June 3rd, 2007:

By Richard Orange
3 June 2007

BP, Royal Dutch Shell and BG Group are poised to bid for a stake in a giant Indian gasfield worth up to $2billion (£1 billion).

Tomorrow, India’s state-owned Gujarat State Petroleum Company (GSPC) is to take expressions of interest from international oil companies for up to 30 per cent of the fields which it has named Deen Dayal, or Saviour of the Poor.

The auction is one of the most promising opportunities international oil majors have had to gain a foothold in India’s gas-rich Krishna-Godavari basin. Situated off the East Coast of India, the basin has been dubbed India’s North Sea. read more

(Rex W. Tillerson, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil)

By LINDA LEATHERDALE, TORONTO SUN
June 3, 2007
 
Read this and try not to blow a gasket.

The world’s largest oil giant, which is raking in the biggest corporate profits in history, wants a corporate welfare cheque from Canadian taxpayers, who’ve already forked out billions to the oil patch.

Exxon Mobil Corp., which owns 69.9% of Imperial Oil, is the Texas-based giant which netted a record profit of $39.5 billion US in 2006, which equates to $4.35 million US every hour, while the average worker gets only $12. read more

EXTRACT: …tar sands are not going to save the day for North American consumers, regardless of the huge reserve figures that we constantly hear so much about. For example, when Shell Oil states that they might have access to an impressive slice of the 2 trillion barrels of oil reserves that they believe could eventually be located in Canada, they are sending a message to present and potential investors in their shares that great things are ahead, despite any disappointments or negative press that they might have been exposed to over the past few years. read more

Jun 3rd 2007
From Economist.com

RUSSIA’s regulators will now decide the fate of BP’s investment in the Kovykta gas field after the G8 conference—the government had previously seemed likely to order the confiscation of the field on June 1st.

The British oil firm’s Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, is likely to lose its licence to develop the giant source of natural gas in Siberia. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has gone off foreign investment in energy.

Last year, under duress, Royal Dutch Shell and its partners agreed to sell a majority stake in a big oil and gas project called Sakhalin II to Gazprom, the state-owned gas firm. read more

By JOE CARROLL
Bloomberg News
June 3, 2007, 1:31AM

Colorado and Utah have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates combined.

That’s not science fiction. Trapped in limestone up to 200 feet thick in the two Rocky Mountain states is enough so-called shale oil to rival OPEC and supply the U.S. for a century.

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., the two biggest U.S. energy companies, and Royal Dutch Shell are spending $100 million a year testing new methods to separate the oil from the stone for as little as $30 a barrel. A growing number of industry executives and analysts say new technology and high prices make the idea feasible. read more

A seismic shift is taking place in the boardrooms of the country’s biggest and most powerful energy producers as new CEOs take control of the oilpatch

Deborah Yedlin, Calgary Herald
Published: Sunday, June 03, 2007

The first sign, was the departure of of EnCana Corp. one of North America’s largest independent oil and gas companies in 2005, and his replacement by a much younger (48) — and very different — Randy Eresman.

Not long after, Hank Swartout, chairman, president and chief executive of Precision Drilling, one of North America’s foremost land drillers, decided to hand over the position of president to his 30-something son-in-law, Gene Stahl. read more

Tim Webb
Published: Jun 03, 2007

When his reputation as the “Sun King” who could do no wrong was still intact, BP’s chief executive, Lord Browne, signed a landmark deal to create TNK-BP, a joint venture with Russian businessmen to extract their country’s oil and natural gas. Four years on, Lord Browne’s reign at BP has come to a dramatic end – and one of the prize assets of TNK-BP is on the brink of being snatched away.

Russian authorities are expected to revoke TNK-BP’s licence to operate the huge Kovykta field, with an estimated 2 trillion cubic metres of gas reserves, although a final decision was delayed on Friday for two weeks. A bigger headache still for Lord Browne’s successor, Tony Hayward, is the impending sale by BP’s Russian partners of their 50 per cent stake in the joint venture, which is responsible for about a quarter of the group’s reserves and total production. Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled gas giant, is the likely buyer and could try to take over other BP assets. read more

Published: 03 June 2007

Now could be the time to buy shares in oil companies. According to stockbroker Charles Stanley, the oil and gas sector listed on the FTSE has underperformed the rest of the market for most of the past five years.

On a price-earnings basis, BP and Shell are trading at a 20 per cent discount to other non-oil companies. Shell, for example, has a dividend yield of 4.2 per cent, compared to 3 per cent on the FTSE. This is even though prices for the black stuff have risen from $24 per barrel in 2002 to some $70 this year. read more