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Armed youths blew up a Nigerian crude oil pipeline operated by U.S. major Chevron, a militant group said on Saturday, cutting more output from the world's eighth largest oil exporter. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said it was contacted by youths claiming responsibility for Thursday's attack on Chevron's Abiteye-Olero crude pipeline. The military said about 120,000 barrels per day of crude oil production was shut by the sabotage. "For production to have stopped, this shows the damage was serious," said the government's Army Brigadier-General Wuyep Rintip, head of the Joint Task Force in the western...

Petrostate By Marshall Goldman (Oxford, 244 pages, $27.95)Russia, with its huge natural-gas reserves, uses its monopoly on east-west pipelines to promote Russia's political interests -- and reacts toughly when challenged. Marshall Goldman sets out these disturbing truths in "Petrostate," a bleak and yet spirited account of Russia's energy politics. The West, Mr. Goldman makes clear, should be wincing at its own vulnerability. The story, as Mr. Goldman tells it, starts with the first oil boom in the czarist era, when Russia and America together produced 97% of the world's oil. Foreign companies were booted out of the Soviet Union by...

JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska's governor is recommending state lawmakers approve a proposal from TransCanada Corp. to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope to a hub in Alberta, Canada. Gov. Sarah Palin, along with the state's natural resources and revenue commissioners, said Thursday the Calgary-based company's plan merits issuance of a license under Palin's Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, as well as a $500 million cash inducement from the state. They said the multibillion dollar project stood far above a proposal from oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips because it was binding and enforceable. Lawmakers have 60 days to...

NEW DELHI: For a government struggling to make sense of an Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline that is more loaded with political baggage than it is comfortable with, there now appears an attractive alternative. For the past couple of months, a project for a deepwater pipeline has been presented to key ministries in the government which has been greeted with relief and excitement. Senior officials of MEA, ministry of oil and gas, power and fertiliser have been introduced to this private sector project that goes something like this. It’s a deepwater pipeline from the Middle East (which has the greatest concentration of...

Pipeline politics took center stage as Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad went on the road to promote competing pipelines to export their natural gas. Berdymukhammedov was in Kabul on April 28, making the case for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI), while Ahmadinejad was in Islamabad the same day, discussing details of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline (IPI). Both pipelines have several pros and cons, and the consumer countries -- Pakistan and India -- have signaled they want both TAPI and IPI to help sate their energy needs. Berdymukhammedov spoke about TAPI with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the first-ever...

EDMONTON - TransCanada Corp. alone plans to ship more than one million barrels a day of oilsands production to the United States with an expanded pipeline construction program unveiled today. The Alberta oil and gas delivery mainstay added a second leg to its new Keystone export service that would more than double the system's capacity and extend it to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico. TransCanada president Hal Kvisle said the added route is a companion instead of competition for projects underway by Enbridge Inc., which is also advancing more than one million barrels daily in new oilsands...

Hundreds of workers at Scotland's only oil refinery on Sunday began a 48-hour strike that has forced BP PLC to shut a pipeline system that delivers almost a third of Britain's North Sea oil. BP said it had completed the closure of the Forties Pipeline System by 6 a.m., when 1,200 workers at the Grangemouth refinery in central Scotland walked off the job. The pipeline brings in 700,000 barrels of oil a day from the North Sea to BP's Kinneil plant, which is powered from the Grangemouth site. Energy industry group Oil & Gas U.K. said the strike, over pension...

NEW DELHI: India is gazing at Israel for a passage to energy security in the age of high oil prices, a move that will give Asia's fastest growing economy easy access to the abundant Russian, Caucasian and Central Asian crude as an alternative to volatile West Asian supplies but will perhaps also raise hackles of pro-Arab political elements at home. Top oil ministry officials and senior executives of state-owned refiners who look after crude procurement and shipping operations for their companies held talks with representatives of Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company Ltd, originally an Israel-Iran joint venture that operates a two-way crude...

Attacks on nuclear power stations, oil and gas terminals, Canary Wharf and Heathrow’s control tower were being considered by leaders of the plot to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in mid-flight, a court was told yesterday. Documents found on computer memory sticks at the home of an alleged terrorist ringleader contained a list of targets across Britain – including the gas pipeline between Britain and Belgium. The man, Assad Sarwar, was said to be in contact with terrorist leaders overseas and visited Pakistan a month before his arrest as preparations for the airline attacks were being finalised. Peter Wright, QC,...

