Novedades de Petroleo y Algo mas

A successful takeover would create a global energy titan with more than 100,000 workers and more than 50 million customers in Europe and Latin America.

Utility E.On AG said it would deliver its final and sealed bid for Endesa SA to Spanish regulators on Friday, but would not reveal if it planned to revise its $36.5 billion (US$47.52 billion) offer for the utility.

The announcement came a day after rival Gas Natural SA withdrew from the takeover battle for Endesa, effectively ceding the company to E.On.

Duesseldorf-based E.On is required to notify Spain’s stock market regulator about any possible changes to its bid before the close of business.

E.On said in a statement that it would file its final offer on Friday and there would be no opportunities to change the price once the document is filed. It also said that Gas Natural and its affiliates would not be permitted to buy any Endesa shares.

Analysts have said that E.On could raise its bid further in order to stave off any other suitors and to mollify Endesa’s biggest shareholder, Acciona SA.

Endesa’s board meeting on Tuesday

Endesa Chairman Manuel Pizarro told reporters in Madrid that his company’s board planned to meet Tuesday to discuss the E.On bid and dismissed claims by Gas Natural that E.On was given information by Endesa to help prepare its offer.

In a filing Thursday with the Spanish stock market regulator, Gas Natural said it decided to pull out of the race because it believed its chances of gaining control of Endesa were hurt by the company’s opposition to its bid.

Gas Natural reiterated earlier claims that E.On, which launched a "white knight" bid for Endesa after being approached by management, appears to have been given more detailed information about Endesa’s financial situation than Gas Natural.

The biggest ever cross-border takeover in Europe

Barcelona-based Gas Natural started the bidding battle for Endesa in September 2005, with a cash and stock offer that valued the company, at current market prices, at around $24 billion (US$31.25 billion).

E.On later offered $34.50 (US$44.92) a share, meaning that if the deal is ultimately successful, it would be the biggest ever cross-border takeover in Europe.

A successful takeover would create a global energy titan with more than 100,000 workers and more than 50 million customers in Europe and Latin America.

EITB24

by Jasmine Kelemen (MarketWatch)

The Amex Oil Index (XOI: 1,170.31, 9.58, 0.8% ) was down 1% to 1,167.57 points as crude for March delivery dropped 10 cents to $57.20 a barrel. The Amex Natural Gas Index (XNG: 457.58, 3.14, 0.7% ) was off 0.7% to 457.25 points as natural gas fell 0.9% to $7.47 per million British thermal units. The Philadelphia Oil Service Index ($OSX 194.93, 0.83, 0.4% ) slipped 0.2% to 195.46 points.

On the oil index, Chevron (CVX 73.75, 0.72, 1.0% ) was off 1% to $73.72 after reporting a 9% decline in fourth-quarter net income due to sharply lower natural-gas prices and higher operating costs. See full story.

Earnings for the nation’s second-largest oil company behind Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM74.54, 0.54, 0.7% ) fell to $3.77 billion, or $1.74 a share, down from a year-ago profit of $4.14 billion, or $1.86 a share. Valero Energy Corp (VLO 55.87, 0.16, 0.3% ) was holding up better than the rest of its peers, trading flat at $56.03 after being upgraded to overweight from neutral weight by Prudential.

On the natural-gas index, Apache Corp. ( APA69.82, 1.75, 2.4% ) paced the decline, falling 2.1% to $70.08 following a Citigroup downgrade to hold from buy. "We are concerned that Apache’s poor 2006 reserve replacement cost in the Gulf of Mexico is potentially indicative of a project inventory that is starting to mature," said analyst Gil Yang in a note to clients.

by Peter Howard Wertheim (OGJ)

YPFB’s 2005 statute stipulates that only a professional with at least 10 years experience as a large corporation executive and at least 5 years experience in the energy sector can head YPFB. Olivera does not have this experience. His professional background includes heading his family’s printing company and serving as a top Morales aide when the new president took office in early 2006 on a radical left platform.

Ortiz is an energy specialist who had worked for the subsidiary of Brazil’s state-owned company Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) in Bolivia. Petrobras is Bolivia’s largest energy company, and imports 26 million cu m/day of gas from the Andean country into Brazil.

