June 2nd, 2007:

Sylvia Pfeifer,
Last Updated: 12:03am BST 03/06/2007

Tony Hayward, the new chief executive of BP, will tomorrow back the oil giant’s high-profile slogan “Beyond Petroleum” in a speech to world and business leaders in Berlin ahead of the G8 summit.

In his first major speech since taking over from Lord Browne, Hayward is expected to make it clear that the company is committed not just to the slogan but also to its $8bn (£4bn) investment in alternative energy.

Both are closely associated with Browne’s 12-year reign which ended abruptly in May when he resigned after admitting that he had lied over a gay relationship. read more

June 3, 2007
John Waples, Business Editor

THE impending $30 billion (£15 billion) flotation of Rusal will be the biggest gauge yet of institutional appetite for Russian companies – and it couldn’t come at a more testing time.

On a political and business level, deep distrust has grown among western countries – particularly in America – over the Kremlin’s creeping repatriation of some of its major resources. First with Shell and now with BP, President Vladimir Putin’s desire to put assets back under state control has understandably made investors nervous about their exposure to Russian resource stocks. read more

EXTRACT: The business relationship with Russia has also soured, mainly because of what UK companies believe is the unfair expropriation of oil and gas assets. Shell was this year pushed into the sale of a stake in its Sakhalin 2 gas project to Gazprom, the state-controlled gas group. Now TNK-BP is under similar pressure.

June 3, 2007
Dominic O’Connell

THE Russian aluminium giant Rusal will kickstart the biggest float of the year in London this week when it opens a roadshow for top investors ahead of a listing expected to value it at about $30 billion (£15 billion). read more

By David Greising
Posted on Sat, Jun. 02, 2007

THUNDER HORSE PLATFORM, Gulf of Mexico – The day after massive Hurricane Dennis churned through the Gulf of Mexico in July 2005, a commercial vessel traveling past BP PLC’s hulking Thunder Horse oil platform radioed the bad news to its owner: The platform’s top deck was listing into the water.

When a landing party from BP arrived at the platform two days later, they had to tie onto rails near the control tower to haul themselves up the platform’s 30-degree incline. read more

By Karl Maier

June 2 (Bloomberg) — Nigeria’s main militant group freed six Chevron Corp. workers held hostage since May 1, a spokesman for the group said.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, handed the four Italians, one American and one Croatian over to the governor of Bayelsa state at 11:30 a.m. local time, a spokesman for the group, Jomo Gbomo, said today in an e-mailed statement. Italy’s foreign ministry confirmed the release, the Italian news agency Ansa reported. read more

Vol. 12, No. 22  Week of June 03, 2007

Alberta oil sands operators contributed another 1.79 billion barrels to Canada’s proved reserves in 2006, with only 68 million barrels resulting from acquisitions.

The greatest gains came from in-situ deposits, which rose by 1.12 billion barrels to 3.2 billion barrels, while mining operations added 659 million barrels to reach 7.53 billion barrels.

Proved oil sands reserves apply only to developed projects.

The largest reserve holders in the mining sector at the end of 2006 were Canadian Natural Resources, 1.85 billion barrels: Suncor Energy, 1.51 billion; and Shell Canada, 1.13 billion, with Shell adding 418 million barrels last year, mostly from expansion of its Athabasca project. read more

Energy in the executive, Kremlin-style.
by Irwin M. Stelzer
06/11/2007, Volume 012, Issue 37

What do Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Mikhail Gutseriev, and John Browne have in common? They all thought their desire for profits from Russia’s vast oil reserves trumped Vladimir Putin’s lust for power. Khodorkovsky now languishes in a Siberian jail. When his sentence is served, he will be rearrested and charged with crimes that will get him another 28 years in a prison from which he is unlikely ever to emerge. Gutseriev, head of mid-sized oil company RussNeft, was recently charged with “large-scale tax evasion” and conducting illegal activities as part of an “organized group,” the same charges laid against Khodorkovsky. It seems that Kremlin deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin, the onetime KGB agent who heads state-owned Rosneft, which took over Khodorkovsky’s Yukos oil company, “is extremely ambitious in regard to [RussNeft’s] assets,” according to press reports. read more

Published: June 2 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 2 2007 03:00

When it comes to energy in Russia, timing is everything. In 1912, the Rothschilds swapped their Russian oil assets for big shareholdings in Royal Dutch and Shell. Five years later, during the revolution, the Nobel family fled and sold their one-third share of the country’s oil output for a derisory sum.

