September 1st, 2007:

Web Posted: 09/01/2007 09:00 AM CDT
Vicki Vaughan
Express-News Business Writer

Texas, once famed for its outrageously ample supply of black gold, stunned the energy world last year when it surpassed California as the nation’s biggest generator of wind power for electricity.

This year, the state’s excitement over wind power hasn’t blown cold. Texas now has almost 3,000 megawatts of wind power in production with another 1,700 megawatts planned by 2008.

Although wind power now supplies just a fraction of the electricity going to the Texas electric grid, the industry is attracting big investors, with units of Royal Dutch Shell and TXU Corp. pairing up to build a giant wind farm, only to be outdone by billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens, who’s planning the world’s largest collection of wind turbines in the Panhandle. read more

By Sam Fleming
City & Finance
Page 100 Saturday, September 1, 2007

ROYAL Dutch Shell is getting rattled by a ‘gripe site’ that alleges there are safety problems with its North Sea oil platforms.

An internal Shell email admits the firm has been thrown ‘on the back foot’ because of claims put forward on the Royaldutchshellplc.com website.

John Donovan, who established the site with his father Alfred, has teamed up with former Shell employee Bill Campbell to highlight North Sea maintenance worries. read more

CALGARY, Alberta – Regulators should slap a moratorium on pipelines in Canada’s North because governments and oil companies have not planned for long-term environmental impacts, a green-group representative said Thursday. 

Several environmental and social activists began submissions Thursday to the regulatory panel probing the C$16.2 billion (US$15.3 billion) Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline on the proposed development’s cumulative effects.

They said the line’s backers, led by Imperial Oil Ltd , have not addressed impacts of future gas exploration that the project would spawn in the far North or the greenhouse gases that would be emitted when the fuel is burned. read more

Supply of petroleum engineers dries up as Baby Boomers retire, energy demands grow

Associated Press
September 3, 2007

HOUSTON—So much for sweating out that first job after college.

Like star athletes, engineering students Julie Arsenault and Emily Reasor are prized prospects for the energy industry, which is experiencing dizzying demand for engineers.

Bustling oil-field activity and retiring Baby Boomers, among other factors, have petroleum outfits large and small trying to hire thousands of engineers, and experts say the trend is expected to extend into the next decade as worldwide energy demand grows. read more

Vol. 12, No. 35  Week of September 02, 2007
Jane Wardell
Associated Press Business Writer

Former BP Chief Executive John Browne has made a return to the oil industry, taking up a senior position at one of the world’s largest private equity funds just three months after his scandal-tainted departure from BP.

In a surprise announcement Aug. 24, New-York based Riverstone Holdings LLC, a private equity firm specializing in the energy and power sectors, said it had appointed Browne as head of its European operations. read more

Company has assembled a comprehensive arsenal of tools to clean up oil in case unthinkable should happen in the Beaufort Sea

Alan Bailey
Vol. 12, No. 35  Week of September 02, 2007

Being prepared for an oil spill response is like buying insurance — you hope that the worst will never happen but, if it does, you’d better be prepared.

And in the case of Shell’s proposed offshore drilling activities in the U.S. Beaufort Sea, those preparations have included the construction of the Nanuq, a 300-foot, ice-strengthened oil spill response vessel, and the chartering of the Arctic Endeavor, a 200-foot oil spill response barge. The company has also chartered a 500,000-barrel double-hulled tanker, to hold and carry away any oil that Shell might have to mop up as a result of an oil spill. read more

Saturday 1st September 2007
by David R. Jones, Daily Post
 
GUEST speaker at the next meeting of the North Wales Business Club will be Jyoti Munsiff who, for more than 12 years up to July, was general counsel-corporate to the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and senior legal advisor and company secretary to Shell Transport and Trading Company.

Currently chief ethics and compliance officer of The Royal Dutch Shell, Ms Munsiff was born in Bombay in 1947 and is now a naturalised British subject.

She qualified as a solicitor in 1969 and joined Shell that year. During her career she spent periods in Argentina and Oman and became secretary to the committee of managing directors of Shell, the first woman to take that role. In 2005 she was named Asian Business Woman of the Year. read more

John Hofmeister, President Shell Oil Company

He says U.S. policies hinder ‘energy security’

By Jasen Lee
Published: Sept. 1, 2007 12:51 a.m. MDT

Shell Oil president John Hofmeister says the United States should re-evaluate its policies on tapping North American petroleum as a matter of “energy security.”

Hofmeister stopped in Utah on Friday as part of a 50-city nationwide tour to discuss oil and energy policy. Utah was the 43rd stop on his tour, which he has done for the past two years, meeting with political and civic leaders, as well as residents in town hall meetings. He met Friday morning with members of the Salt Lake Chamber. read more