April 9th, 2007:

April 10, 2007
David Robertson, Business Correspondent

British businessmen could find themselves in American jails after a crackdown by the US Department of Justice on trade with “rogue states”, leading lawyers say.

US officials are reaching across borders in an attempt to prevent companies doing business in countries such as Iran, even if people are obeying their own domestic laws.

Ali Manzarpour, a Brighton-based businessman, is in jail in Poland awaiting extradition to the United States, despite never having visited the country. He is charged with trying to export an experimental single-engine aircraft to Iran. This is not believed to have contravened any British or European law, but because the aircraft originated in the US, the Americans are claiming jurisdiction. read more

GRAEME SMITH April 10 2007

Shell will announce a £350m investment today which will safeguard hundreds of jobs and secure gas supplies for the next 25 years at two Scots plants.

The upgrade involving Mossmorran and St Fergus will lead to supplies from Norway being piped to the St Fergus terminal north of Peterhead.

It is expected that the Shell facilities at St Fergus will be upgraded over five years and that the Norwegian gas will allow the terminal to operate at full capacity.

Declining UK North Sea gas supplies have meant that it has been operating below capacity. The upgrade secures the future of around 300 jobs at St Fergus as well as generating more work for contractors who will be required over the period of the upgrade. read more

Mon Apr 9, 2007

CARACAS, April 9 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s Venezuelan subsidiary has paid the Venezuelan government $13.7 million in back taxes levied on operations in 2005, the nation’s Seniat tax authority said on Monday.

The government of leftist President Hugo Chavez in 2005 launched a broad campaign to increase tax payments by private companies pumping oilfields in Venezuela, the fifth-largest exporter of oil to the United States in January.

The Seniat said it received the payment after an audit that determined the company had not paid enough income tax for 2005. read more

how bad has it to get before a top boss is jailed?

Some of Britain’s biggest companies have seriously neglected their safety responsibilities, with deadly consequences. Hazards editor Rory O’Neill asks how bad it has to get before a top boss ends up behind bars.

Recent tragedies have called into question whether fines, however large, have a significant deterrent effect on major UK corporations. To date, no executive of any major UK-based company has ever served time for workplace safety offences. A handful of firms have received seven figure fines – including BP, Network Rail and steel giant Corus – but have then gone on to commit serious and in some instances more deadly safety crimes. read more

Tuesday, April 10, 2007. Issue 3633. Page 6.
Bloomberg

Gazprom aims to quadruple its market value to $1 trillion within a decade and become the world’s biggest company.

“We will reach a $1 trillion market capitalization in a period of seven to 10 years,” deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said in an interview Friday. “We’d like to be the most valued and most capitalized company in the world.”

The goal would be more than twice today’s $439.6 billion market value of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded company, and would exceed Russia’s 2006 economic output of $975 billion. It would also surpass the gross domestic product of countries including the Netherlands, Australia and South Korea. read more

Crude prices drop nearly $3, extending declines after Iran released British sailors last week.

April 9 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Oil prices tumbled about 4 percent Monday as last week’s selloff that followed Iran’s release of 15 British sailors accelerated.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery sank $2.69 to $61.59 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
 
The two-week detention of the British sailors had driven U.S. crude back briefly above $68 a barrel, the highest price since September. read more

MOSCOW, April 9 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s share of profit from a Total-led oil project in the northern Russia Kharyaga oilfield in 2006 has been established at $107 million, the Industry and Energy Ministry said Monday.

State revenues from the operation of the Kharyaga oilfield, in Russia’s Yamal-Nenets autonomy, which the French energy giant is developing under a production-sharing agreement (PSA) with the Russian government, have been set at $169.1 million, thus substantially exceeding its amount of investment in the project. read more

NORVAL SCOTT

CALGARY — For the past year, practically every Calgary-based company with oil sands assets has been the subject of takeover speculation, with foreign companies presumed to be champing at the bit to get a slice of the region’s huge reserves.

Along with apparent interest from super majors, national oil companies from countries such as India and Norway have said they’re pursuing multibillion-dollar projects in the region, adding more grist to the feverish rumour mill.

