BP’s £4.5billion North Sea Clair Ridge project, which is expected to keep the UK producing oil beyond 2050, has taken a giant leap forward. Three huge topside modules have been installed on the “quarters and utilities” (QU) platform following their long journey from a shipyard in South Korea. They were safely lifted onto pre-installed jackets by the Heerema Thialf deepwater construction vessel.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc executives have visited Tehran to discuss possible partnerships, the latest sign that the largest oil companies are serious about returning to Iran once a deal on the country’s nuclear program is done. The meeting with Iranian officials covered its outstanding debt to National Iranian Oil Co. and possible areas of business cooperation, the company said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday. Shell owed $2.16 billion as of the end of 2014 for oil it wasn’t able to pay Iran for because of sanctions, according to its annual report.
A number of business leaders will gather in Aberdeen today to discuss the challenges and importance of maintaining a healthy workforce in the current economic climate. A round table event is being held by RGU:Wellness, a unique occupational health service for workplace absence management, to address the increasing challenge of ensuring that employee health and wellbeing remains a strategic priority.
Russian gas company Gazprom may offer up to 49 percent in its Baltic LNG project to a strategic partner and the most likely candidates are Royal Dutch Shell or a consortium of Japanese firms, Russia's Kommersant newspaper said on Wednesday. The agreement may be signed this week during an economic forum in Russia's second city of St Petersburg, it reported, quoting sources in the gas industry.
U.S. regulators have given the green light for Royal Dutch Shell's proposed $70 billion acquisition of British rival BG Group, the first clearance for the biggest deal in the energy sector in over a decade. The two companies said on Tuesday the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had cleared the deal. The deal, which the companies aim to complete by early 2016, will require further regulatory clearances from all the countries BG operates in, including the European Union, China, Australia and Brazil.
Russian gas company Gazprom, a leading shareholder in Russia's sole liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, Sakhalin-2, hopes to be able to answer questions about the plant's expansion next year, deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said on Tuesday.
The US has issued a permit which allows Shell to resume its oil exploration off Alaska’s Arctic coast. The permit, which approves Shell’s ability to disturb marine mammals, was granted in the wake of a Greenpeace protest targeting the company’s Polar Pioneer drilling rig. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration signed off on a permit which allows noise from air guns, icebreaking, drilling and anchor handling. The move is in line with the Department of Interior’s earlier decision which approved Shell’s general plan for its oil exploration in the area.
Environmental campaign group Greenpeace says 13 of its activists have blocked Shell's Polar Pioneer drilling rig as it tries to leave Seattle for Arctic waters.
Oil major Shell is said to be considering whether to pull the plug on its last exploration well in Ukraine. The move is being considered as the project has been on hold for almost a year, due to the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukranian forces.
European oil majors are for the first time openly declaring interest in Iran in anticipation of a possible end to sanctions against the country over its nuclear program. Leaders of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc and Total SA all said Wednesday they were ready to return to the nation with the world’s second-largest natural-gas reserves and fourth-biggest oil cache, after similar comments by Italy’s Eni SpA last month. US oil companies, constrained by the history of American sanctions against Iran dating from the 1979 Islamic revolution, are more cautious in their statements on a return. The current curbs have prevented investment in Iran for a decade.
Shell’s decision to remove the topside of its Brent Delta platform in one has shaved off about a million hours of high-risk offshore work, a senior manager from the British-Dutch oil major said in Aberdeen yesterday. Shell said in February it would seek approval for the Pioneering Spirit, thought to be the largest ship ever built, to lift and remove the topside in one piece, shunning more traditional methods which involve cutting installations into smaller sections.
The camera pans up with a slight jerk, and lingers for a moment on the oddly familiar woman in the pink dress, splayed on the grass, holding herself up on her arms. Did she trip? What is it that she's trying to see? We follow her gaze to the two weathered farm houses and back, have a second or two to recall that this woman Andrew Wyeth painted back in 1948 was his neighbor, Anna Christina Olson. Next we're transported to William Bradford's depiction of Melville Bay, before skipping to the pastiche of Highway 138 in David Hockney's Pearblossom Highway. By the time we jump back seconds later, Christina's World has caught fire.
An appeal by oil major Shell against a ruling that a proposed oil-by-rail project at its Washington state refinery must undergo a full environmental review, has been denied. A judge made the ruling just two weeks after a crude train derailment caused a fire in North Dakota. Shell had appealed a ruling in February from a Skagit County Office of Land Use Hearings examiner that a plan to move 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil to is 145,000 barrels bpd Puget Sound refinery in Anacortes must be completely reviewed.
