September 11th, 2007:

The Associated Press
Published: September 11, 2007

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina: Royal Dutch Shell PLC has outlined a US$60 million (€43 million) cleanup plan to pave the way toward reopening a refinery that authorities closed last week because of pollution concerns, officials said Tuesday.

Environment Ministry regulators are taking steps to allow Shell to reopen the Buenos Aires refinery after the company addressed complaints cited in the plant’s closure, a ministry spokesman said. The spokesman, who could not be quoted by name, in line with agency policy, said the reopening of the refinery could come “within days.” read more

Filed from Houston

9/11/2007 6:30:23 PM GMT
 
BRAZIL:  Shell Brasil Ltda. is seeking a partner to join them in drilling what Shell called “a major exploration prospect offshore deepwater Brazil.  The BMC 31 concession is located in an established productive oil fairway – two of the largest oil fields in Brazil, Roncador and Albacora Leste, are in adjacent blocks.”

The primary prospect is a large, three-way dip closure against a salt ridge in the Campos Basin.  The play concept has been successfully tested in the area, providing a direct analog for the prospect.  Additional prospects in other play types provide upside potential, including a pre-salt target, which is analogous to two discoveries.  Petrobras is the operator of BMC 31, and multiple production options are available through nearby infrastructure. read more

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 20:32:58
Source: Agencies

Russia claims to have 40 million tons of proven offshore oil and gas reserves, more than four times what it has in its onshore resources.

Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Alexei Varlamov outlined the estimate at an oil and gas conference in Saint Petersburg, the ministry said in a statement.

Currently, the country’s biggest existing offshore project is the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas field in the Far East, which is run by a consortium led by state-controlled gas giant Gazprom. read more

Email response by Bill Campbell sent to James Brewer, the author of an article published today by Lloyds List: Lloyds List: Shell and BP get safety thumbs up

From Bill Campbell

James – your article contains some flaws.

Information recently given to MP’s and which may I hope lead to a parliamentary inquiry. 
 
Rather than Shell being the ‘best of the best’ it has by a significant factor the worst safety record, either from the period 1999 till Sept. 2003 when the Fatal accident occurred on Brent Bravo, and/or certainly afterwards, the data below is accessible to the public and you can log on yourself to confirm this.
 
After the fatalities since 2003 – with no recommendations for improvement flowing from the inadequate Fatal Accident Inquiry the situation deteriorates read more

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website 

A whale conservation success story, the recovery of the eastern Pacific gray whale, may not be quite what it seems.

Since the end of commercial whaling, numbers rose to about 20,000, thought to be the level they had been at before hunting began.

But a new study using genetic methods, reported in the journal PNAS, suggests pre-hunting numbers were much higher.

The scientists say climate change may be altering the whales’ supply of food significantly. read more

By Nariman Gizitdinov and Anthony DiPaola

Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) — Kazakhstan said Eni SpA’s development plan for Kashagan, the world’s biggest oil discovery in three decades, is “unacceptable” because it will harm the country’s economic growth by delaying profit from the project.

A government-backed study of the Eni-led group’s latest Kashagan budget found that “massive cost overruns and delayed commercial production start entail substantial degradation of the project’s major economic indicators,” the Kazakh energy ministry said in a statement today. read more

U.S. oil executives say potential overstated, but a leader of Brazil’s Petrobras sees too little effort given to champion alternative energy

By BRETT CLANTON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

While usage of ethanol and other renewable fuels is likely to grow in coming years, their ultimate role in meeting the world’s rising energy needs is still up for debate.

And increasingly, that debate is spilling out of Washington and into Houston, the heart of the nation’s energy business, which could feel the most direct impact from even a small shift toward biofuels. read more

CATHRYN ATKINSON
Special to The Globe and Mail
September 11, 2007

Native protesters and environmental groups are taking the next round of their fight against a coal-bed methane exploration project in a remote part of central B.C. to the British media.

A $20,000 advertisement decrying Royal Dutch Shell’s plan to drill wells in the headwaters region of the Stikine, Nass and Skeena rivers is running in the European editions of today’s Financial Times newspaper.

