Posts on ‘February 8th, 2008’

8/2/2008 16:20 London Time

PARIS (Thomson Financial) – French oil giant Total has decided to pull out of a gas exploration project in Saudia Arabia after three wells turned up no gas, a spokesman for the company told Agence France-Presse.

Total was a partner in the South Rub al-Khali joint venture alongside Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Arabia”s Aramco.

Total remains on good terms with Saudi Aramco and continues to pursue other projects in the country, the spokesperson said.

[email protected]
gk1/kf1 read more

Securing supplies, the boom in Wall Street interest, and what $100 oil means for the economy are all up for discussion at upcoming energy conference.

By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
February 8 2008: 11:12 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — How safe are our oil supplies? Where will the new supplies come from? Have high oil prices killed the economy? Are speculative investors responsible for the price runup?

These are all central – an contentious – questions in the world of oil. And they’re all up for debate as leading members of the oil and energy industry gather in Houston, Texas for Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ (CERA) annual energy conference. read more

By Mark Shenk

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil rose more than $3 a barrel on forecasts for lower North Sea output in March and Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s announcement yesterday that pipeline damage would reduce Nigerian exports.

Daily shipments of Brent, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk crude-oil grades produced in the North Sea will drop 1.1 percent in March. Brent shipments will drop 15 percent next month. Shell said yesterday it halted 130,000 barrels a day of production in Nigeria, where output is already down a fifth because of unrest. read more

LONDON and HOUSTON, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ — Shell International Trading
and Shipping Company Ltd. (SHELL) today announced it will begin recruiting
U.S. seafarers for the company’s growing portfolio of managed international
liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels.

    One of the first major oil producers to actively recruit U.S. seafarers
for LNG vessels, Shell is committed to securing the most qualified
seafarers for its maritime fleet operations and the United States offers an
exceptional skill pool, particularly for LNG vessels. read more

By Sven Ridley-Wordich
08 Feb 2008 at 11:18 AM GMT-05:00

AMSTERDAM (ResourceInvestor.com) — After being confronted by increased political meddling by several national governments, such as Russia, Nigeria, Algeria and Venezuela, the Dutch-British oil and gas major is again hitting the rocks it seems.

In the last few days, financial analysts have been reasonably positive about the results reported over 2007. Royal Dutch Shell [NYSE:RDS-B; LSE:RDSB] has reported record revenues, showing the impact of high crude oil and natural gas prices, as being the main backbone of the current success. 
 
However, production and reserve figures have been left out of the connotation, resulting in slightly biased and unrealistic assessments. The success and future of Shell in this coming year is still in doubt. Current financial results are not a basis on which the oil major can build a sustainable future. Without having the opportunity of increased reserves, the pumping capabilities of the company will increasingly come under pressure. read more

02.08.08, 2:22 AM ET

AMSTERDAM (Thomson Financial) – Royal Dutch Shell said a larger amount of ethelyne oxide gas escaped from its Moerdijk location in the Netherlands than previously thought, prompting calls from a Dutch province for an independent inquiry into the incident, Dutch media reported.

Shell said on its Moerdijk website that 5.3 tonnes of the gas was leaked rather than the previous estimate of 1-2 tonnes.

The Anglo-Dutch energy giant also said it asked research bureau TNO to assess the possible impact on public health, but said TNO’s study found that there were no consequences for public health in the region. read more

Date Published: February 7, 2008
The Associated Press

A federal appeals court has thrown out an order giving $6.8 million in fees to plaintiff attorneys who handled a lawsuit over tainted gasoline that damaged fuel gauges.

Three members of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle had decided how much each of the six dozen attorneys would receive by using an “improper and unauthorized” process.

That included meeting privately with the five lawyers the judge named to a committee to recommend fees. Lemelle then accepted the committee’s recommendations and sealed records on how much each attorney received. read more

By David Peyman
2008-02-08  
 
In a recent report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) challenged the impact of U.S. sanctions against Iran, noting Iran’s ability to negotiate $20 billion in contracts with foreign firms since 2003 to develop its energy resources. The GAO correctly recognizes that “Iran’s overall trade with the world has grown since the U.S. imposed sanctions.”

What the GAO fails to recognize is that the most important provisions of the cornerstone of America’s sanction against Iran, the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) of 1995, have not been implemented, and it is precisely these provisions that sought to cripple Iran’s ability to trade with the rest of the world. read more

February 7, 2008, 10:30PM EST

ExxonMobil has won a court battle to freeze $12 billion in assets of Petroleos de Venezuela as compensation for nationalization of projects

By Peter Wilson

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has repeatedly seized assets of international oil companies operating in the country as part of his socialist revolution. Now, Big Oil is striking back.

