May 1st, 2007:

By Marc Schulman

Last Friday, the Florida Senate voted unanimously in favor of a bill that would require divesting pension funds from companies doing business with the petroleum sector in Iran and the government of Sudan.

If passed next week by the House and signed by Governor Crist, Florida would be the first state to legislate divestment of pension fund holdings from Iran. The bill affects more than 40 companies, including Royal Dutch Shell.

The state pension fund now has more than $130.6-million invested in companies connected to Sudan and $833-million invested in targeted businesses affiliated with Iran. read more

By CSD Staff
May 01, 2007

Company joins U.S. coalition currently petitioning congress.

Royal Dutch Shell’s U.S. division has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of big business and environmental groups that has been urging Congress to enforce limits on greenhouse gases tied into global warming.

Shell is the third oil major to join the Partnership, which in January sent a letter to President Bush stating mandatory emissions caps are needed to reduce the flow of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, according to the Associated Press. Joining Shell is BP PLC and ConocoPhillips. read more

By Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent
Published: May 1 2007 15:37 | Last updated: May 1 2007 15:48

Lord Browne resigned from BP on Tuesday following revelations that he had lied to a judge in an attempt to prevent stories about his private life being published by a tabloid newspaper.

BP appointed Tony Hayward as its new chief executive with immediate effect
Lord Browne said in a statement: ”For the past 41 years of my career at BP I have kept my private life separate from my business life. I have always regarded my sexuality as a personal matter, to be kept private. read more

By Stephen Voss

May 1 (Bloomberg) — BP Plc, Europe’s second-biggest oil company, said John Browne stepped down as chief executive officer after he lost a legal battle against a U.K. newspaper over the publication of details about his personal life.

Tony Hayward, who was scheduled to replace Browne as CEO as of Aug. 1, takes over the position with immediate effect, London-based BP said today in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service.

The decision is a further blow for BP, whose reputation has suffered from a series of missteps including a Texas refinery blast in March 2005 that killed 15 workers and oil leaks last year from corroded pipelines in Alaska. read more

EXTRACT: Assistant Secretary of the Interior C. Stephen Allred said in the news release that OSEC’s research project, along with the five others being conducted in Colorado by Royal Dutch Shell, EGL Resources and Chevron, will allow the government to test its belief that oil shale can be developed economically and in an environmentally responsible way.

By BOBBY MAGILL The Daily Sentinel

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The Bureau of Land Management on Monday gave its blessing to Oil Shale Exploration Co.’s plans to reopen the White River oil-shale mine in Utah about 20 miles west of Rangely. read more

EXTRACT: Black Sunday made Shell’s stakeholders realize it’s best to keep the government out of its business interests, Shell spokeswoman Jill Davis said.

By BOBBY MAGILL The Daily Sentinel
Tuesday, May 01, 2007

When energy company executives gather in a room and start talking about trillions of barrels of oil, most of it locked within oil shale conveniently located near the junction of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, they appear overcome with a firm sense of optimism, as they did in April at the Utah Energy Summit. read more

(Grey whale numbers are particularly low)

EXTRACT: Global conservation campaign group the World Wildlife Fund has urged the Royal Dutch Shell energy group to suspend its Sakhalin oil project in the Russian Far East after the IWC called it a threat to the survival of the grey whales in the area.
 
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent in Sorrento, Italy 
 
The committee has urged for marine protected areas 

Evidence that noise from human sources harms whales and other marine mammals is overwhelming, scientists say. read more

The astonishing statistics for this non-commercial website –

www.royaldutchshellplc.com in April 2007…

Page Views: 2,171,290 :  Hits 3,194,873 (Revised upwards 2 May 2007)

EXTRACT: Royal Dutch Shell has been particularly eager to explore and develop the areas in Alaska, and has hired a number of former state and federal officials to help build popular support in communities near the proposed drilling areas. 

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: May 1, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 30 — The Bush administration proposed on Monday leasing out millions of acres along the coasts of Alaska and Virginia to oil and gas drillers, a move that would end a longstanding ban on drilling in those environmentally sensitive areas. read more

EXTRACT: Oil giants Shell and BP are in Turkey, as are Cadbury Schweppes and British Airways.

By Philip Aldrick
Last Updated: 1:19am BST 01/05/2007

Fears of a military coup sent Turkey’s stock market and currency tumbling yesterday.
  
The Turkish lira suffered its largest drop in seven months amidst fears of a military coup.
 
The Turkish lira slid 2.43pc, its largest drop in seven months, and the main stock market index fell 4pc, wiping $7.8bn (£3.9bn) from share values, as economists recommended taking “a defensive strategy to Turkish assets” amid fears for the country’s democracy. read more

But energy giants say many offshore areas are still off-limits

By KRISTEN HAYS
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

The Interior Department’s rollout Monday of a finalized proposal to open 48 million acres of off-limits federal waters for exploration and drilling drew praise from the oil and gas industry, though some said the move would barely tap vast undiscovered resources.

“Most U.S. offshore areas in the lower 48 states and some 80 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf remain off-limits to oil and gas exploration, and these areas contain vast amounts of oil and natural gas,” the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization for the oil and gas industry, said in a statement. read more

May 1, 2007, 2:10AM

By MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The State Department has once again designated Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, accusing the Islamic Republic of aiding extremists throughout the Middle East, particularly in Iraq.