Growing global oil demand will create a daily shortfall equating to about 80 times the size of current North Sea output without more investment in production, Royal Dutch Shell boss Ben van Beurden has said. The gap between supply and demand could grow to 70million barrels per day by 2040, he said, adding: “That’s the equivalent of six times Saudi Arabia’s 2013 production and 80 times the size of today’s UK North Sea production.”
Hundreds of protesters in small boats and kayaks came together in Seattle to make a stand against oil giant Shell and its plans to resume Arctic oil exploration. The company, also plans to keep two of its drilling rigs in the city's port. The move has been met with dismay from a number of environmental groups, including Greenpeace, with a vow to disrupt the company's efforts to use the city as a base for drilling.
Oil major Shell said it would consider smaller additions to its business in North America. The company - which ruled out large acquisitions after its deal to buy BG Group - said while its cash reserves are more limited, it would consider smaller acquisitions. According to reports, Marvin Odum, director of Shell's Americas exploration and production business, said the company would look at other option including the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, the Utica in Appalachia and Western Canada.
A protester perched herself on a 15-foot tripod in a bid to block the entrance of a Shell fuel transfer station earlier this week in protest to the oil major’s planned Arctic drilling. The protest was staged on Seattle’s Harbor Island after the US Department of the Interior gave conditional approval to Shell for it to explore for oil in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska. The company has not drilled in the region since a mishap in 2012.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc won US approval to resume oil exploration off Alaska’s Arctic coast after regulators imposed safety conditions meant to avoid the mishaps that plagued the company three years ago. Environmental groups decried the decision. The Interior Department on Monday endorsed Shell’s plan to have two rigs drill up to six exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea, if it gets other permits needed, sets plans to control any leaks and keeps its ships at least 4 miles away from any walruses. Shell wants to resume work halted in 2012 when its main drilling rig ran aground and was lost. It also was fined for air pollution violations. “As we move forward, any offshore exploratory activities will continue to be subject to rigorous safety standards,” Abigail Ross Hopper, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said in a statement.
Deal making in the oil and gas sector is set to accelerate as higher oil prices and an improved outlook for the sector boost investor appetite, a broker has predicted. Royal Dutch Shell's £46billion bid for smaller rival BG Group last month highlighted the shift in sentiment in the sector after mergers and acquisitions (M&A) slumped in the first quarter of 2015 to a 20-year low, a report by Morgan Stanley revealed. The research found that there were only 30 deals completed at a value of £2.6billion in the quarter, most of them in North America.
Northern Petroleum has completed its Italian farm-out to oil major Shell. The company said Italian regulatory authorities had approved the transfer of 80% of the permit interest to Shell, which has paid it $850,000 as part of the deal. The work programme has started with the re-processing of existing seismic data to detrmine whether there is a requirement for further seismic acquisition to help delineate a proposed target for an exploration well.
The chief executive of BG Group said he welcomed the takeover bid by oil major Shell with "mixed emotions". The deal, was announced just months after former Statoil boss Helge Lund, took up his new role. Lund said there was still work to be done before the deal would be finalised.
Oil major Shell could face delays in its bid to return to Arctic drilling after a ruling in Seattle that the city's port must apply for a permit for the company to use it as a hub for its drilling rigs. The region has previously been a hub for equipment used in energy drilling in Alaska and could be used as a space as Shell makes its first stride back into the Arctic in three years. The company has been planning to return to Arctic oil and gas exploration since 2012, however it is still waiting for the US Interior Department to issue a full blessing.
Oil giant Shell is said to be pushing ahead with plans to explore for oil in the Arctic Ocean near Alaska despite strong opposition from environmental groups. The company is said to be preparing vessels to begin a two-year programme to explore two to three wells in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska. Shell's chief financial officer Simon Henry said work was "currently on track".
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the oil producer buying BG Group Plc for $70 billion, reported first-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates as refining and trading earnings countered part of the drop in crude prices. Profit adjusted for one-time items and inventory changes fell 56 percent to $3.2 billion from a year earlier, beating the $2.5 billion average estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Spending for this year will be cut by about $2 billion to $33 billion or less, The Hague-based Shell said Thursday in a statement. Shell is cutting investment after oil’s slump over the past year forced producers to defer projects to strengthen their balance sheets. Trading and refining operations have cushioned the bear market for Shell and other European oil majors, including BP Plc, Total SA and Statoil ASA, which all reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings this week.
This week's most read story on Energy Voice was Loren Steffy's discussion on the news that Shell is to buy BG Group for £47million. In his editorial he reflects on what could have been should Shell have decided to snap up BP instead. The news of the sale initially began circulating earlier this month.