April 1st, 2008:

Tue Apr 1, 2008 4:37pm EDT 

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) is ready to help Iraq boost oil production once that country’s government finalizes a petroleum law covering big energy projects, the head of the oil giant said on Tuesday.

“We are very much prepared to go back to Iraq,” Shell chief executive officer Jeroen van der Veer said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

But first, he said, Shell employees must be able to work safely in the country and a petroleum law must be passed. read more

Lawmakers criticize industry for taking tax breaks amid record-high prices while underinvesting in renewable resources.

By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: April 1, 2008: 3:19 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Lawmakers grilled executives from the world’s five largest publicly traded oil companies Tuesday, criticizing them for taking tax subsidies and not investing in renewable resources amid record prices for oil and gasoline.

“Americans are hoping that the top executives from the five largest oil companies will tell us that these soaring gas prices are just part of some elaborate hoax,” said Ed Markey, D-Mass, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “Unfortunately, it’s not a joke.” read more

The Associated Press
Published: April 1, 2008

WASHINGTON: Royal Dutch Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer said Tuesday he expected easy-to-produce oil and gas would likely peak in the next 10 years.

Van der Veer said while depletion of maturing conventional resources would certainly play a key role in peak production, lack of access to remaining large reserves, such as in Saudi Arabia, was also a central component in his forecast.

Remaining resources, such as gas trapped in difficult-to-tap reservoirs or oil sands and shales, will require increasingly costly investments per barrel to produce. read more

Apr 1, 2:35 PM (ET)
By H. JOSEF HEBERT

WASHINGTON (AP) – Top executives of the five biggest U.S. oil companies were pressed Tuesday to explain the soaring fuel prices amid huge industry profits and why they weren’t investing more to develop renewable energy source such as wind and solar.

The executives, peppered with questions from skeptical lawmakers, said they understood that high energy costs are hurting consumers, but deflected blame, arguing that their profits – $123 billion last year – were in line with other industries. read more

Slickly does it

By Kelly Fiveash
Tuesday 1st April 2008 15:57 GMT

Royal Dutch Shell has claimed that no more than 30 jobs will be axed following the firm’s decision to outsource more than 3,000 worldwide IT staff.

A spokeswoman at the oil multinational told The Register that it had set a “maximum headcount” of 30 employees who can expect the chop by 1 July.

That’s the transfer crunch date when contracts will begin with EDS, AT&T and T-Systems after the trio inked separate deals – worth $4.2bn – with Shell yesterday. However, individuals are yet to be informed. read more

April 1, 2008 11:57 AM EDT

Announcing Finalists in Finland’s $1.8 Million Technology Prize

WHAT:  The three American finalists of the Millennium Technology Prize, Finland’s bi-annual prize for technology advancement for the betterment of humanity, will be introduced at a press briefing.

    WHO:
    — Jorma Ollila, chairman of both Nokia and Royal Dutch Shell
    — Jason Pontin, editor in chief of MIT’s Technology Review, will
       interview Mr. Ollila on stage about global innovation, mobile media and
       energy
    — Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation
       (1998-2004), will speak about science and innovation.
    — The Millennium Prize finalists will discuss their work and be available
       for press interviews. read more

By Upstream staff

A fire has broken out on the Shell-operated Trans-Niger oil export pipeline in Nigeria, but oil loadings have so far not been affected, the supermajor said today.

The cause of the fire, which started on a section of the Trans-Niger pipeline in the Ogoni area in the southern state of Rivers state on Sunday, has yet to be ascertained, a company spokesman said.

The Ogoni area been calm for sometime now, but a longstanding dispute with Shell, which shut the company’s operations there for years is yet to be resolved. read more

Tue Apr 1, 2008 2:06pm IST

MOSCOW, April 1 (Reuters) – Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP.MM: Quote, Profile, Research) wants to supply a quarter of the world’s liquefied natural gas needs by 2030 to diversify away from pipeline gas supplies and become a global energy player, a Gazprom executive said on Tuesday.

Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, will add some 90 million tonnes of the super-cooled fuel to its production by 2030, Gazprom’s deputy head Valery Golubev told reporters at an energy forum in Moscow. read more

By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen
Last update: 5:33 a.m. EDT April 1, 2008

MOSCOW (MarketWatch) — Royal Dutch Shell will enter a joint venture between Russia’s top oil producer OAO Rosneft and China’s state oil company China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, a Rosneft spokesman said Tuesday.

Shell has won a tender to carry out a feasibility study for an oil refinery project, which the Russo-Chinese joint venture is planning to build in China.

Total investment into the refinery, which has an annual capacity of 10 million tons, is estimated at $3-4 billion, the Interfax news agency said, citing an unnamed source at Rosneft. read more

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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is poised to reap significant benefits with the impending entry of AT&T and T-Systems into Cyberjaya and another company, EDS, expected to expand its presence there, following the signing of multi-billion ringgit outsourcing contracts between Royal Dutch Shell and the three global IT services providers.

Shell yesterday announced it had signed master service agreements with the three global IT and telecommunications suppliers to manage a significant part of its IT infrastructure and telecommunications services. The five-year deals with AT&T, T-Systems and EDS are worth US$1.6 billion (RM5.12 billion), €1 billion (RM4.9 billion) and US$1 billion, respectively. read more

By Alexander Kwiatkowski and Dulue Mbachu

April 1 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s biggest oil company, said two pipelines were on fire in Nigeria’s Port Harcourt area, including one which transports crude to the Bonny export terminal.

