in the Sakhalin II liquefied natural gas project. read more

Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:56 AM BST

HOUSTON, March 11 (Reuters) – Shell Oil Co.’s (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile , Research) 156,000 barrel per day (bpd) San Francisco Bay-area refinery in Martinez was “not at normal operations” on Sunday night as the plant struggles to restart boilers shut since Friday, a refinery spokesman said.

Those carbon monoxide boilers that are closed supply steam to the refinery’s gasoline-producing 73,000 bpd fluidic catalytic cracking (FCC) unit along with other units, said spokesman Steve Lesher. read more

Sunday, March 4, 2007
By Rob Stapleton 
 
A participant at a recent Resource Development Council breakfast examines an Insitu unmanned aerial vehicle at the Petroleum Club in Anchorage. The Insitu UAV can be launched and retrieved on land or water after each mission. PHOTO/Rob Stapleton/AJOC     
 
Unmanned aerial vehicles will aid oil exploration near the North Slope in the Beaufort Sea, according to officials from Shell Oil Co.

“Drones are being investigated as an alternative to manned aerial flights for marine mammal monitoring in order to reduce the safety risk to humans associated with flights over remote stretches of Arctic Ocean,” according to a written statement by Terzah Poe, a Shell Oil spokeswoman. “The unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone aircraft, would be used to monitor and track marine mammals in the areas where we are operating.” read more

THE WORLDS

FIRST INTERNET GRIPE SITES?

The first reference to our “Internet” activities was made by Shell in a press statement issued on 17 March 1995.

 http://shellnews.net/2006affidavit/shell-press-release-dated-17-march-1995.htm

The text of the Daily Telegraph article above published on Thursday 11 June 1998 is as follows: –

Daily Telegraph: Donovan’s beef with Shell on-line

Thursday 11 June 1998

HIGH court writs have been filed against Shell UK by independent marketing man John Donovan. Through his company, Don Marketing, he claims that in 1989 he was the brains behind Shell’s Smart Card scheme. read more

Sunday, March 4, 2007
By Rob Stapleton 
 
Unmanned aerial vehicles will aid oil exploration near the North Slope in the Beaufort Sea, according to officials from Shell Oil Co.

“Drones are being investigated as an alternative to manned aerial flights for marine mammal monitoring in order to reduce the safety risk to humans associated with flights over remote stretches of Arctic Ocean,” according to a written statement by Terzah Poe, a Shell Oil spokeswoman. “The unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone aircraft, would be used to monitor and track marine mammals in the areas where we are operating.” read more

By Tim Webb
Published: 11 March 2007

The British Government intervened to help UK and US energy giants in their attempts to secure lucrative contracts to exploit Iraq’s ruined oilfields.

The Foreign Office delivered a report by the International Tax and Investment Center (ITIC) – a Washington-based think-tank backed by a host of multinationals, including oil companies such as Shell and BP – to Iraqi officials in Baghdad, it has emerged.

The British ambassador to Iraq formally sent the “road-map” study on the Iraqi oil industry to the then Iraqi minister of finance, according to documents seen by The Independent on Sunday. The study recommended the Iraqi government sign long-term production-sharing agreements with foreign oil companies. read more

EXTRACT: Last month it reported that oil and gas output jumped 19 per cent last year, compared with a 4.2 per cent gain at ExxonMobil, and declines of 2.2 per cent and 1.3 per cent, respectively, at BP and Shell.

By Sylvia Pfeifer
Last Updated: 11:53pm GMT 10/03/2007

BG Group, the British oil and gas explorer, could become the first major Western energy company to invest in Iraq.

It is understood that representatives from BG recently visited the northern region of Iraq in a move to assess the opportunities. read more

HEADLINE: US class action star targets UK

Big business beware: litigation supremo Michael Hausfeld is setting up shop in Britain and he’s in the mood for a good fight.

March 11, 2007
By Holly Watt

IN American corporate boardrooms, the mere mention of the name Michael Hausfeld is enough to spread panic among directors and investors.

He is one of the country’s top litigators who has won billions in compensation for everyone from Holocaust victims to Alaskan fishermen and consumers ripped off by Microsoft. This month Hausfeld is opening a London office and is preparing an aggressive assault on British companies. In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times this weekend, he said that there “are laws [in Britain] and they’re not being enforced”. read more

03/10/2007
Associated Press 

HARTFORD: Developers of a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound accused some state officials Friday of ignoring the big picture of Connecticut’s energy woes as they continue to battle the project.

“What we need in this project is less political heat and more objective light,” Gary Vale, a spokesman for Broadwater Energy, said.

“By saying no all the time, they’ve created a situation where we now have the highest electric rates in the nation except for Hawaii, which is an island,” he said. “And the fact that the we have the highest energy rates and one of the lowest job growth rates, those dots connect.” read more