The headwaters area, known as the Klappan to the local Tahltan people, is home to a rich, year-round run of each of B.C.’s five indigenous salmon species, as well as steelhead trout. read more

By Upstream staff
11 September 2007 07:41 GMT  | last updated: 11 September 2007 07:48 GMT

Eni chief executive Paolo Scaroni is to meet Kazakh officials today with the aim of finding a solution to the dispute over the Kashagan oilfield.

Scaroni is due in the Kazakh capital Astana later today for closed-door negotiations with the energy minister, prime minister and other officials.

Energy Minister Sauat Mynbayev, pressed by reporters ahead of the talks, gave few details on the proposed meeting.

“I will be talking to him [Scaroni] today,” Mynbayev said. “I will say something after the talks. I haven’t spoken to him yet.” read more

James Brewer, Lloyds List
Published: Sep 11, 2007

UNDERWRITERS have cast doubt over the validity of allegations that there have been serious flaws in the safety record of Shell and other North Sea operators.

They said that in a testing environment, Shell had proved to be ‘the best of the best’ operators.

Experts in Copenhagen for the IUMI annual conference were sceptical about concerns raised by, among others, the Washington-based campaign group Oil Change International over ageing equipment. read more

Tony Gray, Lloyds List
Published: Sep 11, 2007

AUSTRALIAN companies have so far had little luck persuading Californians to import the liquefied natural gas that America’s most populous state will soon so badly need, writes Tony Gray.

In May, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected BHP Billiton’s proposal to build a floating LNG terminal off the coast of Malibu after intense pressure from Hollywood thespians and former colleagues such as Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry.

A major reason BHP Billiton’s Cabrillo Port proposal provoked opposition was that it required an LNG terminal to be moored permanently off the Malibu coast. read more

Jaswinder Kaur
Published: Sep 11, 2007

KOTA KINABALU: One example Malaysian youth should not follow from their elders is the way they throw rubbish everywhere.

Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun hopes school children will take seriously the lessons they are taught about protecting the environment into adulthood.

“Go to the central market in the city and look at the sea behind it.

There are plastic bags everywhere. The town is sometimes littered with rubbish. There was a sea of rubbish after the National Day celebration at Padang Merdeka last week. read more

Published: Sep 11, 2007

PTT Plc, the state-owned energy conglomerate, expects its liquefied natural gas (LNG) price negotiations with Iran to be delayed for six months, leading contracts to be postponed to mid-2008, according to executive vice-president Chitrapongse Kwangsukstith.

The Energy Ministry signed an agreement in principle in July 2006 with the Oil Ministry of Iran to purchase LNG from the Pars LNG site.

At that time, the selling price negotiation was expected to be finalised in June 2007, with contracts signed before the end of this year. read more

Published: Sep 11, 2007

CHICAGO – U.S. refineries must be expanded to handle a rising tide of crude-oil imports from Canada’s oilsands, the world’s second-biggest oil deposit, said John Hofmeister, Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s U.S. chairman.

Shell, Saudi Aramco, Conoco-Phillips, BP PLC and Marathon Oil Corp. plan to spend a combined US$15-billion to expand refineries from Michigan to Texas to process more low-grade oil from northern Alberta. Environmental opposition stalled a BP expansion in Indiana and may hinder a ConocoPhillips project in Illinois. read more

Published: Sep 11, 2007

MELBOURNE, Sept 11 Asia Pulse – Oil and gas producer Woodside Petroleum Ltd (ASX:WPL) says it has held talks to sell gas to CPC Corp of Taiwan, possibly from its Browse project in Western Australia.

Woodside said that the company was in “discussions with potential Asian buyers about significant volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and that a key terms agreement may soon be signed”.

The oil and gas producer confirmed the discussions included CPC Corp.

A Woodside spokesperson declined to confirm the talks centred around Browse but market speculation suggests the project is the likely source. read more

By PAUL BETTS, Financial Times

Resource patriotism has thrown the oil and gas industry into turmoil. Kazakhstan is only the latest example, but is drawing plenty of attention because of the scale of the resources at stake there.