Moscow yesterday deferred its decision on the Kovykta gas field but BP’s joint venture, TNK-BP, is still widely expected to lose its permit within weeks. Last December, Royal Dutch Shell lost control of its Sakhalin project to Gazprom. Yet some investors remain sanguine. Shell received a 25 per cent premium to its capital invested, and TNK-BP might recover the $500m it sank in Kovykta. Foreigners, it is argued, are still welcome as minority partners. read more

Associated Press

MOSCOW — Regulators postponed a decision Friday on revoking the license of BP PLC’s Russian joint venture for a giant gas field, days before President Vladimir Putin heads into a Group of Eight summit amid grumbles about the Kremlin using energy as a political weapon.

Before the meeting that could have seen the license for the Kovykta field pulled, the deputy head of Russia’s environmental watchdog, Oleg Mitvol, said BP was likely to lose authorization to develop the 2.1 trillion cubic meter field. read more

By REUTERS

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (Reuters) – Gunmen used dynamite and heavy machine guns to kidnap at least three senior managers of Indonesian chemical company Indorama in Nigeria’s southern oil-producing Niger Delta, police said on Friday.

In a different area of the impoverished delta, community elders expelled protesters occupying a major oil export pipeline hub and reopened valves to allow crude oil to flow.

The pre-dawn raid by suspected ransom-seekers on Indorama’s residential estate in Rivers state added to a tally of 20 foreign workers being held by various armed groups in the delta, home to Africa’s largest oil industry. read more

EXTRACT: A separate report by Open Europe, in July 2006, found that UK oil companies were also poised to make a lot of free money: £10.2m for Esso; £17.9m for BP; and £20.7m for Shell. And behind this profiteering, the environmental reality was that these major producers of carbon emissions were under no pressure from the scheme to cut emissions.

THE ARTICLE

On the eve of a G8 summit focused on climate change, Nick Davies reveals major flaws in the global system designed to reduce emissions

Saturday June 2, 2007 read more

(The Gazprom building in Moscow: analysts still expect the company
to take control of the Kovykta field)

By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 12:19am BST 02/06/2007

Russian regulators have delayed a decision on the fate of BP’s involvement in the massive Kovykta gas field until after next week’s G8 summit of rich countries.

The move may avoid a potentially embarrassing row over Moscow’s attempts to return its energy assets to state control.

But the regulator has revoked a licence allowing Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum to operate a field in the Caspian Sea, and given Britain’s Imperial Energy three months to correct alleged breaches of exploration and development obligations at three projects in Russia. read more

By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 12:19am BST 02/06/2007

BP received a stay of execution on whether its Russian joint venture will continue to operate the vast Kovykta gas field, but no one should be in any doubt that the clock is ticking. TNK-BP’s involvement in Kovykta is going to cease or be substantially curtailed.

President Vladimir Putin is intent on renationalising energy resources and does not want revenues from a prize asset like Kovykta, which contains enough gas to power Europe for four years, flowing overseas. read more

June 2, 2007
Steve Hawkes

Russian authorities yesterday gave BP an extra two weeks to negotiate a deal over its future role in the $20 billion (£10.1 billion) Kovykta gas field, by delaying a decision over whether to revoke the group’s licence.

The move amounts to a brief stay of execution for Tony Hayward, BP’s new chief executive, who is understood to have held talks about the project on Thursday with Gazprom, the Kremlin-backed gas group.

Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources had been widely expected to annul the Kovykta licence held by TNK-BP, the UK group’s Russian venture, in a meeting yesterday. read more

Saturday June 2, 2007
By STEPHEN THEN

BINTULU: Oil major Shell is venturing into territory others fear to tread in its search for fresh ground to tap liquefied natural gas (LNG). It is setting up an LNG plant in the Arctic Circle.

Shell Asia Pacific Gas and Power executive vice-president Datuk Jon Chadwick said the company was looking at setting up an LNG facility in ultra-cold conditions that required very extreme engineering and technological feats.

“We are also looking at setting up floating LNG plants in the middle of oceans. read more

Executive weighs in on energy security, pump prices and the effects of hurricanes.

By TIMOTHY J. GIBBONS, The Times-Union

Despite jokes about the reception usually given to oil company executives, Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister was widely applauded during a lunchtime address to Cornerstone, the economic development arm of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Before the lunch, Hofmeister, who is touring 50 cities to talk about the future of the nation’s energy supply, sat down with the Times-Union to share his thoughts. read more