MOSCOW, March 26 (Reuters) - Russian firm Stroytransgaz has signed a protocol with Iraq to reactivate an oil export pipeline to Syria's Mediterranean terminal of Banias, the Russian firm said on Wednesday. It said it had signed the deal in Amman, Jordan, with Iraqi North Oil Company. "The participation of Stroytransgaz in this project will represent a substantial contribution by Russian firms to reconstruction and modernisation of Iraqi economic infrastructure," the statement said. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki calling on him to support Russian investments in the country. The letter...

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil jumped above $107 on Thursday after saboteurs blew up one of Iraq's two main export pipelines. The attack on the pipeline in southern Iraq came on the third day of an Iraqi military operation against fighters loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the oil port of Basra. "This morning saboteurs blew up the pipeline transporting crude from Zubair 1 by placing bombs beneath it. The pipeline was severely damaged," a Southern Oil Company official told Reuters. "We will lose about a third of crude exported through Basra," he said, adding that it would take three...

BAGHDAD: A bomb struck an oil pipeline Thursday in Iraq's southern city of Basra where Iraqi security forces have been clashing with Shiite militia fighters, an oil official said, the second such attack this week

On February 28 Hungary’s Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany joined Russia’s outgoing and incoming presidents, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, in Moscow to seal an intergovernmental agreement on Gazprom’s further expansion into European Union territory via Hungary. Hungary’s privately owned energy company MOL is staying out of this intergovernmental, politically-colored deal. MOL is a partner in the U.S.-backed Nabucco project of the EU. The Hungarian government’s accession to South Stream, however, adds to the recent series of defections from the Nabucco project (see EDM, January 24, 28, 29, February 5, 28). The agreement just signed envisages building an extension of...

Russia and Serbia Monday signed an agreement to create a joint company that will build the Serbian stretch of the South Stream gas pipeline. The new company would draft all details for the pipeline over the next 18 months, including the rights and obligations of the Russian-Serbian enterprise, according to the agreement signed by Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and his Srbijagas counterpart Sasa Ilic. "We allocate three months for the creation of the company, and another 18 months for the feasibility study," Gazprom's spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told reporters in Belgrade. "We expect construction to start no later than 24 months...

McCOOK, Texas (AP) - An explosion Friday at a gas pipeline in south Texas sent flames rising hundreds of feet into the air, but the fire was quickly contained and no injuries were reported, authorities said. Hidalgo County Emergency Manager Tony Pena said earlier reports that one person had been injured in the explosion were incorrect. After the explosion, black smoke rushed across a cloudy sky in northern Hidalgo County, driven by winds gusting to 40 mph (64 kph). Orange flames reached 400 feet to 500 feet (120 meters to 150 meters) into the air, Pena said. Firefighters shut off...

Mackenzie Valley Pipeline – The ' Wealth of Nations ' is Founded on Fossil Fuels – But What about the Future?CASR Editor , Dianne DeMille , presents a brief outline of a complex story Proposed Pipeline to bring Gas from Mackenzie Delta & Valley to Alberta The ecology of the human species includes a subset we call ' the economy '. But there are actually many different types of human economies. There is the 'subsistence economy ', under which people live off the land. Another is a 'resource economy', where the source of wealth in a given region are the...

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Russia strengthened its grip on Europe’s energy supplies on Friday as it signed a major gas deal with Bulgaria that analysts said would further undermine the European Union’s attempts to diversify its energy sources.

Oil hit $100 a barrel last week, but scandal and corruption still stalk the industry, reports Iain Dey Doug Suttles, a senior executive at BP, had more than his fair share of bad news over Christmas. While most of the western world was eating turkey, the lawmakers in the area he runs for the British oil giant decided to throw their weight about. The authorities on Suttles' turf decided to press ahead with a big rise in tax on oil companies. On Boxing Day, they upheld a decision to withdraw exploration licences awarded to BP and other large oil producers....

Excerpt - DELHI, La. (AP) - Interstate 20, a major east-west route across north Louisiana was shut down Friday afternoon after a nearby oil pipeline erupted in flames. Sgt. Markus Smith of the Louisiana State police says the explosion happened about 1 pm. Details were sketchy, but Smith says the pipeline was burning just east of Delhi, a small town about 200 miles northwest of New Orleans. The dispatcher for the Richland Parish Sheriff's Department, who would not give his name, says the oil line is about 50 yards from the interstate. He says the four-mile stretch from Delhi to...

(AP) - ConocoPhillips said today it's submitted a proposal to develop an Alaskan pipeline to carry about four billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to the United States and Canada.