ExxonMobil (XOM) said on Feb. 7 that courts in Britain and the U.S. had granted its requests to freeze more than $12 billion in assets of Venezuela’s state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). ExxonMobil is seeking compensation for the nationalization of two oil projects in the country that are together worth several billion dollars. read more

By Dino Mahtani
Published: February 8 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 8 2008 02:00

Higher demand for liquefied natural gas in Asia helped BG Group beat analysts’ forecasts with a 36 per cent increase in fourth-quarter profits.

Excluding disposals and other one-off items, the group earned £558m in the fourth quarter, 8 per cent higher than expected. Pre-tax profits of £850m were 7.5 per cent higher than the same period a year ago.

Full-year pre-tax profits dipped 7.5 per cent to £3.03bn, in part because of disruption to a North Sea pipeline. However, profits excluding disposals and one-off items were up 9 per cent to £1.78bn, driven by higher margins for gas. The full-year dividend is lifted 30 per cent to 9.36p. read more

By Dino Mahtani in London
Published: February 8 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 8 2008 02:00

The US government has licensed off nearly 3m acres near the coast of Alaska to exploration companies, drawing the ire of environmental activists.

Shell, ConocoPhillips, StatoilHydro, Repsol and Eni this week bid for the licences, which fetched more than $2.6bn (£1.3bn, €1.8bn) in signature fees, a fraction of the sum companies could be expected to invest in exploring in the Chukchi Sea area off Alaska. read more

By Russell Hotten, Industry Editor
Last Updated: 2:35am GMT 08/02/2008

BG Group, the UK’s third-largest producer of natural gas, has tripled its estimate of reserves held in the giant Tupi field off Brazil.

The success of the Tupi discovery, one of the largest finds in decades, is key to BG’s long-term growth and the company said yesterday the field may contain between 12bn-20bn barrels of oil – up from previous estimates of 1.7bn-10bn barrels.

BG chief executive Frank Chapman said Tupi, discovered last year, “is probably about the same size as Kashagan was at the same stage of [its] appraisal.” This field, in Kazakhstan, has about 12bn barrels of recoverable oil and gas. BG owns a 25pc stake in the Tupi field, which is controlled by Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro. read more

Edited by Yvette Essen
Last Updated: 1:03am GMT 08/02/2008
BG Group
£11.18 +41p
Questor says Buy
  
After two weeks of the oil and gas supermajors fretting over their growth prospects, BG Group swept in yesterday with a refreshing blast of good news. BG is a minnow compared with the likes of Shell, BP or Chevron, but these giants will be looking enviously at its forecasts.

On the face of it, bearish commentators will have spotted that production growth was, in fact, scaled back fractionally to between 6pc and 8pc per year to 2012. And the rate at which it is refilling its tanks was just 54pc last year. read more

Natural resources

Royal Dutch Shell said that it would not be able to honour its export contracts from one of its key terminals in Nigeria’s volatile delta. Shell said that it was halting contracts from its Bonny terminal throughout March because it is unable to repair a leak due to security concerns. The leak has halted the flow of 130,000 barrels of crude per day, the company said.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article3331146.ece

Reuters Friday February 8 2008
(Updates prices paragraphs 2-3)
By James Topham

TOKYO, Feb 8 (Reuters) – Oil extended gains towards $89 a barrel on Friday as traders bought back short positions on expectations that cold U.S. weather would boost fuel demand and after prices failed to break below the $86 watermark.

U.S. light, sweet crude for March delivery rose 70 cents to $88.81 a barrel by 0656 GMT. Prices fell as low as $86.24 a day earlier, near the lowest in three and a half months, but later rebounded to close 97 cents higher on the day. read more

A zoo employee plays with a walrus during celebrations marking the zoo’s 23th birthday in Minsk, August 11, 2007. REUTERS/Vladimir Nikolsky

Fri Feb 8, 2008 6:49am GMT
By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – An environmental group filed a petition on Thursday seeking Endangered Species Act protection for the Pacific walrus, an iconic Arctic marine mammal dependent on shrinking sea ice.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed the petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, citing the impact of global warming to the icy habitat used by walrus especially nursing mothers and calves that need ice shelves to rest and nurse. read more

02.07.08, 10:35 PM ET

SINGAPORE (Thomson Financial) – World oil prices rose in Asian trade Friday after Anglo-Dutch group Shell said production in strife-torn Nigeria, Africa’s biggest crude producer, will be disrupted for two months.

A general rise in prices of commodities, including gold, platinum, soya beans and wheat also helped lift crude oil prices.

New York’s main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March, was 57 cents higher at 88.68 dollars per barrel. The contract gained 97 cents to 88.11 dollars per barrel in late US trade on Thursday. read more