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Google avoided about $2 billion in global income taxes last year by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into a Bermuda shell company, Bloomberg reported. That level is almost double the total from three years ago, Bloomberg said, citing a Nov. 21 regulatory filing by a Google subsidiary in the Netherlands. And it allowed Google to cut its overall tax rate almost in half. Google's action -- moving about 80 percent of its total pretax profit from 2011 to tax-free Bermuda -- isn't illegal. On the contrary, many companies have taken similar steps in recent years to avoid paying steep taxes....

The Israeli Navy is prepared to neutralize threats targeting Israel's Tamar natural gas rig, the IDF Website reported Saturday. The Navy will protect the reception facility – a vital infrastructural facility to pump gas from the rig – which is currently being built. The IDF's defensive model has been tested in three scenarios: routine, escalation, and emergency. "The wisdom in the development of this kind of model is that it provides an excellent response for all three scenarios," senior naval commander Rear Adm. Yaron Levi recently explained at a conference on protecting Israel's economic waters held at the Institute for...

Oil giant BP has agreed to pay the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history, totaling billions of dollars, for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a person familiar with the deal said Thursday. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the deal, also said two BP PLC employees face manslaughter charges over the death of 11 people in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that triggered the massive spill. The person said BP will plead guilty to obstruction for lying to Congress about...

TAHITI PLATFORM, Gulf of Mexico – Deep-water drillers are pushing the boundaries of modern technology to help revive the Gulf of Mexico as one of the world’s most prolific oil producers. In offshore frontiers hit by the 2010 oil spill and drilling moratorium, pioneers are adapting water injection, an old technique for boosting oil recovery, to challenging new environments in the deepest drilling regions of the Gulf. By flushing massive loads of high-pressure water through miles of ocean and earth, they’re stimulating the deepest reservoirs and bringing up more oil. The technique has been used for decades on land to...

Power East Coast via wind? Doable with 144,000 offshore turbines, study saysBy Miguel Llanos, NBC News 10 hours ago Placing wind turbines off the East Coast could meet the entire demand for electricity from Florida to Maine, according to engineering experts at Stanford University. It would require 144,000 offshore turbines standing 270 feet tall — not one of which exists since proposals have stalled due to controversy and costs. But the analysis shows it's doable and where the best locations are, says study co-author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering. The team is not advocating for...

Offshore operators continued to redeploy workers and restart oil and gas production after evacuating personnel and halting Gulf of Mexico operations due to Hurricane Isaac. Lafayette, La.-based Stone Energy reported Tuesday that its major Gulf of Mexico facilities have been safely remanned, with damage from Hurricane Isaac to its facilities appearing to be minor. The company began shutting in production and evacuating workers on Aug. 26; by Aug. 28, virtually all of its Gulf production had been shut in, Stone said in a statement Tuesday. Stone's Gulf facilities were producing 35,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) prior to...

Energy companies have reoccupied nearly 400 of the production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico that were abandoned in advance of Hurricane Isaac, a federal agency said Saturday, though offshore oil production still remains almost entirely shut down. Oil and gas workers began retaking the offshore sites Friday and federal officials said that 377 of the 596 productions platforms have some staffing on them, up from just 97. Yet officials estimate that 94 percent of oil production, and about 65 percent of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, remains shut in in the aftermath of the hurricane. It...

With the threat posed by Hurricane Isaac to Gulf of Mexico offshore facilities past, some Gulf of Mexico operators were either redeploying or looking to return workers to offshore facilities on Thursday. Chevron Corp. said Thursday it started deploying personnel to onshore and offshore facilities "where it is safe to do so" to assess Hurricane Isaac's impact on its facilities. The company said it would not comment on any possible impact to its operations. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. expects to begin restaffing its central Gulf facilities - Gunnison, Marco Polo and Constitution - on Friday, the company said in a statement...

Seventy-eight percent of U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil production and almost half of U.S. Gulf natural gas production has been shut in as Tropical Storm Isaac is set to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. reported Tuesday that production continues at its operated Boomvang and Nansen tension leg spars in the western Gulf, but the company evacuated Monday all non-essential workers from these platforms as precaution. The company in total has evacuated approximately 195 workers from its Gulf of Mexico operations. Anadarko has evacuated all workers from and shut in production...

Prices for crude oil and gasoline rose today as the advance of Tropical Storm Isaac caused companies to shutter offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico and threatened Gulf Coast refineries. Crude futures for October delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose $1.03 a barrel to $97.18, the biggest increase in a week. Forecasters are predicting Isaac will pick up strength, becoming a hurricane and making landfall early Wednesday between New Orleans and the Florida Panhandle. About 24 percent of U.S. oil production and more than 8 percent of natural gas production has been affected by the storm, as...

