February 6th, 2008:

By Bernard Simon in Toronto
Published: February 7 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 7 2008 02:00

An assault by environmental activists on General Motors’ 100th-anniversary website has turned into a pioneering online chat between the carmaker and its critics.

Brent Dewar, GM’s vice-president for North American field sales and service, spent an hour yesterday fielding questions from environmental campaigners and others on the subject of “corporate greenwashing”.

GM set up the website www.gmnext.com only last month as a springboard for ideas on future automotive technologies. read more

By Toby Shelley
Published: February 7 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 7 2008 02:00

Sibir Energy increased oil production in 2007 by 80 per cent as output increased at the Salym field in western Siberia where it partners Royal Dutch Shell.

The group said production rose to 48,900 barrels a day, with a year-end rate of 63,100 b/d. A further 40 per cent increase is forecast for 2008.

The oil exploration and production company, which is majority-owned by Russian businessmen, also increased the annual volume of crude processed on its account at the Moscow Refinery by 51 per cent to 21.4m barrels. This is seen rising to 35m barrels in 2008. read more

Thursday February 7, 2008

Your report that “BP has been holding meetings with Iraqi oil officials as it speeds up plans to re-enter” the country (Report, February 5) is disturbing. Both Shell and BP – with British government assistance – have been pushing the Iraqi government to pass legislation that would allow foreign oil companies to control most of Iraq’s oil reserves, depriving Iraqis of scores of billions of dollars. Such an effective privatisation of Iraq’s key natural resource is opposed by Iraq’s trade unions, many senior Iraqi oil experts and most Iraqis. On February 23, people will be at petrol stations around the country to highlight the role of Shell and BP in this looming theft of Iraq’s future. We urge readers to join us.
Jonathan Stevenson
Hands Off Iraqi Oil read more

February 7, 2008
Jane Macartney: Analysis

China has the money and the motivation to mount a bid for Rio Tinto, but actually doing so would mark a U-turn in the recent “going out” strategy of the country’s state-owned companies.

China remains deeply scarred by two rebuffs, both in 2005, in its quest to secure energy and minerals to feed its thrumming economy. A bid by Minmetals Corp for Noranda, of Canada, was blocked by political objections, just as the oil giant CNOOC’s $18.5 billion offer to buy Unocoal, the Californian refiner, was scuppered by nationalist outrage on Capitol Hill. read more

Thursday February 7, 2008

Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil group, and Repsol, the Spanish energy company, have both registered to compete for contracts to develop Iraq’s oil reserves, the world’s third largest.

Gazprom, the Russian gas exports monopoly, shipped 5 per cent less gas to Europe in 2007 as consumption fell because of the warm winter, according to Energy Ministry data.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article3322047.ece

Wed Feb 6, 2008 4:42pm

ANCHORAGE, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) bid $105.3 million for a single exploration block in the U.S. government’s sale of drilling rights in federal waters of the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwestern coast, the Minerals Management Service said.

The bid is one of the largest ever for drilling rights in federal waters off Alaska since the late 1970s when some federal acreage in the adjacent Beaufort Sea attracted bids of more than $100 million, an MMS spokeswoman said. read more

Wed Feb 6, 2008 11:57am EST

(Adds Repsol comment para 5)

By Simon Webb

DUBAI, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Oil major Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and Spanish energy company Repsol YPF (REP.MC: Quote, Profile, Research) have both registered to compete for contracts to develop Iraq’s huge oil reserves, company sources said on Wednesday.

Big oil firms have been positioning themselves for years to gain access to the world’s third largest reserves, among the cheapest oil to produce in the world. read more

Wed Feb 6, 2008 11:59am

LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) has declared a force majeure on shipments of its Bonny Light crude oil in Nigeria, trade sources said on Wednesday.

Sources said they were not sure why Shell declared the force majeure on the 400,000 barrel per day oilfields.