A fire was discovered on Shell’s Trans-Niger pipeline on March 30 and is still burning, Shell spokesman Rainer Winzenried said in a telephone interview from The Hague today. The pipeline transports oil from the Port Harcourt area to the terminal. read more

By Ed Crooks and Andrew Parker in London
Published: April 1 2008 03:00 | Last updated: April 1 2008 03:00

Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s biggest oil company, has signed one of the biggest outsourcing deals of recent years with the award of more than $4bn worth of contracts over five years to manage its IT and telephone systems.

Almost 3,000 workers worldwide, roughly 1,800 on staff and 1,100 contractors, will be transferred to service providers under the deal.

The outsourcing package is part of Shell’s drive to cut costs to offset rampant cost inflation in the oil and gas industry, caused by shortages of staff and equipment. read more

By Emiliya Mychasuk and Emiko Terazono
Published: April 1 2008 03:00 | Last updated: April 1 2008 03:00

Centrica chief Sam Laidlaw has recruited from outside for his new boss of the upstream operations, after the retirement of the well-known Jake Ulrich .

The new man, Mark Hanafin , becomes managing director of the Centrica Energy and Europe division, after being hired from Shell. His Shell background wasn’t so much on the upstream side – or the business of getting oil and gas out of the ground – but on the sales side. His 21-year career at Shell included a number of senior roles in marketing, trading and supply before his last job as head of Shell Energy North America, based in Houston, with responsibility for Europe. read more

*ROYAL DUTCH SHELL CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER PETER VOSER HAS BEEN A DIRECTOR SINCE APRIL 2005 OF THIS SCANDAL HIT BANK WHICH IS IN A DEEP FINANCIAL CRISIS: HE IS A MEMBER OF THE UBS BOARD FACING MOUNTING CRITICISM OVER FAILURE TO IDENTITY HUGE EXPOSURE AND ITS SUBSEQUENT MISHANDLING OF THE CRISIS

By Haig Simonian in Zurich
Published: April 1 2008 07:18 | Last updated: April 1 2008 08:15

Marcel Ospel on Tuesday bowed to intense pressure and said he would not seek re-election as chairman of UBS, as Europe’s biggest casualty of the subprime crisis announced a further massive loss and its second capital increase in two months. read more

By REUTERS
Published: April 1, 2008
Filed at 3:58 a.m. ET

ZURICH (Reuters) – UBS AG doubled its writedowns from the subprime crisis, parted company with its chairman and asked shareholders for more emergency capital on Tuesday in a second dramatic attempt to reverse its fortunes.

The Swiss bank wrote down an additional $19 billion on U.S. real estate and related assets, causing a net loss of 12 billion Swiss francs ($12.03 billion) in the first quarter, and said it would seek 15 billion francs through a rights issue of shares. read more

Peter Voser Shell/UBS director

Related article:

Financial Times: HSH lawsuit claims UBS ‘acted fraudulently’ (*Shell CFO Peter Voser is a director of UBS)

By Richard Blackden and Philip Aldrick
Last Updated: 8:19am BST 01/04/2008

UBS has unveiled plans to raise 15bn Sfr (£7.6bn) by selling new shares as the Swiss banking giant scrambles to repair a capital base savaged by the US sub-prime crisis.

The bank also announced that chairman Marcel Ospel will no longer stand for re-election to the board later this month and will be replaced by Peter Kurer, who currently serves as chief legal counsel.
 
Mr Ospel’s departure, and the rights issue, comes as the lender revealed a net loss of 12bn Sfr for the first quarter after taking a write-down of 19bn Sfr on its sub-prime related investments. read more

April 1, 2008
Patrick Hosking, Banking and Finance Editor

UBS chairman Marcel Ospel fell on his sword this morning as the Swiss banking giant announced a humiliating SwFr15 billion (£7.57 billion) rights issue to shore up its crumbling balance sheet.

The bank revealed that it had lost a further $19 billion (£9.6 billion) in US real estate and related structured credit positions, bringing the total damage from the US subprime implosion to around $37 billion.

The fresh injection of capital is fully underwritten by J P Morgan, Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs and follows a SwFr13 billion capital injection only four months ago from the Singaporean Government fund GIC and a mystery Middle East investor. read more

USA 2008: The Great Depression

Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive – a sure sign the world’s richest country faces economic crisis

By David Usborne in New York
Tuesday, 1 April 2008

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families. read more

Nelson Chukwudi • Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008

Two separate pipeline fires have been reported at two strategic pipelines belonging to Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), and located at the K-Dere section of Bomu-Bonny Trans Niger Pipeline in the Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State.

The fire on the Shell’s Bomu – Bonny Trans Niger Pipeline was discovered last Sunday during an over-fly by the oil giant’s helicopter on surveillance mission in the area. read more

April 1, 2008; Page B6

AT&T Inc. said it won a $1.6 billion telecommunications-services contract from Royal Dutch Shell PLC. The five-year deal calls for AT&T to provide, manage and maintain Shell’s world-wide communications system. AT&T said it is one of the largest commercial orders it has signed and is the biggest with a company outside the U.S. The services AT&T will deliver include wide- and local-area networks, voice services, managed-security solutions and mobility services. The network services will be provided to Shell and its units in more than 100 countries. read more