August 4th, 2007:

August 5, 2007
Jenny Davey

BRITAIN’s biggest businesses are preparing to ride to the rescue of the 10,000 small companies hit by the summer floods.

John Hutton, the new business and enterprise secretary, will announce tomorrow that BT, BP, Shell, Asda, Tesco and Marks & Spencer are among a band of businesses that have pledged to help.

The companies will join a new working group which aims to provide support and assistance to small companies in the affected areas.

Hutton will unveil the initiative during a visit to southwest England tomorrow during which he plans to talk to business people about the difficulties they are facing after the floods and ask what support they need. read more

Created: 1 August 2007 Updated: 2 August 2007
Written by: Daniel O’Sullivan & Alastair Ford

Only last week, JKX Oil & Gas chief executive Paul Davies was extolling the virtues of his latest Russian acquisition. One of the best things about it, he said, was that the licence for the gasfield in question was newly issued, and was therefore ‘clean’ and free of any of the irregularities that can dog Russian asset deals. Yet this week, the owner of the field was nevertheless named on a new list of oil and gas enterprises being investigated by Russian state natural resources regulator Rosprirodnadzor over compliance with licence conditions. read more

ShellNews.net
Saturday 04 August 2007
By John Donovan

A posting was made on our Live Chat box at about 4pm UK time today Saturday 4th August, making serious allegations of a personal nature against Mr Hugh Mitchell, Director of Human Resources for the Royal/Dutch Shell Group.

At about the same time, I received an email purportedly from a Shell employee which expanded on the allegations. The sender copied the email to Mr Mitchell and to other Shell email addresses. 

As I have not yet received answers to questions put to the accuser and in the absence of evidence to support the allegations of an alleged incident in Aberdeen, I have deleted the posting. Under the circumstances the deleted allegations should be considered completely without foundation by anyone who read them.   read more

Deborah Yedlin, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, August 04, 2007

Even though Western Oil Sands has a respectable bid on the table, in the form of the $6.6-billion offer made Tuesday by Marathon Oil Corp., the betting is this isn’t a done deal.

Western’s primary asset is a 20 per cent interest in the Athabasca Oil Sands Project, together with Royal Dutch Shell Group (60 per cent) as the operator and Chevron holding the remaining 20 per cent.

It’s easy to see why Marathon wants Western; it’s the perfect, low-risk approach to getting involved in what is the future of North American oil production. With Royal Dutch as the operator, all it needs to do is write the multimillion-dollar cheques and learn how an operation, which is expected to produce 770,000 barrels a day, comes together. read more

Lorna Siggins, Marine Correspondent, Irish Times
Published: Aug 04, 2007

The Shell to Sea campaign says it is “still holding out some hope for the Green Party in government”, in spite of the Minister for Energy’s refusal to commission an independent review of the entire Corrib gas project.

Shell to Sea spokesman John Monaghan said it was “unfortunate” that a Green Party Minister should fail to uphold his own party’s promise on the issue, given that the “problem hasn’t gone away”. His group is still pressing for a meeting with Eamon Ryan. read more

By Robert Amsterdam
Published: August 4 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 4 2007 03:00

From Mr Robert R. Amsterdam.

Sir, The thinly veiled seizure of RussNeft assets (report, July 30) is further testimony to the willingness of the Russian state to act with both commercial and political impunity within a deteriorating and corrupt regulatory and legal framework that provides no protection to foreign and domestic business in the face of state-sanctioned theft.

In an interview with the Financial Times (July 13), Oleg Deripaska, the middle man in the RussNeft transaction, went as far as proclaiming that he could not be separated from the state. read more

EXTRACT: Shell, in particular, is stymied after a long period of weak investment and exploration performance, highlighted by its reserves scandal of three years ago.

The Times: Oil sector’s big issue now delivery, not discovery

August 4, 2007
Carl Mortished: Tempus

So, what happened to $100-per-barrel oil? On Wednesday, the price of US light crude reached $78.77, briefly topping last summer’s record and then subsided. A few dreary bulletins about the US economy and signs that American petrol stocks were rising were enough to kill the excitement and stall the rally. read more

A while ago I got a copy of Wired Magazine with an interesting DVD inserted into the package. It turned out to be a highly polished 10-minute advertisement/film for Shell entitled “Eureka”. You can watch the whole thing yourself below (via link).

What first struck me about the film is that the production value is incredibly high, and the story they weave is actually compelling and mostly believable, though painfully cheesy. It tells the story of Jaap Van Ballegooijen, a Shell engineer who apparently came up with a less invasive method of drilling for oil – inspired no less, by his son’s drinking of a milkshake with a “bendy straw”. read more

Vol. 12, No. 31  Week of August 05, 2007

Royal Dutch Shell launches 400,000 bpd upgrader plans; Marathon bids to acquire Western Oil Sands and enter upstream

Gary Park & Kay Cashman

The giant Athabasca Oil Sands Project is moving from Canadian to international control, with three deals carrying a combined value of up to C$38 billion getting unveiled July 30 and 31.

Royal Dutch Shell, having brought its Canadian unit under Shell’s global umbrella, said it is embarking on one of the largest undertakings in Canadian construction history — a 400,000 barrel-per-day oil sands upgrader that could cost C$22 billion to C$27 billion over the next 15 to 20 years. read more

Vol. 12, No. 31  Week of August 05, 2007
Alan Bailey

Shell can check two more items off its to-do list for its planned 2007 Beaufort Sea drilling program. On July 24 the company finally signed a conflict avoidance agreement with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission for the company’s 2007 open water exploration program. And on July 27 the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Tom Irwin, upheld the Office of Project Management & Permitting’s Alaska Coastal Management Plan consistency determination, subject to some new conditions. read more