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American NBC media executive Jeff Shell has been denied entry into Russia, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Shell arrived in the country on a business trip but was detained by officers at the airport for several hours. He was then escorted onto a flight to Amsterdam after being forced to sign a document stating he was barred from entering Russia. As well as heading NBC Universal's motion picture unit, Shell also serves as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an American governmental agency which supervises the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe media outlets. Shell told...

Royal Dutch Shell will build the multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant it proposed more than four years ago on the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County. The decision announced early Tuesday ends years of anticipation and debate that swirled as Shell prepared the massive site in Potter and Center while a global collapse in oil and natural gas prices prompted the company to lay off thousands and halt other projects. “Shell Chemicals has recently announced final investment decisions to expand alpha olefins production at our Geismar site in Louisiana and, with our partner CNOOC in China, to add a world-scale...

Shell has said it has begun work to repair a fault in a flowline that has resulted in around 2,000 barrels worth of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. More than 88,000 gallons of oily-water mixture has been released from the Glider Field, a group of four underwater oil wells located around 97 miles south of Port Fourchon in Louisiana. The company said it suspects a line connecting these wells to a Shell platform leaked oil on Thursday, creating a 13 mile-wide slick on the surface of the water. Shell said the oil is not expected to reach the shoreline and...

Shell has evacuated nearly 100 essential oil personnel from a major production facility in the Niger Delta, following a series of attacks from a newly formed militant group that has vowed to renew the fight abandoned after a 2009 amnesty deal. Some 98 Shell personnel were airlifted from the Shell-operated Eja Oml 79 oil production facility in the Niger Delta over the weekend, bringing into question the facility’s 90,000 barrel-per-day production capacity. The facility is run by Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development Corporation). The evacuations come after militants of the Niger Delta Avengers attacked an offline oil platform...

Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Aramco appear to be getting a divorce, breaking up their joint venture in U.S.-based refining assets. The two companies joined together to create Motiva Enterprises LLC in 1998, a 50-50 joint venture that operated three refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. But Shell and Saudi Aramco have seen their interests head in different directions. "It is now time for the partners to pursue their independent downstream goals," said Abdulrahman Al-Wuhaib, a senior vice president of Saudi Aramco’s downstream unit. Reuters reported that the relationship started to fray after Motiva announced a $10 billion expansion of...

It has been a brutal few weeks for Royal Dutch Shell. On October 27, the Anglo-Dutch oil major announced that it was pulling the plug on its Carmon Creek oil sands project in Alberta, Canada. The project was expected to yield 80,000 barrels per day in oil sands production, which was originally greenlighted in 2013. However, the markets have turned against Shell. In March, the company said that it would alter the design of the project to “take advantage of the market downturn to optimize design and retender certain contracts.” The logic was that low oil prices are forcing cost...

Citing "low industry interest," the Interior Department announced a freeze Friday on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska until at least 2017.

TEHRAN - Iran has left the development of two oilfields to the energy giant British Petroleum (BP), an informed source told the Tasnim News Agency on the condition of anonymity. The announcement is a follow-up to the September meeting between Iranian Oil Ministry officials and BP top managers, where the Iranian side headed by Amir Hossein Zamani Nia, the deputy oil minister for international affairs and trade, agreed to transfer the development of two oilfields to BP based on the new model of Iranian oil contracts, known as Integrated Petroleum Contract (IPC), which is due to be unveiled soon. ---snip---...

At the beginning of this week, oil major Shell announced that it will indefinitely postpone (read: completely abandon) its Arctic drilling operations in the Chukchi Sea offshore Alaska. The company stated: "Shell will now cease further exploration activity in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future. This decision reflects both the Burger J well result, the high costs associated with the project and the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska." This retreat will result in Shell losing its $7 billion investment, a bitter pill to swallow for the oil major. While Shell and many others have given up...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Royal Dutch Shell's dry hole in the Chukchi Sea may be disappointing to shareholders, but it's potentially devastating to Alaska. The company's decision to end oil exploration in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future means the state must find another source to fill the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline and solve its economic woes, Gov. Bill Walker said.

Royal Dutch Shell will cease exploration in Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast following disappointing results from an exploratory well backed by billions in investment and years of work. The announcement was a huge blow to Shell, which was counting on offshore drilling in Alaska to help it drive future revenue. Environmentalists, however, had tried repeatedly to block the project, and welcome the news.Shell found indications of the oil and gas in the well in the Chukchi Sea about 80 miles off Alaska’s northwest coast, the company said Monday in a release from The Hague, Netherlands. However, the petroleum was not...

