August 12th, 2007:

Topics on Russia and the former Soviet Union

Sunday, August 12, 2007
 
Independent news website Huliq.com has the story of Alfred and John Donovan and how their small grudge-match against Royal Dutch Shell cost that corporation billions in Sakhalin-2. Huliq accepts citizen-journalist news reports, of which this is article is one, and penned by the John Donovan himself.

The tale is ultimately written as a warning to all large corporations to not underestimate the power of private citizens in the internet age. For a meager $4/week, 90-year old Alfred Donovan, a disgruntled marketing consultant, was able to take on Royal Dutch Shell. read more

August 12th, 2007 13:07

Mr. Donovan

I was the Shell MSO operator in Orlando, Florida (26 sites) until Sept. 2006.

I am currently in a law suit with them over several transgressions they perpetrated during our relationship including non-payment of my transition payment ($130,000) upon our mutual termination of our agreement and their subsequent sale to Alimentation Couche-Tard.

Are you aware of any other actions or suits that are ongoing?

Do you have any advice or information that may be helpful to my case? read more

By Richard McGregor in Beijing
Published: August 12 2007 17:52 | Last updated: August 12 2007 17:52

Sinopec, China’s largest energy company by revenue, has revived negotiations with a number of foreign partners to build a $5bn-plus refinery in southern Guangdong, near Hong Kong.

Wang Tianpu, Sinopec’s president, told local and foreign journalists in Beijing on Friday that talks to build the refinery and petrochemical plant with overseas partners were “right on track”.

The foreign companies are Royal Dutch Shell, Kuwait Petroleum Corp and Dow Chemical , Chinese officials said. The foreign companies could not be contacted for comment. read more

Risk in Russia: The price of stability

August 2007
Sam Jones, Staff writer

Yukos, back in 2004, did not put pay to the government’s aggressive relationship with energy investors in Russia. Until June this year, TNK-BP (a joint venture owned by British fields, the huge Kovykta reserves. The company, however, failed to deliver on its production targets mandated in its licence.Petroleum and Russia’s Alfa Group) held the licence to develop one of Russia’s largest gas

“How much longer do we have to tolerate this?” asked Putin at a press conference. It was, perhaps unwittingly, a rhetorical question. Despite the fact that TNK-BP could not meet its licence targets because Gazprom had refused to build the required pipeline to China, Russian officials refused to back down on TNK-BP’s licence infraction. read more

GEORGE ONAH Port Harcourt
Posted to the Web: Sunday, August 12, 2007

*15 killed
*Okiro, defence chief rush in
*Residents call for emergency rule

SHOOTINGS, allegedly by cultists, for the sixth day running, continued in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, yesterday, as no fewer than 15 persons were killed and scores injured in an early morning shooting by unidentified gunmen amid calls for the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the state as a step to check the massive shootings and killings. read more

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
August 7, 2007 8:18 a.m.

(Updates an item at 0926 GMT with comments from Shell spokeswoman.)

LONDON (Dow Jones)–Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) has evacuated workers from its North Sea Brent Bravo platform after the facility suffered a power outage Friday.

Workers were taken off the platform Sunday after a power generator left an accommodation module without lighting, ventilation and water.

But oil and gas production at the facility is believed to be unaffected, with the platform currently undergoing annual maintenance. read more

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

MOSCOW (Dow Jones)–Russian environmental regulator Oleg Mitvol Thursday denied a report in a Russian tabloid daily citing him as claiming that Royal Dutch Shell Group (RDSA) tried to bribe him.

A report in the daily “Tvoy Den” cited him as claiming that Shell offered $50 million to drop environmental investigations that appeared to play a key part in the eventual transfer of control of the $20-billion Sakhalin-2 project to OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) at the end of last year. read more

A Shell spokeswoman said that the company “refutes the claim made by the newspaper that Shell or its representatives attempted to bribe Russian government officials in the course of inspections of the Sakhalin-2 project.”

“This statement is completely groundless,” she added.

The newspaper -which as a rule concentrates more on celebrity and human interest stories -said on its Web site that it stood by its story and congratulated Mitvol on being a rare example of a Russian official capable of resisting foreign bribes. It did not appear to have asked Shell to comment on the allegation. read more

(Matthias Clamer) Fueled by Conscience Sister Patricia Daly (in navy suit) and some members of her other other — of concerned shareholders.

By DASHKA SLATER
Published: August 12, 2007

Daly’s order, the Sisters of Saint Dominic of Caldwell, N.J., owns about 300 of the 5.5 billion Exxon Mobile shares outstanding, but she has used those few shares to keep the company talking about an issue that it would just as soon ignore.

In a few weeks’ time, the company’s millions of shareholders would be able to vote on a resolution she wrote, which asked ExxonMobil to set a firm date for reporting on its progress to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from both its operations and its products. The board opposed the resolution, as it did each and every one of the 20 resolutions related to climate change submitted over the past 10 years, but Henry wasn’t calling to debate the issue. That had already been done, ad nauseam, in countless meetings and phone calls between representatives of the company and its dissident shareholders, and it would be done again at the annual meeting on May 30. This was a courtesy call. read more

Web posted at: 8/12/2007 3:32:21: Source: AP

DUBAI • As the deadline nears for the US military commander in Iraq to report on the country’s political progress, international oil companies are forging alliances to develop its prized fields.

US General David Petraeus has until mid-September to submit his report to Washington and oil multinationals believe there could be progress on Iraq’s oil law when parliament resumes early next month.

Washington has for months pushed Iraq to speed up passage of the oil law and other legislation, seen as vital to curbing sectarian violence between majority Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs. read more

Web Posted: 08/11/2007 12:01 PM CDT

Twenty years ago, the Soviet Union was on the verge of catastrophe. People who suffered under the repressive rule of the communist regime in Moscow had lost faith in its guiding ideology. Calls for internal reform met with increased internal repression.

Revenue from the energy sector had for years sustained exorbitant military expenditures and propped up the Soviet state. But in the mid-1980s, America’s Arab allies flooded the market with cheap Middle Eastern crude. Ronald Reagan’s “Saudi strategy” led to a collapse in the price of oil. The authoritarian dictatorship that had been preserved by Siberian oil fields soon collapsed as well.
 
The Cold War ended. The West had won. Not a shot was fired. read more

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) — Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company, plans to study the potential for natural gas discoveries below existing fields off southeast Australia after adding to resources there in the past two years.

A venture between Exxon and BHP Billiton Ltd. found 300 billion cubic feet of gas in the Gippsland Basin in 2006, in addition to 700 billion in 2005, and drilling is continuing, Exxon’s Esso Australia Resources Pty. unit said today in an e- mailed statement. Exxon hadn’t previously released the 2006 figures. read more