Free Republic

Mexican state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos will take control of the Deer Park refinery in Houston, Texas on Jan. 20, three sources with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday. Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) in May agreed to sell its majority stake in the Deer Park refinery, which can process up to 340,000 barrels per day (bpd), to Pemex (PEMX.UL), its long-time partner in the plant, for about $596 million.

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...

A decision this week by Shell to shutter its oil shale operation in Colorado to pursue other ventures in Jordan and Canada highlights the difficulties faced by developers in the state as they wrestle with uncertain rules under the Obama administration. Royal Dutch Shell was one of the most successful companies in the state in its efforts to develop a cost-efficient technique to extract oil from shale rock. But the final act of Ken Salazar as Interior secretary earlier this year to rewrite industry rules left companies in limbo with undeterminable royalty rates, and blocked them from obtaining leases for...

Shell Sees No 'Quick Recovery' As Energy Company Cuts 5,000 JobsRoyal Dutch Shell is “not expecting a quick recovery” after shedding 5,000 jobs in a global restructuring and seeing profits drop 73pc on lower oil and gas prices. By Rowena Mason Published: 7:59AM GMT 29 Oct 2009 Europe’s biggest energy company made $2.99bn in profits on a cost of supplies basis – a measure that strips out the effect of changing inventories – slightly beating analyst expectations. Revenue fell 43pc to $76bn. Peter Voser, the chief executive who took over in July, said 5pc of the oil giant’s staff would...