BP will find out on Thursday whether its proposed alliance and share swap with Russia’s state-oil champion Rosneft broke the UK oil group’s shareholder agreement with its other Russian venture TNK-BP.
The Stockholm tribunal panel hearing the case is expected to issue its ruling to the two parties on Thursday afternoon and both sides are likely to issue an announcement sometime after that.
Socialist Venezuela has some way to go before becoming the workers’ paradise it would like to be.
Workers at state oil company PDVSA, one of the flagships of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution, are expressing “alarm” over the fact that they may be facing lean times in their twilight years after hundreds of millions of dollars went “missing” from their pension fund, because of fraud and even Ponzi activity.
It’s hard to know how much can be put down simply to gross negligence or incompetence on PDVSA’s part, not to mention a scant regard for its workers; but at worst, the affair exposes corruption deep in the bowels of the revolution’s cash cow and provides yet another example of well-connected individuals wrecklessly milking Venezuela’s oil wealth.
Energy headlines: Workers resume Japan nuclear battle
- Work resumes on restoring power, cooling at plant – WSJ
- Fukushima plant workers hospitalised for radiation exposure – WSJ
- Crisis-hit Tepco taps lenders for $25bn – FT
- China pushes ahead with Pakistan nuclear plant expansion – Reuters
- Top Japan nuclear aide sees no slowing of sector – WSJ
- Fukushima fears chill Obama’s atomic ambition – The Guardian
- Can geothermal help Japan in crisis? – Reuters
- US officials make NY nuclear site top priority – FT
- Is the French public beginning to doubt nuclear? – The Guardian
- Italy introduces 12-month moratorium on nuclear energy – Argus
- Oil companies and diplomats start to leave Yemen – FT
- BP Gulf spill probe uncovers valve blockage – FT
- Carbon floor price boost for ‘green’ power – FT
- Fuel duty concession will cost oil industry £10bn – The Guardian
- North Sea oil taxes: an unwise policy – FT Lex
- Motorists’ relief will be all too short – The Times
- Osborne’s plans are a disaster for the environment – The Guardian
- Soco targets Vietnam and DRC for exploration – FT
- German energy company hits headwind in India – NY Times
Effectiveness of blowout preventers questioned
It turns out the reason why the blowout preventer on BP’s Macondo well failed to close was because a section of drill pipe had buckled inside the well during the accident and blocked efforts to seal it off. This is according to Det Norske Veritas, a consultancy hired by the US interior department to investigate why the blowout preventer failed.
Cameron International, the maker of the blowout preventer, responded:
The BOP was designed and tested to industry standards and customer specifications. We continue to work with the industry to ensure safe operations.
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