The country’s Kashagan field is considered the most important energy find since the discovery of Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in the 1960s. So it was always going to be only a matter of time before the Kazakh government decided to press the oil companies developing the Kashagan field – Eni, Exxon, Total, Royal Dutch Shell, Conoco and Japan’s Inpex – to renegotiate the original contract. read more

By John Griffiths
Published: September 11 2007 08:13 | Last updated: September 11 2007 08:13

The motor sport industry can point out, with justification, that the 4m angling population in the UK alone uses vastly more fuel – and hence generates much more globe-warming carbon dioxide – getting to lakes and riverbanks each weekend than is consumed by all forms of motor sport in the same period.

But the problem for an industry that generates billions of dollars in earnings (£5bn in the UK alone) and employs well over 100,000 directly worldwide is that it is a direct user of CO2-generating fuels. Unfairly or not, that places it in the line of fire more than almost all other sports. read more

By Javier Blas and Ed Crooks in Vienna
Published: September 11 2007 08:22 | Last updated: September 11 2007 08:22

Crude oil prices on Tuesday jumped above $78 a barrel as the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Opec started to discuss in Vienna a small production increase in an effort to cool high oil prices and reassure industrialised countries.

Prices rose to $78.32 a barrel in New York, just below the all-time high of $78.77 a barrel reached in early August, before easing to $77.71. read more

Published: September 10 2007 19:36 | Last updated: September 10 2007 19:36

The Roman emperor Tiberius liked to say that the secret of good government was that a ruler should shear his flock, not skin it. Operating a successful cartel is much the same.

On Tuesday the ministers of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – they prefer the term “producer group” to “cartel” – are meeting in Vienna to agree how much oil the 10 members subject to quota restrictions should produce. What they must decide is how much help to give a world economy battered by the financial turmoil of the past two months. read more

EXTRACT: Among the corporate actions for which his blend of activism has been responsible was the abolition of Royal Dutch Shell’s dual share structure in 2004. That, according to people who know Mr Knight, was the moment that he became a force to be reckoned with in boardrooms across Europe.

THE ARTICLE

By Mark Kleinman, in Hong Kong
Last Updated: 1:03am BST 11/09/2007

From his room at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong last weekend, Eric Knight had a clear view of the Norman Foster-inspired building that was once HSBC’s global headquarters. read more

By Angela Macdonald-Smith and Yu-huay Sun

Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) — Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s second-largest oil and gas producer, said it has held talks with Taiwan’s CPC Corp. and other Asian buyers for liquefied natural gas sales and initial accords may be signed “soon.”

The potential contracts are for the sale of “significant volumes” of LNG, Perth-based Woodside said in a statement today to the Australian Stock Exchange. The statement came after Bloomberg reported yesterday CPC plans to buy as much as 3 million metric tons a year of LNG from the Browse project. read more

Jyoti Mukul | Tuesday, 11 September , 2007, 08:48 
  
While government departments squabble over the pricing of natural gas from Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL) Krishna Godavari block, a gas deal inked Down Under last week has far-reaching impact on the nascent domestic gas market. 

On September 4, Shell Eastern LNG agreed to sell 1 million tonnes (mt) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to PetroChina for 20 years out of its stake in Gorgon, Australia. While the heads of agreement, according to a Shell statement, constitutes a milestone in the development of LNG supplies to China, it throws a challenge to India – in supply as well as price. read more

Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:47AM BST
 
BUENOS AIRES, Sept 10 (Reuters) – Argentina will let Royal Dutch Shell’s(RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) sole refinery in Latin America reopen on Tuesday after the company presented a $60 million clean-up plan, a government spokesman said on Monday.

The Dock Sud refinery, which refines about 100,000 barrels of crude per day was closed by the government last week on the grounds that environmental officials had detected leaks and contamination in soil samples at the facility. read more

By Nicholas Rummell
September 10, 2007

The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering whether to ease accounting rules for oil companies to allow them greater latitude in how they calculate oil reserves, but some critics worry the rules are already too lax.

The current reserve requirements date back to the 1970s, and a number of new techniques, such as 3-D seismic interpretation and computer-enhanced reservoir simulation models, have improved oil companies’ reserve estimates, said James Eggers, an audit partner at KPMG’s energy practice. Furthermore, some technologies, such as flow testing, that are required by the SEC, are viewed as outdated by the industry, he said. read more