**SNIP** The Obama administration's green light for the Anglo-Dutch oil giant angered environmental groups which have decried the "hypocrisy" of the president, who in recent months has stressed the need for aggressive actions against climate change. **SNIP** "I know there are Americans who are concerned about oil companies drilling in environmentally sensitive waters," Obama said in his weekly address, noting that the drilling leases had been purchased before he took office. "I share people's concerns about offshore drilling," he added. "I remember the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico all too well. That's precisely why my administration has worked...

HOUSTON -- A Texas oilman who's accused of defrauding the Nigerian government by illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Kase Lawal of Houston is at least the fourth person accused or convicted of criminal wrongdoing to help finance Clinton's political ambitions since 2000 and the second in her quest for the White House. The list also includes Chinese and Pakistani fugitives and a former Miami lawyer, Peter Paul, who was convicted of defrauding Cuba. There's no indication that Clinton's campaign was aware of Lawal's legal problems when it...

The newly released financial files on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's growing fortune omit a company with no apparent employees or assets that the former president has legally used to provide consulting and other services, but which demonstrates the complexity of the family's finances. Because the company, WJC, LLC, has no financial assets, Hillary Clinton's campaign was not obligated to report its existence in her recent financial disclosure report, officials with Bill Clinton's private office and the Clinton campaign said. They were responding to questions by The Associated Press, which reviewed corporate documents. The officials, who spoke on condition of...

Hundreds of people in kayaks and small boats have staged a protest in the north-western US port city of Seattle against oil drilling in the Arctic by the Shell energy giant. Paddle in Seattle was held by activists who said the firm's drilling would damage the environment. It comes after the first of Shell's two massive oil rigs arrived at the port. The firm wants to move them in the coming months to explore for oil off Alaska's northern coast. Earlier this week, Shell won conditional approval from the US Department of Interior for oil exploration in the Arctic. The...

The arrival in Seattle Thursday of an oil rig Royal Dutch Shell is outfitting for oil exploration in the remote Arctic Ocean marks a pivotal moment for an environmental movement increasingly mobilized around climate change. Activists paddling out in kayaks to meet the rig off Seattle's picturesque waterfront said it's their moment to stand against opening a new frontier of fossil fuel exploration. "Unless people get out there and put themselves on the front lines and say enough is enough, than nothing will ever change," said Jordan Van Voast, 55, an acupuncturist who was going out on the water to...

The Obama administration gave conditional approval on Monday for Shell Gulf of Mexico, Inc. to start drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean this summer. The approval is a major victory for Shell and the rest of the petroleum industry, which has sought for years to drill in the remote waters of the Chukchi seas, which are believed to hold vast reserves of oil and gas. “We have taken a thoughtful approach to carefully considering potential exploration in the Chukchi Sea, recognizing the significant environmental, social and ecological resources in the region and establishing high standards for the...

Shell’s ambitious plans to finally return to the Arctic face yet another hurdle, one that could delay drilling once again. Shell is using the port of Seattle as its base for some of its vessels that it will use in the Arctic. Seattle has been a launching point for Shell in the past (and has hosted Alaskan drilling equipment for decades), but a new greener municipal government is taking a harder look at Shell’s operations. Spurred on by Shell’s error-ridden 2012 campaign in the Arctic that culminated in the grounding of the Kulluk, environmental groups have mustered up some political...

How can Shell possibly finance the purchase of BG? Royal Dutch Shell is set to report its first quarter earnings, and by all accounts, it will be a doozy. Analysts predict a 60 percent decline in earnings from a year earlier, including a massive 7 percent fall in production. But the price tag for BG will be $70 billion, a colossal sum in a period of low oil prices. Shell has already said that it would undertake a major divestment campaign to rid itself of assets it does not see as integral to its future. Purchasing BG is a sign...

The latest example is Royal Dutch Shell's bid for BG Group, a British firm with a stockpile of prized oil fields off the coast of Brazil, and lucrative natural gas holdings in Australia. The companies announced the £47 billion ($70 billion) deal early Wednesday. It's the biggest in the sector since Exxon bought Mobil in 1998, according to Dealogic. Shell will pay a 50% premium to BG's closing share price of £9.10 ($13.56) on Tuesday. If completed, the purchase will add 25% to Shell's oil and gas reserves and 20% to production. Shell also expects "synergies" of around $2.5 billion,...