October 14th, 2007:

By Laurie Goering and David Greising
10/14/07 4:00 AM PT

Around the globe, businesses, governments and people are searching for solutions to the vexing problems presented by climate change. One of the most promising is carbon sequestration, the process of injecting carbon dioxide emissions, usually from power stations or industrial plants, into permanent storage, mainly in depleted oil or natural gas fields or salty aquifers at least a half-mile underground.

Beneath the rolling green hills of Australia’s Latrobe Valley lies a deposit of brown coal so enormous it seems almost endless. After nearly a century of mining, more than 95 percent of the 35-mile-long, 600-foot-deep coal seam is still in place, ready to fuel Australia’s energy needs for generations. read more

By Eduard Gismatullin 2007-10-15  
 
ROYAL Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, shut natural gas pumping at one of its Nigerian fields following a fire on a pipeline in the south of the country.

Nigerian unit Shell Petroleum Development Co reported the fire on the Utorogu-Ughelli gas condensate pipeline in the Delta state on Friday, Alexandra Wright, a London-based company spokeswoman, said. Shell had to declare force majeure on deliveries to the nation’s gas pipeline network, she said. read more

By Nadja Brandt

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) — The following stocks may rise or fall in European markets. Prices are from the last close.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA LN): Europe’s largest oil company, shut natural gas pumping at one of its Nigerian fields following a fire on a pipeline in the south of the country.

Nigerian unit Shell Petroleum Development Co. reported the fire on the Utorogu-Ughelli gas condensate pipeline in the Delta state on Oct. 12. Shell’s stock added 11 pence, or 0.5 percent, to 2,045. read more

By Shigeru Sato

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) — Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K., the Japanese unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, got a license to trade electricity on the nation’s wholesale power exchange, making it the 37th company to join the two-year-old bourse.

The Japan Electric Power Exchange granted the license to the petroleum refiner on Oct. 12 after a board meeting, Ryoichi Kunimatsu, the bourse’s deputy director general, said by telephone today.

Tokyo-based Showa Shell’s entry is part of the company’s plans to diversify its operations, as petroleum demand declines in the world’s second-largest economy partly because of a shift to cleaner-burning fuels such natural gas. Showa Shell and Tokyo Gas Co. are building a gas-fired power plant in Yokohama. read more

BunkerWorld.com: Outage at Shell’s gasoline-making unit in Singapore

15 Oct 2007, 01:47 GMTDuration of unplanned shutdown remains unclear while damage continues to be assessed.

http://www.bunkerworld.com/news/2007/10/69406

‘You can be different, yet the same’ 
 
October 15, 2007 (Computerworld) — Companies with a global presence are beginning to standardize their Web sites for a variety of reasons: look and feel, branding, technology infrastructure and content. Not only does this practice provide for consistency across the globe, but it can also result in improved time to market and ease of maintenance.

That wasn’t always the case, however. In the late 1990s, large global corporations wanted to have Web sites because it was the latest fad, the thing to do. Unfortunately, there were no guidelines about which corporate divisions or affiliates could have a site, where the content would come from or how the sites would be run. This resulted in a mishmash of company representations. Some companies were not even aware that they had Web sites in certain countries. read more

By Neil Hume in London
Published: October 13 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 13 2007 03:00

UK house prices are falling at their fastest pace in two years. The chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has lowered his growth forecasts for the economy. The Treasury has had to guarantee new deposits at troubled mortgage lender Northern Rock, and the big clearing banks are still reluctant to lend to one another.

This is not usually a backdrop associated with rising share prices. Yet the FTSE 100 came within eight points of a seven-year high this week and is now close to the levels it was trading at before the credit squeeze started in July. read more

By Jill James, Financial Times
Published: Oct 15, 2007

You may think that a builder of luxury yachts would be the last person to be either interested or passionate about the environment, but you would be wrong.

Amsterdam-based Hugo Le Breton cares very much about climate change and about his own carbon footprint.

Mr Le Breton left his job in environmental and social impact management with Shell in The Hague two years ago – although he still does some consultancy work for them – to build high-performance yachts that combine speed, comfort and fun. The yacht, the SIG45, can be used for fully-crewed racing or for short-handed cruising. read more

JOSEPH OLANYO 
KAMPALA
October 15, 2007

The visiting Shell Group top executive has said the greatest business opportunities of the next few decades will lie in meeting consumer demands for products.

Mr Rob Rout held meetings with the Ministry of Energy officials, top Chief Executives and Government officials at Kampala Serena Hotel.

He also visited the Infectious Disease Institute at Mulago before addressing Shell customers and staff. He said the businesses of vehicle production and that of producing energy are becoming closely linked. He however, said the challenges for both industries are to meet growing demand for mobility in ways that are sustainable. read more

October 14, 2007

Oil futures rose to a new trading high above $84 a barrel on Friday — and settled at a new record — on concerns that supplies are not adequate to meet fourth-quarter demand. Light, sweet crude for November delivery rose 61 cents to settle at a record $83.69 a barrel after rising as high as $84.05.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/602310,CST-FIN-mkts14.article

By Alan Caruba (10/14/07)

There was an interesting news item out of Moscow in late September to which most people probably paid little heed. “Russia is one of several countries that have rushed to lay claims to the area where a U.S. Study suggests as much as 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden.”

