October 30th, 2007:

Posting on Live Chat by Guest 1116

Guest 1116: Sakhalin Project Team morale at all time low this morning on this remote island as Schoolmaster Craig and Helpless Huijskes swing axe wildly and despatch our OPF Project Manager, Bernt Granas for no reason at all !!!!! Neither Craig nor Huijskes know anything about project management and even less about how to manage people. Cold, heartless, insensitive, incompetent and worthless managers. No wonder the project is delayed and wildly over budget. Time for all of us to get out of here before these read more

Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:01 PM GMT

DOHA, Oct 30 (Reuters) – Construction is on schedule at the project that has attracted Royal Dutch Shell’s largest foreign investment, a super-clean fuels plant in Qatar with a cost of up to $18 billion, a senior executive said on Tuesday.

“We’re broadly on schedule for a start up by the end of the decade,” said Shell’s Qatar Country Manager Andrew Brown, who is also managing director of the 140,000 barrels per day Pearl gas-to-liquids project. read more

By John Donovan

Publication on a daily basis of top secret Royal Dutch Shell internal documents relating to the reserves scandal (first revealed to an astonished world in *January 2004) began yesterday on the website royaldutchshellplc.com. The site has been described by the Financial Times as being “anti-Shell”.

*The Times: How Shell blew a hole in a 100-year reputation (Jan 10, 2004)

http://www.shellnews.net/2004%20Documents/todds/thetimeshow%20shellblewahole.htm 

*Daily Telegraph: Shell drops ‘bombshell’ on reserves (Jan 10, 2004) read more

By Hector Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News
October 30, 2007

Rocky Mountain Arsenal is expected to remain contaminated beyond 2010 when a cleanup was scheduled to be completed, according to an assessment released Monday by the Colorado attorney general.

The Natural Resource Damage Assessment Plan found that hazardous substances will continue to move into groundwater from contaminated soils below the surface and “thus groundwater at the Arsenal will not be clean for the foreseeable future.” read more

By Fred Pals

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) — Qatar, the world’s largest shipper of natural gas, said natural gas is “very, very undervalued” compared with oil.

“I’m unhappy, unsatisfied with the gas price,” Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said at an oil conference in London today. The fuel is more environmentally friendly, and projects to construct liquefied natural gas plants have become very expensive, he said.

“The world is underestimating the importance of gas,” Al- Attiyah said. read more

The Associated Press
Published: October 30, 2007

LAGOS, Nigeria: Six foreign oil workers who were kidnapped from an offshore oil field in the Niger Delta were released Tuesday after three days in captivity, officials said.

The Indian and Polish workers are in good health, Italian energy giant Eni SpA said.

Gunmen in speedboats kidnapped the workers at dawn Friday from the Mystras, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore. Another Nigerian worker was reported to have been wounded in the leg in the attack. read more

MOSCOW (Thomson Financial) – Russian oil firm GazpromNeft is in talks with StatoilHydro, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell on forming a joint venture to develop oilfields off Sakhalin island and the north Russian province of Chukotka, said its president Alexander Dyukov.
 
As yet the western companies have not given a response to Gazprom Neft’s proposals, the head of the Gazprom unit was quoted as saying by the Ria-Novosti agency.

The Sakhalin block, which Gazprom Neft bought from rival TNK-BP, is estimated to contain 50-60 mln tonnes of oil. read more

Iconic Brands Collaborate to Bring ‘Ease’ to Easy Riders
October 30, 2007: 08:00 AM EST

HOUSTON, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire/ — What does Harley-Davidson recommend for all their motorcycles? Premium gasoline. And what does a Harley(R) rider need to find quality gasoline while riding their motorcycle? A really detailed map … until now. Harley-Davidson Motor Company (Harley-Davidson) has begun an alliance with Shell Oil Products US (Shell) that will soon place all 14,000+ Shell-branded stations on the motorcycle maker’s online Harley- Davidson(SM) Ride Planner, where riders will find Shell V-Power(R) premium gasoline. As part of this alliance, Shell also will proudly be the exclusive fuels sponsor of the Harley-Davidson(R) 105th Anniversary Celebration in August 2008. read more

08:50 – 29 October 2007
 
The benefits of sharing subsea solutions will come under the spotlight this week when international subsea engineering and software company MCS brings its annual technical conference to Aberdeen for the first time.

Delegates from each of MCS’s six bases around the world are to attend the two-day event at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre with guest speakers joining more than 20 internal presenters drawn from both the engineering and software development sides of the business. read more

By Upstream staff

Any penalty imposed on oil producers in Nigeria for gas flaring beyond a 2008 deadline should target only the operators and not their partners, Tony Chikwueke, the head of Nigeria’s oil regulator said today.

