Free Republic

DALLAS -- Royal Dutch Shell and Dallas-based TXU Corporation agreed to jointly develop a wind-powered electricity generation project in the Texas High Plains on Friday. The proposed 3,000-megawatt project would be situated in Briscoe County, southeast of Amarillo. One megawatt of electricity is enough to light 1,000 homes. The deal between Shell Wind Energy and TXU subsidiary Luminant also commits both sides to work together on other renewable energy projects in Texas. Both companies said they'll also research whether compressed air can be stored and used to drive the wind-driven turbines at times of low winds or peak demand.

It has become almost a regular stop for San Francisco tourists. Once they've seen the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid, they can drive down Harrison Street to see the most amazing sight of all. Regular gas for $4 a gallon. Actually, it is higher than that. At Bob Oyster's Shell station at Sixth and Harrison, regular is $4.33 a gallon, plus is $4.43, and "V-Power'' is $4.53. Motorists can be seen rolling their eyes as they drive by. Just another example of a greedy station owner, sticking his customers for all they are worth? Not really. There's a...

BRUSSELS -- In a legal milestone, American trial lawyers have reaped their first big payday in Europe: $47 million in fees from settling a securities-fraud case with Royal Dutch Shell PLC, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Europe's largest oil company by market capitalization said Wednesday it would pay $352.6 million to settle claims brought in the U.S. by European shareholders, who accused Shell of defrauding them by overstating its reserves. The Netherlands-based oil giant also agreed to pay attorneys' fees to three American law firms that represented the European investors, the paper reported. The agreement marks the first time...

What You Can Do about Iran March 23, 2007 FrontPageMagazine.com Kenneth R. Timmerman This week brought unusual news from Russia, which until now has been a major supplier of Iran’s nuclear programs. The Russians said they were pulling engineers and technicians out of Busheir, the Persian Gulf site where since 1995 they have been building a nuclear power plant for Iran. They cited as pretext Iran’s failure to make timely payments on the $800 million contract. Should this turn out to be more than just a tactical maneuver, Russia’s pullback from Iran signals a real success for U.S. diplomacy. But...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan, Feb. 22, 2007 – Long hours of stressful work faced by deployed troops, combined with little privacy and not much free time, can end up taking a mental and emotional toll. Fortunately, soldiers serving in every Brigade Combat Team in the Army will now have a greater opportunity to visit a behavioral health clinic and speak to a trained specialist. Behavioral health used to be a division-level function, but the Army’s adoption of a modular brigade combat team structure changed that, explained Spc. Alex Townsend, a behavioral health specialist assigned to the 82nd Airborne...

Shell defies US pressure and signs £5bn Iranian gas deal Terry Macalister Monday January 29, 2007 Guardian Unlimited (UK) Shell has signed an important deal to help Iran develop a major gas field, ignoring growing pressure from George Bush to isolate the country for being part of what he alleges is an "axis of evil". The Anglo-Dutch group, which is struggling to bring more momentum to its business after being forced to hand over vital Russian reserves at Sakhalin island to the Kremlin, confirmed it had finally reached agreement on various aspects of its "Persian LNG" - liquefied natural gas...

Gale Norton is back providing oversight of energy development issues on public lands in the American West, this time as a key legal advisor for a major global oil company. Months after she resigned her cabinet post as President Bush's Interior Secretary—and then seemed to disappear from public view—the Coloradan apparently has accepted an offer to serve as counsel for Royal Dutch Shell PLC. Shell, one of the world's largest producers of oil, was also one of the companies that Norton's Interior Department routinely engaged on matters of drilling in sensitive ecological settings. According to Dow Jones Market Watch, which...

Gazprom grabs Sakhalin gas stake State-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom has wrested control of a massive oil and gas field from Anglo-Dutch rival Shell.Gazprom will pay $7.5bn (£3.8bn) for a 50%-plus-one-share stake in the Sakhalin-2 project after Shell was accused of breaking environmental laws. The deal was signed by President Vladimir Putin and top executives from Royal Dutch Shell and Gazprom. Analysts said the deal was better than expected for Shell. Shell and Japanese companies Mitsui and Mitsubishi will see their stakes in the $22bn project on the Pacific island halved. Holdings cut Shell will now be left with...

/begin my excerpts A N. Korean Shell Lands on Chinese Village An unidentified shell landed on a field near a house On Oct. 1, a shell flew in and landed on a field next to senior citizen's hall at Qing-shi-zhen, Jian City, Jilin Province, China. People were startled, and reported to police. Later, experts from PLA Engineering Unit inspected the shell at the scene and concluded that it is a anti-personnel howitzer shell, and fired from a an artillery unit stationed at Manpo District, Jagang Province, N. Korea. They disassembled it and the further examination showed that it is indeed...