Shell officials were not immediately available to comment. The declaration allows companies to suspend the contractual obligations, such as deliveries of oil and gas, following unforseen events, without incurring penalties. read more

February 06, 2008: 11:46 AM EST

LONDON, Feb. 6, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) — The Nigerian government is looking at withdrawing an incentive scheme for oil exploration projects in the country, said a spokesman at the Anglo-Dutch oil group Royal Dutch Shell PLC. (NYSE:RDS A)

‘We got a letter from the government informing us of (its plan) to change the regulations,’ the spokesman told Thomson Financial News.

‘We’re still studying what it means and what its consequences are,’ he added. read more

BY TOM INCANTALUPO | [email protected]
February 6, 2008

Broadwater Energy and its parent, Shell Oil, are cranking up an advertising and public relations campaign to win more support for their controversial Long Island Sound liquefied natural gas barge proposal in the final days before Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s administration is to either approve it or reject it.

TV, radio and some print ads say the metropolitan area needs the extra billion cubic feet a day of natural gas that the floating terminal would provide and that the extra fuel would help lower Long Islanders’ energy bills — by a claimed $300 a year. read more

Posted by jamie on 6 February 2008.

As one fossil fuel giant sidelines its alternative energy projects and invests in even more damaging technologies such as tar sands, the former head of another multinational has made some startling demands vis a vis car efficiency. To all intents and purposes, Sir Mark Moody-Smith – ex-chairmen of Shell – wants to see all gas guzzlers banned.

Expanding on a column he wrote for the BBC website, Sir Mark said that the EU should bring in a minimum standard of 35 miles per gallon (mpg). “Nobody needs a car that does 10-15mpg,” he said. “We need very tough regulation saying that you can’t drive or build something less than a certain standard. You would be allowed to drive an Aston Martin – but only if it did 50-60mpg.” read more

(02/05/08) DEER PARK – The heads of Shell Oil Company and Broadwater Energy have presented a $150,000 check to United Way of Long Island, but many are questioning the sincerity of the gift.

The money is slated to go toward ?Project Warmth,? a program to help struggling Long Island residents heat their homes over the winter. However, Shell’s visit to the Island comes just a week before the New York Department of State rules whether or not to approve the placement of Broadwater’s liquefied natural gas barge in the Long Island Sound. read more

This is a quote from Tariq Ali who was writing about characters in Anthony Powell’s “Dance to the Music of Time” – but it struck me immediately as being very true of Shell today.

When I left Shell after 37 years back in 2002 there were a number of colleagues much younger than me who I rated and respected and who I thought were the future of the oil giant. Almost without exception they have left the corporation over the last few years. To illustrate the point I will pick out two of them but, to spare their blushes, I will keep their names anonymous! read more

Oil Titan to Slash
Work Force Amid Drop
In Refining Margins
By BENOÎT FAUÇON and GUY CHAZAN
February 6, 2008

LONDON — BP PLC posted a 53% rise in fourth-quarter net profit but unveiled cost cuts and a fattened dividend in preparation for what could be a tough ride ahead for major oil companies.

The London-based oil giant said it would reduce corporate overhead by between 15% and 20% and slash 5,000 jobs, amounting to roughly 5% of its work force, by the middle of next year. BP had already planned to move about 9,500 jobs off its payrolls by selling its U.S. convenience-store business to franchisers last year. read more

By Ed Crooks in London
Published: February 6 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 6 2008 02:00

BP, Europe’s second biggest oil company, has raised its quarterly dividend by 31 per cent to reflect “the company’s increasingly robust view of the future”, in spite of fourth-quarter profits well below analysts’ expectations.

The company announced that it added to its reserves more than 100 per cent of the oil and gas it produced last year, when its leading rivals have either reported poor performance or said nothing about their reserves replacement. read more

By JULIA WERDIGIER
Published: February 6, 2008

LONDON — BP, the British oil giant, announced on Tuesday that it would cut an additional 5,000 jobs by the middle of next year, part of a plan by the chief executive, Anthony B. Hayward, to slim management and make the company more efficient.