Earlier the Russians sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole. In response, Canada vowed to increase its icebreaker fleet and build two new military facilities in the Artic and Denmark sent a team of scientists to seek evidence that the ridge in question was attached to its territory of Greenland. read more

Look who’s in denial about global warming now
Ted Nordhaus,Michael Shellenberger

Sunday, October 14, 2007

For the last several years, environmental leaders and writers have blamed stealthy misinformation efforts by a handful of global warming deniers for the lack of national political action on global warming. Two years ago, Mother Jones pointed to the $8 million Exxon-Mobil had pumped into 40 conservative groups between 2000 and 2003, concluding, “They’ve delayed action for 15 years.” Greenpeace protested the company’s activities and launched ExxonSecrets.com. And in a cover story in August, Newsweek declared that, “The reason for inaction was clear … well-funded naysayers.” read more

Monthly oil price chart from TradingCharts.com

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Ten years ago, oil prices hit their lowest levels in two decades, and pundits proclaimed that an era of lower prices was here to stay.

Industry insiders felt that not even OPEC could help the world’s producers. Prices had plummeted because of increased production from Iraq, lack of demand growth in an Asia struggling to recover from an agonizing economic crisis, and high world oil inventories following two unusually warm winters. In addition, OPEC’s members were cheating on their export quotas, and large new volumes of oil were flowing into world markets from such non-OPEC countries as Norway and Russia. read more

Rookie premier Ed Stelmach faces three crucial decisions that will define his future – and the oil-rich province’s

Oct 14, 2007 04:30 AM
David Olive
Business Reporter

In office less than a year, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is confronted with three of the toughest decisions any premier of Canada’s most prosperous province has ever had to make.

The first and most obvious, expected within days, is whether to hike royalty rates on oil and gas producers by 20 per cent, as recommended by a controversial report Stelmach himself commissioned. read more

By BOBBY MAGILL The Daily Sentinel
Sunday, October 14, 2007

Gov. Bill Ritter will unveil a major climate change action plan next month that will rely on the Legislature to enact new policies aimed at reducing the state’s influence on global warming, he said Saturday.

State governors at a recent Western Governors Association meeting agreed that climate change is real and that their states’ impact on the carbon content of the atmosphere must be reduced, Ritter said, speaking at the annual meeting of the Western Colorado Congress in Grand Junction. read more

Tim Webb
Sunday October 14, 2007

Centrica is considering calling for a judicial review to overturn a government decision which excludes most energy companies from the contest to build the world’s first green coal plant.

John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (Berr), last week barred most companies’ existing designs by unexpectedly favouring an alternative clean coal technology.

Shell, Scottish and Southern Energy, Conoco-Philips and Marathon Oil, plus Centrica, have spent almost £100m developing the now redundant plans. read more

By Sylvia Pfeifer, Deputy Business Editor
Last Updated: 12:10am BST 14/10/2007

Tony Hayward, the new chief executive of BP, has pledged to turn around the oil giant’s fortune in the next two to three years. In an interview this weekend, Hayward told The Sunday Telegraph that “we have been on the downward spiral for three or four years and it will take us two or three years to come back up”.
 
He said: “This is going to be step by step. It’s not whiz-bang fireworks today, everything is fixed. It is step by step over two to three years, but we have going for us a bit of a revenue wave from the stuff that is coming in so we will see if we can pick the wave.” read more

Tony Hayward believes sweeping changes to BP’s culture and behaviour will lead to recovery

The British oil major will steer its own course in the post-Browne future, Tony Hayward tells Sylvia Pfeifer

Last Updated: 12:24am BST 14/10/2007

Tony Hayward does not want to use the “B” word. The word is Browne, the name of his illustrious predecessor at BP. Hayward succeeded him six months ago when Lord Browne left the oil giant under a cloud after admitting that he had lied about details of his private life.
 
Last week Hayward finally set his stamp on the company, revealing plans to break with the past by slashing layers of management and streamlining operations. He said the company had a decent strategy that it had failed to execute. Despite this show of independence, Hayward is still clearly reluctant to address the looming shadow of Browne, who dominated the company for more than 10 years. read more

By Lianne Gutcher
14 October 2007

Firms condemned for failing to back up ethical policies

THE DEALINGS of oil companies in countries such as China and Burma have led a former Shell executive to accuse his ex-employer and its rivals of “hypocrisy” in regard to human rights.

Paddy Briggs, who worked for Shell for 37 years before retiring in 2002, has criticised oil giants for continuing to be involved in countries accused of human rights abuses, despite issuing statements insisting they support those rights. Briggs cites Shell’s involvement in China and Saudi Arabia, and Total’s investment in Burma as examples of this hypocrisy. read more