Abuja, Nigeria (AHN) - The Nigerian military has launched several raids against oil militants, a few days after they killed 17 soldiers in the Niger Delta. Militants say the army swept through an oil producing community of the region with crushing strength. A militant group dubbed the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said, "In light of this attack on a helpless community, we are at present considering reciprocal action against the military or oil installations in Rivers [State]." A local army spokesman, Sagir Musa, has denied the report saying, "There is no truth in the...

YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK -- Oleg Mitvol, the state official leading the charge against Shell's Sakhalin-2 venture, warned Thursday that he would seek to shut down work at the $20 billion project for purportedly causing $50 billion of damage to the environment. "The project must be stopped and all that's been done must be reworked," Mitvol, deputy head of the Natural Resources Ministry's environmental watchdog, told reporters after a daylong tour of sites that have borne the brunt of the project's environmental effects. "For every destroyed tree or damaged river, we want to bring a criminal case," Mitvol said. The Natural Resources Ministry...

Kremlin 'bullying' leaves western energy companies furious By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow (Filed: 23/09/2006) In the past few years, mention of Vladimir Putin at the dinner table of some western leaders could have brought on a case of indigestion. In the past week, though, the Russian president has been causing ulcers. Sakhalin Energy extracts oil and gas from one of the world's most inhospitable regions On Monday, Russia suspended an environmental permit for an oil and gas project led by Royal Dutch Shell on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific Ocean. The international community has watched with queasiness as democracy in...

When Shell started shelling out mega bucks to drill for oil off the coast of Sakhalin Island, Russia wasn't one of the global oil suppliers. Russia is now. It is just plain costing too much for Shell to get the oil out of the icy water in the sea of Oshkosh. So...Shell has teamed up with Russia's Giant Gazprom. Gazprom will get a share of whatever they find in the sea of Oshkosh, and Shell gets a 50% stake in a Gazprom field in western Siberia. The relationship with Gazprom is supposed to give Shell some political protection, but it...

<p>I think something at the Shell refinery just exploded. There was some kind of pressure wave that hit our house (here in Destrehan). I thought it was a strong gust of wind at first, but now it seems like there's an enourmous fire burning in that direction. I can hear a low roar when I go outside, and there's a orange glow in the sky in that direction.</p>

I am writing this letter in answer to article concerning high gas prices, in the May 3 edition of the Calvert Independent. In addressing the high gasoline prices, I am not surprised to see the slant, or “spin,” that the greedy oil companies are the blame for the high prices. It never fails to amaze me when liberal minds continually spout the talking points spewed forth daily by the media. Why are gasoline prices high? Who is to blame? First, we have the onerous fuel blend regulations of the Carol Browner EPA of 1997, creating nearly 30 fuel blends nationwide....

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria - Militants battling for a bigger cut of Nigeria's oil revenue exploded a car bomb inside a military base, ending weeks of relative calm with a blast that killed at least two people and sent a fireball into the night sky. The Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility for the blast late Wednesday at a barracks in the southern oil center of Port Harcourt. The group's attacks on oil installations in Nigeria, Africa's leading oil exporter, had already helped drive up world oil prices. This country is the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports....

Capital movements due to fears over a possible US-Iran war, financial speculation or market meltdown are driving crude prices upward. Milan (AsiaNews) – Capital movements on commodity exchanges, not low supply are pushing oil prices upward. Brent crude has reached US$ 74 a barrel because of lowered refinery use and a backup in crude inventories that has left many a super tanker waiting to unload. Oil storage has become a problem since facilities are full in the Persian Gulf, Europe, the Americas and even Asia. Even Israel, which built huge embargo-busting oil depots to allow the country to survive every...

Fascism is an ugly though greatly misunderstood word. Few realise that fascist economics involved the socialisation of the economy in practice though not in word. So-called capitalists kept the deeds to their property, as did everyone else, but only so long as they did as instructed by the state. In other words, fascism made a mockery of property rights. But another aspect of fascist thinking is that it sought to direct business from commercial to ‘social’ ends, as if they were different and incompatible. Unfortunately Shell and BP Amoco have apparently decided that green fascism is the “wave of the...

Thanksgiving marked the day that some analysts thought global oil production would have reached its peak, ushering in a new era of fuel shortages. These petro-pessimists were using the same formula as the one that accurately predicted the apex of U.S. oil production in 1970. Matthew Simmons, author of "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," is one of them. He thinks Saudi Arabia has pumped much of its usable reserves and will start to experience production declines. Even analysts who are more optimistic warn that chronically high prices and occasional supply crunches...

Chairman of the Shell companies in Iran, Yves Merer, said here Sunday the Anglo-Dutch oil giant would make an investment worth billions of dollars in the Islamic Republic's industry. Merer, who talked to Fars News Agency, added the demand for energy, including oil, would soar in the future but oil prices would keep fluctuating. He reiterated, The Shell will inject billions of dollars into Iran's industry if the country pays more heed to investment. The Shell Companies Group has allotted some 15 billion dollars for development of complicated oilfields across the world. The task is faced with two main problems...