Although the designation is not new, the release of the department’s annual global survey of terrorism comes at a delicate moment — just days ahead of a possible meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iran’s top diplomat. read more

By JOHN PORRETTO AP Business Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

HOUSTON — Royal Dutch Shell’s U.S. arm said Monday it has joined a corporate/environmental coalition urging Congress to require limits on greenhouse gases tied to global warming, the third oil major to do so.

The Anglo-Dutch company said it has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of big business and environmental groups that in January sent a letter to President Bush stating mandatory emissions caps are needed to reduce the flow of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. read more

By The Associated Press

(Multichannel News) _ DirecTV teamed up with MediaCom http://www.mediacom.com and interactive television agency Weapon7 http://www.weapon7.com to launch a global interactive ad campaign for Royal Dutch Shell.

The Global Interactive Shell Campaign http://www.shell.com/home/PlainPageServlet?FC=/aboutshell-en/html/iwgen/shell_real/app_shell_real_welcome.html — now running in the United States and United Kingdom — depicts Shell exploring for oil in an environmentally responsible manner. read more

An Iranian oil official has said Royal Dutch Shell is willing to cooperate with the Chinese firm Sinopec to develop Iran’s Yadavaran oil field.

Talking to the Iranian Shana and ISNA news agencies, the managing director of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said , “NIOC can either sign a deal with these companies as a joint venture or sign a contract with Sinopec and let the Company hold talks with Shell on the project.”

“The Oil Investment Company has recently held talks with Sinopec over this project as well,” he added. read more

EXTRACT: Europe: Willie Corduff, 53, Ireland: In the small farming community of Rossport, Corduff and a group of fellow local residents and landowners successfully forced Shell Oil to halt construction on an illegally-approved pipeline through their land.

Published: May 01, 2007

Pelosi, Boxer, Members of Congress welcome and honor the 2007 Goldman Environmental Prize winners, recipients of the world’s largest prize for grassroots environmentalists

Goldman Environmental Prize Natalie Silverstein, 415-345-6330 [email protected] or Allison & Partners Tim Black, 415-277-4920 [email protected] read more

Range Oil ‘ Gas and DNO lead the charge in a Kurdish region which is relatively unaffected by security problems sweeping much of the country, writes James Brewer, Lloyds List

Published: May 01, 2007

GIANT oil companies could be overtaken by one or more junior operators in the struggle to open new frontiers in Iraq.

Range Oil ‘ Gas, a subsidiary of Range Metals recently listed on Canada’s new exchange for emerging companies and on the Frankfurt stock exchange, is targeting the extremely sweet oil grades in the Kurdish region of Iraq. read more

Published: May 01, 2007

SUBSEA 7 is about to begin sea trials on its latest deepwater rigid pipelay vessel Seven Oceans before it commences work offshore Brazil, writes Martyn Wingrove.

The 12,340 dwt ship was built by Merwede shipyard, part of the IHC Holland Merwede group in the Netherlands and will be used to lay rigid and flexible pipelines on deepwater subsea oil projects around the world.

Sea trials are set to begin in the second week of May on the new ship, which has a Huisman Itrec supplied pipelay spread and two work-class remotely operated vehicles, before final delivery in June. read more

ALAN ZIBEL,
Published: May 01, 2007

New worries about the environment, technology advances and tax break extensions are empowering European wind energy companies to try their luck in the United States.

The U.S. has led the world in installing new wind turbines for the past two years, but it still ranks behind Germany and slightly below Spain in wind power production, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. Now, America’s renewed embrace of policies to encourage energy alternatives have led companies with years of experience in Denmark, Germany and Spain to invest in U.S. shores, challenging both the U.S. market leaders and any environmental opposition to building giant turbines. read more

EXTRACT: This is just one example of the use of video to make a case. The commercial currently running on Shell’s home page (www.shell.com) is another, even though it uses actors. So if private equity companies can scrape a few pennies together to do something, just something, they may find the return on investment in terms of increased goodwill is startling.

By David Bowen

David Bowen is a website effectiveness consultant for Bowen Craggs & Co (www.bowencraggs.com). [email protected]

*Comment by John Donovan: I note that Mr Bowen continues to use his FT Column to promote Shell without declaring that Shell is a client. read more

By Stefan Stern
Published: May 1 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 1 2007 03:00

Jeffrey Immelt had been in post as General Electric’s new chief executive for a whole four days on the morning of September 11 2001. It was a good thing he had spent the previous nine months shadowing the outgoing chief executive Jack Welch. The new boss already had a thorough understanding of the state of the business when the world was turned upside down.

In 2005, Willie Walsh spent six months by the side of outgoing British Airways chief executive Rod Eddington before taking charge in the autumn. During that time he saw up close exactly what sort of problems the head of BA can face, including widespread unhappiness among its unionised workforce – the Gate Gourmet and baggage handler disputes blew up that summer – and the impact of oil price spikes. This was a five-star induction programme. Mr Walsh can hardly claim that he did not know what he was getting into. read more