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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...

MADRID, Oct 5 Asia Pulse - Iranian Oil Ministry Deputy for International Affairs Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian said that Iran could run out of oil reserves in nine decades. Speaking at a gathering dubbed "Iran in the 21th century: Energy and Security" here Monday, he cited latest figures which put Iran's crude oil reserves at 137 billion barrels, accounting for 11.6 per cent of the world's total reserves. He also said that Iran has about 29,000 billion cubic meters of gas which is 15.3 per cent of the world's total gas reserves. Quoting research findings, the official said that due to the...

Is Oil Shale The Answer? September 30, 2005 by Alan Burkhart With fuel prices skyrocketing many people are thinking that extracting petroleum from a soft rock known as oil shale may provide an answer to America’s energy woes by providing an additional source of crude. Although no one is saying that oil shale could replace traditional exploration, I have serious doubts about its viability. I’m not ruling it out, mind you, but if history is to be our guide we likely have little to gain and much to lose by sinking money into the expensive process of extracting oil from...

After leaving the state in 1998, the company has returned and hopes to join BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil as a major player in Alaska. Shell this year made its intentions clear by spending more than $44 million for 84 offshore leases in the Beaufort Sea. Company officials say that is just the beginning. "Alaska is a great and vast land. It is for people who think big ... and that's what we're doing," said Chandler Wilhelm, the company's Alaska Exploration manager, at an open house Tuesday at Shell's new offices in midtown Anchorage. ... Annell Bay, Shell's regional vice president...

México. Pemex, the Mexican oil monopoly, is studying an alliance with Anglo-Dutch Shell to develop a crude oil deposit in the Gulf of Mexico, near the maritime boundary with the US, according to newspaper El Universal de México. The newspaper cites sources close to the project and Secretary of Energy Fernando Elizondo, who acknowledged that Shell is interested and that "there have already been contacts". "But we have to adjust our activities absolutely to the legal framework", he emphasized. "We have to resolve this matter quickly because there is a risk that someone could beat us" to the development of...

An American Traitor: Guilty As Charged By Henry Mark Holzer and Erika HolzerFrontPageMagazine.com | June 10, 2005For three decades Jane Fonda obfuscated, distorted and lied about virtually everything connected with her wartime trip to North Vietnam: her motive, her acts, her intent, and her contribution to the Communists’ war effort.  With the aid of clever handlers, she so successfully suppressed and spun her conduct in Hanoi that many Americans didn’t know what she had done there, and, more important, the legal significance. Three years ago, our book, “Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam (McFarland & Co.), laid bare...

We’ve all been had. The bottom has long since fallen out of the key group that master-minded the Kyoto Protocol credit scheme, but nobody seemed to have joined the dots. It all began with the flight of Canadian Maurice Strong’s Earth Council from Costa Rica as noted by the National Post’s Peter Foster in May, 2004. With no fanfare, the Earth Council landed in CH2M Hill’s Consumer Road Toronto office towers. The Costa Rican government has been pursuing the Earth Council for payment of U.S.$1.65 million, for the wrongful sale of a tract of land it imprudently donated to the...

SHELL yesterday reported an "excellent" first quarter with a strong financial performance across its businesses. The oil giant, which reported the biggest annual profits in UK corporate history in February, said its income had risen by 42% to $6.7bn (£3.5bn) in the period.

PLEASANT GROVE — Scott and Lori Connors' family room looks like it was bombed. There are random holes in the walls, gashes in the fabric of the couch and chair. There's broken glass everywhere and a sheet of plywood where the window used to be. Outside, a shed is in tatters, and there's a boulder-size crater in the lawn. Upstairs, there are pieces of shrapnel imbedded in the bathroom wall. A large mirror has what looks like bullet holes in the glass. It looks like it was bombed — because it was.

MICHIGANTOWN, Indiana (AP) -- An Indiana pet store owner says he sees the image of Satan on the shell of a turtle that was the only survivor of a store fire in October. The palm-sized red-eared slider turtle, named Lucky, was the only animal to survive the fire at Dora's A-Dora-ble Pet Shop in nearby Frankfort, about 40 miles northwest of Indianapolis. Owner Bryan Dora now says he sees Satan's face on the critter's shell. He can spot lips, eyes, a goatee, shoulders and a pair of pointy horns on Lucky's back.