Free Republic

The global-warming debate is shifting from science to economics. For years, the fight over the Earth's rising temperature has been mostly over what's causing it: fossil-fuel emissions or natural factors beyond man's control. Now, some of the country's biggest industrial companies are acknowledging that fossil fuels are a major culprit whose emissions should be cut significantly over time. A growing number of these companies are pushing for a mandatory emissions limit, or "cap." Some see a lucrative new market in clean-energy technologies. Many figure a regulation is politically inevitable and they want to be in the room when it's negotiated,...

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

The trial of Anglo-Dutch super major, Shell, over its alleged complicity in the death of Mr. Ken Saro-Wiwa, leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), will begin today. Lawyers from the company will today represent the oil major in a New York court as it faces charges that it colluded in human rights abuses and torture in the Niger Delta which led to the hanging in 1995 of Ogoni campaigner and renowned poet, Saro-Wiwa. The troubled oil giant had refused to comment on the court case ahead of the hearings, but the continued flaring of...

The world's largest natural gas company, Russia's Gazprom, has after years of attempts finally gotten a foothold in the U.S., the world's biggest gas market. A supply agreement, part of a multipart contract reached with Royal Dutch Shell, was announced late Wednesday. The contract, signed in Moscow by Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and his Shell counterpart Jeroen Van der Veer, guarantees the two companies will deliver 1 million tons of Russian liquefied natural gas annually until 2028. Under the arrangement, Gazprom gets access to a Shell terminal in Baja California, Mexico, that will turn Russian liquefied gas into gas that...

Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation. Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world's largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generat­ion of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment. The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of...

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's largest oil company, is examining possible oilfield projects in Iraq as the nation prepares to issue exploration permits next year, Chief Executive Officer Jeroen van der Veer said today. Shell may bid for Iraqi fields in the first half of 2009, van der Veer told reporters at a conference in London. Iraq expects to award contracts by June in its first oil-licensing round since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Oil Minister Hussain al- Shahristani said last month. "They've just issued the rules on how to bid,'' van der Veer said. "It's quite complicated; we will...

Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell says Shell Oil Products U.S. has agreed to take steps to reduce cigarette sales to minors at 13,000 gas stations, including 76 in Vermont.

Click here for video. This terrifying slow motion video shows the destructive power of a tank canister shot, blazing across an entire battlefield. It's so spectacularly crystal-clear that you can easily understand why it is one of the most feared weapons by infantry soldiers. The canister shot is not new, however. This simple and incredibly effective technology has been wreaking havoc in ground fronts since the Napoleonic Wars. Designed to create a destructive cloud to do major damage on a large group of soft bodies, the canister shot has played a central role in ground battles since the 18th century....

Nigeria: The main armed group claims to have destroyed a Shell pipeline LAGOS - The main armed group in southern Nigeria, Mend said they had destroyed Thursday evening a "significant pipeline" and belonging to Anglo-Dutch company Shell. At 17:30 GMT, "fighters of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have destroyed with powerful explosives, a major oil pipeline belonging to Shell Development Company," in Rivers State in southern Nigeria's oil, said a press release the group.

The Perdido spar will bring production in from three fields—Great White, Silvertip and Tobago—with a production design of 130,000 boe/day. The Shell-operated Perdido Regional Development Spar has arrived in the ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and is currently being secured to the seafloor in 7,816 ft (2,382 m) of water, a process that will take about one month. Perdido will be the deepest oil development in the world, the deepest drilling and production platform in the world and have the deepest subsea well in the world to date. Other partners in the joint venture are BP...

The consequences for federal restrictions on oil and gas exploration go beyond just higher gas prices, interfering with the basic free-market principle of allowing enterprise to meet demand by providing a supply, according to former Shell Oil CEO John Hofmeister. Hofmeister, who is the founder and CEO of the recently-formed advocacy group Citizens for Affordable Energy, appeared on CNBC’s July 15 “Squawk Box.” He criticized government for 30 years of inaction. “I think if you look at it in real time – looking at it in this month, next month, the following month, the answer is no – it’s not...

Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) is in the final stages of striking a production sharing agreement with the Jordanian government to explore oil from the country's vast oil shale, a senior official at the state-run Natural Resources Authority said Thursday. "We are about to complete drafting a production sharing agreement with Shell and expected to sign the agreement initially in September this year," NRA's assistant director-general for mining and petroleum, Hisham al-Rabi, told Dow Jones Newswires. The PSA needs the approval of the Jordanian government and parliament, he said. Shell is expected to invest more than $20 billion in the...

In its quest to remove oil from western Colorado's shale, Royal Dutch Shell has been buying land and water rights in anticipation of what is likely to be a thirsty new industry. Some officials worry that the demands of the oil-shale industry could drain every drop of the region's remaining water. "On the upper end, we're looking at potentially several hundred thousand acre-feet of water — more than people think is commonly available to develop in the Colorado River," said Dan Birch, deputy general manager for the Colorado River Water Conservation District. Shell and other energy companies have amassed tens...

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil major Royal Dutch Shell has pulled out of a planned gas project in Iran, after coming under pressure not to participate from U.S. lawmakers who were concerned about Iran's nuclear programme. A spokeswoman said on Saturday that the world's second-largest non government-controlled oil company by market capitalisation was pulling out of Phase 13 of the giant South Pars gas field but may yet join later stages of the field's development. Shell, Spain's Repsol and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding in January 2002 to develop Phase 13 in a project to...

John Hofmeister, the Houston-based president of Shell Oil's U.S. operations, expressed doubt about the validity of peak oil theory in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box show. "The peak oil theory has really swamped the world. God bless Matt Simmons," Hofmeister told CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla, according to a transcript provided to WND by CNBC. "His assumptions are correct based on his hypotheses, but his hypotheses are too narrow." Matt Simmons, a Houston-based investment banker who specializes in the energy industry, is widely known for his 2005 book, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World...

Russian police have raided the Moscow offices of the oil giant BP and its joint venture TNK-BP. The searches have renewed fears that the Russian government wants greater control of foreign-owned energy assets. There is market speculation that the Kremlin would like the state-owned gas firm Gazprom to buy the stakes of BP's Russian partners in TNK-BP. Last year, TNK-BP was forced to sell its stake in the Kovykta gas field at a discount price to Gazprom. In 2006, Shell was forced to cede control of its Sakhalin gas field to Gazprom. "We will co-operate with the authorities but we...

Royal Dutch Shell has been forced onto the defensive after its announcement of record profits sparked calls for a windfall tax and complaints from motorists about soaring pump prices. While investors fretted about whether the $27.6bn (£13.9bn) profits based on the current cost of supply masked deep problems facing the world's second largest non-government oil company, Shell received a barrage of complaints that its earnings were "obscene". Understatement: Shell's chief executive,Jeroen van der Veer, said the figures were "satisfactory The annual profits, which were up 9pc, are a record for a European listed company and were driven by last year's...

(IsraelNN.com) MK Reuven "Ruby" Rivlin wrote Wednesday in a column at Nrg that Israel needed to bomb Gaza civilians in response to the ongoing "Kassam" fire coming from Gaza. Rivlin thinks Israel should transfer a certain amount of money to the PA so that it can build shelters on the streets of Gaza. At the same time it will build improvised rockets that will resemble the fire power of the PA "Kassam" and "Grad" missiles. Israel will announce that from now on, every time the sirens sound in Sderot, Ashkelon and the Gaza perimeter, identical rockets will fall on the...

Two decades ago, when Dutch oil giant Shell was poking holes in the ice-clogged Arctic Ocean, Rick Fox was a young buck managing the company's drilling rigs. Some of the holes hit oil, and Fox and the other oil men felt pretty good about what they found. But none of the discoveries was developed -- the price of oil was too low and the finds too remote -- and Shell abandoned Alaska's Arctic. Now Fox, 55, and Shell are mounting an aggressive return to the polar ocean, staking hundreds of millions of dollars to lease vast offshore acreage, staff an...

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group is gearing up to tackle one of the biggest and costliest projects in oilpatch and Canadian construction history. The company announced Monday that it has filed a regulatory application to build a new upgrader east of Edmonton to serve its oilsands expansion projects in northern Alberta and that the cost could run as high as $27 billion. The Scotford Upgrader 2 will have a total capacity of up to 400,000 barrels per day and will be built in four phases, taking as long as two decades to complete. It will be located adjacent to Shell's existing...