Energy companies intensified their efforts to evacuate workers from the Gulf of Mexico, as companies continued shutting down production. The trend is likely to continue Monday with refinery operations also being suspended. BP said Sunday it had suspended production at all of its operated production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, as it and other energy companies scramble to get ready for Tropical Storm Isaac to blast into the Gulf. The storm was moving across the Florida Keys and toward the Gulf Sunday afternoon, and several of the leading storm-tracking models show a westward shift, with a growing consensus that...

Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, will take over a rig for an exploration project off Cuba's west coast "in the upcoming days" after a Malaysian-Russian consortium was unable to make a commercial discovery using the rig at a separate site, a statement in Cuban state newspaper Granma said Monday. The Venezuelan company will receive control of the Scarabeo 9 platform to begin exploration drilling in deep waters off Cuba's coast with the Gulf of Mexico, the state publication said. ... Venezuela sends Cuba around 100,000 barrels of oil a day in exchange for around 30,000...

il industry representatives and regulators are four days into a first-of-its-kind test of how they would respond to a runaway offshore well in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. The drill, which began Tuesday morning, tests the Marine Well Containment Company’s equipment for capping blown-out underwater wells and containing the hydrocarbons gushing from them. The exercise represents the first time the equipment and personnel responsible for deploying it have been put through a real-life emergency scenario with regulators looking on. To recreate emergency conditions, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement effectively told Shell Oil Co., that there...

During the time that President Obama has been in office, he has earned some $2,711,340 from foreign sources. That’s 30.1 percent of Obama’s total income during that time. During that period, Obama forked over $87,429 to foreign countries. Most of that cash comes from book sales. That’s an inordinately large amount of money coming from overseas – far more than the typical American, certainly. And the question becomes whether President Obama is outsourcing his book sales. After all, why not pay American tax rates on that income? Why not ship from the United States, rather than printing abroad?

Disclosure forms reveal that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, previously held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India. This revelation comes mere days after the Democratic chair attacked presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for holding money in Swiss bank accounts in the past. "Americans need to ask themselves, why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account and secretive investments like that?" the DNC chair, a chief surrogate for President Obama's reelection team, said on Fox News Sunday two days ago. "Just...

...The line of attack, dismissed by the Romney campaign as an "unfounded character assault," follows new reports that raise questions about Romney's personal wealth, which could exceed $250 million. President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is expected to push the strategy throughout the coming week, underscoring their desire to portray Romney as disconnected from the middle-class voters he needs to win the presidency... Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/08/democrats-want-romney-to-explain-offshore-accounts/#ixzz204a1lm88

Offshore oil and natural gas operators in the Gulf of Mexico kept close watch on Tropical Storm Debby Sunday as they continued evacauting people from facilities and shutting down production. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said as of 11:30 am Sunday based on operators reports that about 22.7 percent of the current daily oil production in the Gulf of Mexico was shut-in. It also estimated that about 22.9 percent of the current daily natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico had been shut-in. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Gulf of Mexico oil production accounts...

An Israel energy company announced Sunday it has discovered an off-shore energy field that may even surpass previous finds in terms of the possibilities of developing commercial grade oil. Israel Opportunity Energy Resources LP announced that its Pelagic licenses indicate 6.7 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas and 1.4 billion barrels of oil. By comparison, the previously announced Tamar and Leviathan off-shore fields contain an estimated 9 and 17 TCF of natural gas. The amount of commercial oil, if any, has not been finalized, but estimates of possible oil in the Leviathan field have been downsized to 600 million barrels....

The offshore drilling industry is struggling to find younger labor as its workforce ages. Companies are finding that a lack of skilled job candidates isn't their only problem. Many applicants are washing out due to drug use. Ask Hercules Offshore CEO John Rynd why it’s so hard to find skilled workers for offshore drilling and he’ll talk about hefty competition from shore-based employers. There’s a big demand for workers on land-based wells, thanks to the hydraulic fracturing revolution. The rise of auto manufacturing along the Gulf Coast means workers that traditionally formed part of the offshore labor pool are now...

Spanish company Repsol has said it is pulling out of Cuba after failing in a recent attempt to find oil off the island. Chairman Antonio Brufau told journalists and investors that Repsol "won't do another" well in Cuba. On 18 May Repsol announced an exploratory well it had drilled north of the Cuban coast had come up dry. Cuba's communist government is relying on potentially huge oil and gas reserves to revive the economy. Repsol's unsuccessful attempt, some 50km (31 miles) off the island, cost the company more than $100m (£155m). The decision to stop operations in Cuba was announced...