This means Western multinationals could face fines or other penalties for flaring while the Nigerian state oil company, which owns majority stakes in the joint ventures operated by the foreign companies and gets more of the profits, would be exempt.

“In my view we should have a system that penalises the actual operators and not their partners,” Tony Chukwueke, director of the Department of Petroleum Resources, told Reuters in an interview. read more

October 30, 2007; Page A10

BEIJING — Royal Dutch Shell PLC is “moving East” to countries including China and India to take advantage of booming demand for oil products, a senior Shell executive said.

Demand in Asia is growing strongly along with the region’s economies, while demand in Europe and the U.S. is moderating, because of high pump prices, higher vehicle efficiency and greater use of substitutes such as biofuels, said Rob Routs, Shell’s executive director of downstream operations. In the oil business, downstream typically refers to the business of refining oil into fuels like gasoline and selling them. read more

In the race to profit off the scramble to go green, there will be winners and losers. Here’s how the players currently stack up.

By JEFFREY BALL
October 29, 2007; Page R1

The green stampede is on.

As a global economy powered by cheap fossil fuel comes under intense pressure to change, corporate executives are racing to stay ahead of the tectonic shift in their world.

From Capitol Hill to California and Brussels to Beijing, multinational companies are stepping up their lobbying and tweaking their product lines in response to demands that they get more environmentally attuned. New companies — even new industries — are challenging the established giants to exploit a growing market for everything from green cars to green fuels. read more

The vast tar sands of Alberta in Canada hold oil reserves six times the size of Saudi Arabia’s. But this ‘black gold’ is proving a mixed blessing for the frontier town of Fort McMurray, fuelling both prosperity and misery. As the social and environmental toll mounts, Aida Edemariam reports on the dark side of a boom town
 
Aida Edemariam
Tuesday October 30 2007

You’ve only got to stroll down Hardin Street to the main drag, then hang a left and walk a couple more short blocks, to see what Fort McMurray is about. It wouldn’t be the whole story, but you would catch the drift. You’d pass the Boomtown Casino, strip malls, and a club called Cowboys proudly advertising “naughty schoolgirl nights”. Then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police station, the municipal offices, the Oil Sands Hotel, and Diggers bar, with its advertisement for exotic dancers. You would be passed by Humvees and countless pick-up trucks, each more souped up than the next, many covered in dried mud, many carrying further 4x4s – in winter, snowmobiles; in summer, all-terrain vehicles on which to go chasing through the bush, which is visible from the main street. And if the wind is from the north-west, you can smell oil on the air: heavy, slightly sour, unmistakable. Round here, they call it the smell of money. read more

By Michael Mackenzie in New York
Published: October 29 2007 20:20 | Last updated: October 30 2007 01:12

Oil hit a new record high of $93.80 and the dollar struck a new low yesterday as investors showed their growing certainty that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates on Wednesday.

The same conviction also saw gold approach $800 a troy ounce – its highest price for 28 years – while equities made gains. The move into gold reflects how investors fear rising inflation from the twin forces of higher oil prices and a weaker dollar. read more

By David Blair
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 30/10/2007

Whenever the King of Saudi Arabia pays a state visit to a Western ally, all the ingredients for controversy are present.

No matter how many flags line the Mall, the absolute monarch of a theocratic state that oppresses women and routinely tortures opponents will never receive a warm public welcome.

The row over King Abdullah’s visit to Britain this week is predictable – and many of the criticisms of Saudi Arabia are justified. But a few salient points are at risk of being lost. read more

The price of oil is unlikely to stay at its current record levels, the head of Shell has said.

Shell UK chairman James Smith told Sky News’ Jeff Randall Live that the rise was the result of speculation and international tensions.

Oil is now priced at a record $93 a barrel.

“It’s a little hard to explain why the oil price is as high as it is at the moment, because there’s plenty of oil and oil products around- it’s not as if there’s a shortage,” said Mr Smith. read more

Ireland, Rossport Day of Action, November 9th – Get on the bus – Direct Action against Shell

The Workers Solidarity Movement is urging anarchists and other supporters of Shell To Sea to get to Rossport for the day-of-action on November 9th. WSM members will join people from around the country in showing, one year since Gardai batoned protesters, that we will not be intimidated. — Shell have shown contempt for the concerns of locals about a high pressure gas pipe running close to their houses. They have refused to move their operation offshore, claiming it would be too expensive. Shell makes a profit of €375million every week. The cost of moving the Rossport operation offshore would be €360million. Those figures speak for themselves. — But why should anyone be surprised? It is the same old story of a capitalist government giving a “dig out” to a capitalist company, and always at our expense. read more