Jorma Ollila, Royal Dutch Shell’s chairman, may joke about being a "modest, down-to-earth Finn", but his record at Nokia gives him great credentials as a thinker on technology and strategy.

I spoke to him at his office in the Hague, for his first interview since taking the job, and we have put further quotes from what was a long and wide-ranging interview here. One striking quote: "I think it’s a believable scenario that in 2050, renewables will form 30 per cent of the energy source for mankind." What is more, he added, they could be 30 per cent of Shell’s business too.

Having chewed over Tuesday’s first quarter results from BP, featuring a 17 per cent drop in profits, Deutsche Bank’s analyst Lucas Herrmann has downgraded his recommendation from a hold to a buy, suggesting a price target for the shares of 580p, against a close on Tuesday of 568.5p.

Looking further ahead, however, he argues:

"Fortunately, where the company’s refining activities continue to attract more attention than they ought, in E&P the recently espoused ‘end of year’ timelines around the key growth projects continue to appear conservative."

Those projects include Atlantis in the Gulf of Mexico and Greater Plutonio and Rosa in Angola.

When the full-year results came out in February, and BP set out some very conservative guidance on future production, we suggested that the company might be trying to give the best possible platform for Tony Hayward to report some good news (requires subscription) after he takes over in August. It has not been doing much to accentuate the positive since then, promising a "year of consolidation" in 2007.

Another analyst, Peter Hitchens of Teather & Greenwood, suggests in a note today that that means there could be better news to come as we head into 2008:

"We believe that BP will perform in line with its peers for the next six months as the company is in a transition period. John Browne will step down as chief executive in July and will be replaced by Tony Hayward. Once Hayward takes full control, we believe the new strategy will start to emerge and could lead to some outperformance."

A postscript to my story in the FT on April 19 about estimates of huge undiscovered oil reserves in Iraq. I was called by Felicity Arbuthnot, a London-based journalist, who interviewed Tariq Aziz, the then deputy prime minister of Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was in power, for the online newspaper the Palestine Chronicle. His key quote: "Iraq has the second largest oil reserves, actually the first. You can find oil wherever you drill in Iraq. The US wishes to dominate oil, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. They want to keep us dormant, bring in a pro-US government and present that as bringing about ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’." It seems that on the question of Iraq’s oil reserves, at least, he may have been on to something.

As oil surged towards $80 a barrel last year, people worried about whether the world economy could cope. The oil shock, along with the US housing crash, was among the reasons cited by Nouriel Roubini of New York University here on his blog (some content requires subscription) and in a piece for the FT, arguing that a US recession was coming.

Now Lutz Kilian of the University of Michigan has shed interesting light on the debate. He argues in a recent paper that not all oil shocks are alike. Oil price surges are more often a result of demand-side factors, such as a strong world economy or precautionary stock-building, than of supply-side disruption. In particular, the run-up in prices this decade has been largely caused by strong global growth.

As James D.Hamilton of the University of California at San Diego, observes on his blog, one implication is that the real threat posed by the latest oil price surge has not been a recession, but higher inflation.

The US housing crash, however, may be another story….

Contrary to the hopes of the Bush administration, nuclear power will neither play a major role in reducing US carbon emissions nor in increasing energy security, according to a report by Council on Foreign Relations. Even if a new reactor was built every four or five months over the next forty years, it would only be enough to replace the 103 reactors currently in production in the US, many of which will close down in the next few decades. This replacement rate faced "daunting challenges" said the report, such as a lack of skilled workers and difficulties in getting specialised components.

Who would be in the Russian oil business? Imperial Energy, the London-listed oil and gas company, has been threatened with losing its licence in Russia, for reasons that seem rather confused, to put it mildly. Oleg Mitvol, the hammer of Shell over Sakhalin-2, is leading the charge.

Imperial’s reserves were valued at $2.8bn (requires FT.com subscription) in March, after it revealed a 41 per cent increase in those reserves (also subscription).

The theory after the problems faced by Shell and BP was that companies such as Imperial were too small to attract the Kremlin’s attention, and they could operate "below the radar". It looks as though it has just popped up on the screen.

Meanwhile, Shell has signed the deal to let Gazprom take control of Sakhalin-2, no doubt with its executives’ teeth tightly clenched. One shred of comfort: Ian Craig, the project’s chief executive, can stay in place until when the first gas arrives, expected by the end of next year, and will not be replaced immediately by a Gazprom appointment.

World prices for thermal coal, used in power stations, are likely to rise sharply in the next few years as China becomes a net importer of the fuel earlier than expected, says Mineweb. European coal prices have already risen to about $70 a tonne from $52 at the end of 2005, it adds. This should benefit mining companies such as Xstrata, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. Meanwhile China’s rush to produce the coal it needs from its own ramshackle mines is having tragic consequences. Mineweb points out that there have been three coal mining accidents in China in the last 24 hours.

Mining and energy group BHP Billiton has not yet scrapped ideas of building California’s first terminal for imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), according to The Times of London, despite its plan being rejected by a second state regulator. A glamorous group of protestors, including Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry and Cindy Crawford, contend that the $800m offshore regasification project will cause damage to ocean mammals and birds and prove an eyesore for residents of Malibu. In what could be an intriguing clash of Hollywood tough guys, Californian governor Arnold Schwarzeneggar has implicitly backed the project, saying that LNG "should be part of California’s energy portfolio".

Total, the French oil group, today published its quarterly market indicators, a table of numbers that show the general price environment in which the company, and indeed the industry, operated from January until March 2007. Earlier this month, BP did the same, using slightly different benchmarks. Oil and gas prices dropped, while European refining margins rose, Total showed. But, in contrast to its peers, Total is expected to impress with its volume growth when it announces its quarterly earningson May 4, analysts at Citigroup said in a note today. That is good news for Total, which has been in the news recently mainly because of investigations into its alleged corruption in Iran and Iraq. Another bit of good news for the company today was Iran’s announcement that it had extended the company’s deadline to decide whether it to embark on the multi-billion-dollar South Pars gas project. The managing director of Iran’s national oil company told wires in Dubai that Total is likely to make up its mind within 3-4 months. 

Health campaigners and politicians are in a flap over the ambitions of Gazprom, Russia’s gas monopoly, to supply the National Health Service, one of the UK’s largest gas consumers, the Times, of London, writes. Rather than worrying about the NHS keeping its bills down by choosing the cheapest supplier, the naysayers are concerned about Russia’s reliability. Meanwhile, Russia itself is having trouble supplying energy to some of its own more remote regions. At least that is the explanation its officials are giving as the country this weekend began construction on the first of six floating nuclear stations, Russian news agencies reported. To allay safety concerns they are reassuringly citing the the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000. The vessel may have failed, but the nuclear reactor could be switched right back on as soon as the sub was raised. Phew.