The company also announced a fourth-quarter profit that missed analyst estimates, but said it would raise its dividend 31 percent, citing an “increasingly robust” outlook.

Profit in the last three months of 2007 rose 53 percent, to $4.4 billion, from $2.88 billion, in the period a year earlier. Excluding gains or losses from holding inventories or one-time items, profit was $4 billion, which was about 10 percent less than analysts expected. read more

By Damian Reece, Head of Business
Last Updated: 3:07am GMT 06/02/2008

When BP was suffering its darkest hours in 2006 and 2007, there were people, me included, who argued the oil giant’s problems were deep-seated enough to warrant a new chief executive coming in from outside the company to change it.

Instead, an insider was appointed in the shape of Tony Hayward. He had to address severe operational difficulties, including a culture that had left a hollowed-out shell (excuse the pun) where safety fatally collapsed, and a boardroom at war. Further, he also needed to persuade shareholders he was his own man and that the baggage of the Lord Browne years would be left outside the chief executive’s suite. Hayward is still an unknown quantity to most people outside the higher echelons of the industry. But yesterday’s results announcement gave us more distant observers some valuable clues. Hayward is certainly dynamic, adopting shareholder-friendly practices from the start, be it a material 5,000 job cuts to save money and a 31pc dividend hike. He’s restructuring BP’s US service station business while promising production growth. And he’s still discovering more oil than BP is pumping, unlike rivals. read more

February 6, 2008
Robin Pagnamenta

BP is in talks with the Iraqi Government about a plan to boost oil production at the huge Rumaila field on the border with Kuwait.

Tony Hayward, chief executive, said that he had met Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi Oil Minister, “in the last few weeks” to discuss opportunities in the country.

Among other potential projects in Iraq, BP’s interest is understood to include the Rumaila field, one of Iraq’s largest, which is believed to contain about 18billion barrels of oil, according to figures from Wood Mackenzie. read more

February 6, 2008
Nick Hasell: Tempus

Eight years and nearly $49billion (£25 billion) later, BP is finally reining in its blockbuster share buyback programme. The world’s third-biggest oil major accompanied yesterday’s full-year results with the declaration of “a shift in the balance between dividends and share buybacks as a means of returning value to shareholders”.

In short, that rethink translates into a 31 per cent increase in the fourth-quarter dividend to 6.8p in sterling terms, against expectations of a 10 per cent rise, and 7 per cent increase for the year as a whole. For US dollar investors, the full-year out-turn was even better – up 16 per cent. That unexpected bump-up in the payout ensured that BP was one of only three constituents of the FTSE 100 to see its shares rise. A switch in emphasis away from buybacks is partly pragmatic: having retired 16 per cent of its outstanding shares since the turn of the decade, a higher dividend is now more affordable. read more

February 6, 2008
Carl Mortished, World Business Editor

Royal Dutch Shell is close to a deal with Nigeria’s Government that will fund a billion-dollar shortfall in the financing of its Nigerian operations.

Shell is expected to lend NNPC, the Nigerian state oil company, the funds to cover the State’s share of the budget of SPDC, the troubled joint venture company that houses Shell’s onshore business.

Reports from Nigeria late yesterday indicated that NNPC was close to agreement with its joint-venture partners on a short-term solution to the mounting financial crisis over Nigeria’s funding of its oil industry. read more

February 6, 2008
Carl Mortished: World business briefing

Bloated with profits and rolling in cash, but it isn’t nearly enough. Oil companies confound our senses with big numbers – BP earned $17 billion (£8.6 billion) last year, a meagre performance compared with Shell’s $28 billion, revealed last week. The European twins are hopelessly outclassed by ExxonMobil. The American ended the year with $40 billion tucked under its belt.

Don’t be fooled; this pumped-up industry is impoverished, both in performance and opportunity. Beset from all sides, by inflation, weak operations and lack of opportunity, the oil majors have reverted to Plan A – cut the costs and raise the dividend. read more