And yet, there have been no major mergers and acquisitions to speak of in the oil sands. In fact, since France’s Total SA bought Deer Creek Energy Ltd. of Calgary for $1.4-billion in September, 2005, the only significant oil sands deals have involved Calgary-based Shell Canada Ltd., which bought Blackrock Ventures Inc., also of Calgary, in May, 2006, for $2.4-billion, before being snapped up itself by Anglo-Dutch parent company Royal Dutch Shell PLC for $8.7-billion, a deal that’s expected to close this month. read more

Published: Monday, 9 April, 2007, 09:20 AM Doha Time

DOHA: Indonesia plans to sign production deals in the next two months with firms, including Royal Dutch Shell, to extract gas from coal seams that could double the nation’s output, Energy Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said.

He said yesterday the country would start up a $6.5bn liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal around six months early in 2008 as it strives to stem a decline in its LNG exports.

Indonesia was the world’s largest exporter of the gas cooled to liquid form for years until last year, but as output from its ageing oil and gas fields declined, fast-developing Qatar snatched the top spot. read more

Published: Apr 09, 2007

JAKARTA, April 9 Asia Pulse – State-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina has teamed up with Shell, the world’s largest jet fuel supplier, to cooperate in aviation gas supply in Indonesia and abroad.

The tie-up will include the operation of supply facilities in the country and abroad, Pertamina President Ari Soemarno said.

The first implementation of the cooperation will be implemented at Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta airport, Ari said, adding that Pertamina will be able to utilize the operational standards of Shell. read more

By Carola Hoyos in London
Published: April 9 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 9 2007 03:00

Doha’s Ritz Hotel is rather different from the discreet club in the suburbs of Cairo where Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran in 1959 signed the gentlemen’s agreement that would later create the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil cartel. But European governments will be watching nervously to see if energy ministers of the big natural gas exporting countries come up with similar plans when they meet there today. read more

By Carola Hoyos
Published: April 9 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 9 2007 03:00

To date, Total executives and investors have largely shrugged off the investigations into whether the French energy group used bribery to try to secure deals in Iran, Iraq and Cameroon.

Christophe de Margerie, the company’s chief executive, has twice been summoned since October to be grilled by French police. Now US authorities want to interview him too, though people close to the company say he has yet to receive that request. read more

Prices Could Level Off
But Uncertainty Looms;
Supply-Demand Snags
By BETH HEINSOHN
April 9, 2007; Page C3

In what has become as much a springtime phenomenon as vacationing college students partying on warm beaches, U.S. gasoline prices are soaring.

But although the $2.763 a gallon average retail price for regular gasoline is higher than the price a year ago, there is no guarantee it will head to levels above the $3 seen last summer.

“Once summer gasoline is in place, and expecting that higher prices might cause demand to adjust, prices could level off,” said Geoff Sundstrom, spokesman for the AAA. In spring, oil refiners replace winter-grade gasoline with a grade that evaporates less in warmer summer temperatures.
 
Prices “will be high in the summer but unless there’s some kind of disaster we remain optimistic we won’t have an average $3 price across the nation,” Mr. Sundstrom said. read more

April 9, 2007
Carl Mortished, International Business Editor

Qatar is to launch the first market for trade in liquefied natural gas (LNG) amid fears that the world’s gas-exporting countries are forging closer links that could lead to the formation of a gas cartel.

The Gulf emirate is seeking to capture global trade in the world’s fastest-growing energy commodity with the creation of an LNG contract based at IMEX, an energy exchange to be launched this year in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

Talk of the formation of a gas cartel overhangs a meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GEFC) that begins today in Doha. The notion of a gas Opec, proposed by Iran last month, has been rejected by Russia, but other members of GECF, such as Algeria, have expressed ambivalence and recommended that an expert group study the proposal. read more

April 9, 2007
Carl Mortished: Analysis

What would you expect to be discussed at a meeting of gas-exporting nations?

It was Adam Smith who commented that people of the same trade seldom meet together but the conversation ends “in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices”.

The participants at this year’s meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum have been at pains to insist that the formation of a “gas Opec” is not on the agenda at today’s meeting in Doha. It probably isn’t, but there are many forms of co-operation that fall short of a formal cartel and it is almost certain that leading gas producers, such as Russia, Algeria and Iran, are watching the rapid expansion in the liquefied natural gas market (LNG) with some anxiety. read more