The Bolivian Chamber of Hydrocarbons, a private sector organization composed of oil and gas companies operating in Bolivia, considers Olivera more "ideological" than his predecessor, which might affect Bolivia-Brazil negotiations concerning price hikes for gas exported to Brazil.

Hydrocarbons Minister Carlos Villegas said Olivera must complete the state’s recovery of four oil companies partially privatized in the 1990s, seek a higher price for natural gas sold to Brazil, and boost gas exports to Argentina in 2010 via a pipeline set for construction.

"I’d like to remember at this moment those who fell in the fight for nationalization—the dead and the wounded," Olivera said after being named to the post. The nationalization of Bolivia’s natural gas, announced May 1 by President Morales, did not involve bloodshed but the state’s renegotiation of contracts with foreign oil and gas companies so that Bolivia received a greater share of revenues.

Putin’s first indication that Russia could participate in a gas exporter’s group will be deeply worrying to the European Union, which takes about a quarter of its supplies from Russia and has been keen to diversify its sources.

"A gas Opec is an interesting idea. We will think about it," Putin said at his annual news conference in the Kremlin.

Russia’s massive gas resources – nearly 30 per cent of known world reserves and 20pc of world gas production – have raised fears in the West that it may gain further leverage over energy consumers by co-ordinating supplies with other gas-rich nations such as Iran and Algeria.

Meanwhile, Putin hailed Russia’s strong economic growth and said it could not have been achieved without a consolidation of power in the Kremlin’s hands.

But he added that although Russia’s GDP reached $1 trillion last year, the top priority was still to raise living standards.

Putin said yesterday that Russia and Ukraine had revived an idea to set up a joint venture to manage Ukraine’s gas transit pipelines and added Kiev also wanted access to Russian gas fields.

GULF DAILY NEWS

Yesterday alone, three other companies – Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Marathon Oil Corp. and Valero Energy Corp. – also reported best-ever full-year profits.

The four companies combined had earnings of $75.6 billion US last year. Royal Dutch Shell beat forecasts, but pointed to tough times ahead by issuing reduced growth targets and forecasting higher costs and lower refining margins.

Stelmach’s Tories trail federal parties in bid to reap oilsands prize

Meanwhile, federal Liberal Leader Stephane Dion and Prime Minister Stephen Harper – with his puppet master Jack Layton at his side – are already well up the track.

The prize is to reap the rewards of the Alberta oilsands. Which are huge. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers resident "sky is falling" expert, Pierre Alvarez, has already warned that $40 US-a-barrel is now at the break-even point for new oilsands projects. With all parties in Ottawa now determined to green up Alberta’s economic engine at the oil industry’s expense, the fight for surplus energy company dollars is already on. Yesterday, Dion released an old fund-raising letter from back in the Canadian Alliance days, which he insisted shows conclusively that the prime minister is a "climate change denier."

SECRET PLAN
Then his natural resources critic, Mark Holland, let slip exactly what the Liberals have in store for the energy patch if Albertans are unlucky enough to have the Ottawa Liberals lording it over us again.

Holland accused Harper of having a secret plan to "encourage rapid, unfettered growth in oilsands production." As though that’s a sin. He said it’s "just one more example of how he will ensure Canada will fail to meet its obligations to the world under Kyoto."

How the Libs plan to fetter (another word for hog tie) the oilsands, sadly, Holland didn’t say. But if the letter proves that Harper was skeptical about the worth of the Kyoto accord – which sneaky Jean Chretien signed without consulting Albertans – then will the real Stephen Harper please come back? Not the present impostor who must cut a deal with NDP leader Jack Layton to get his tax-cut budget passed.

In the 2002 letter – which the Liberals released as a 10th-generation photocopy version – Harper launched something called "the Battle of Kyoto."

It described Kyoto as a "job-killing, company-destroying" deal that’s based on "tentative and contradictory scientific evidence."

Harper notes that the pact is based on harmless carbon dioxide emissions – not pollution – as the Libs’ scare tactics would have us believe.

"Implementing Kyoto will cripple the oil and gas industry," Harper continued. "Which is essential to the economies of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia."

Because the oil industry hit will "trickle through" to industries in other parts of the country, "THERE ARE NO CANADIAN WINNERS UNDER THE KYOTO ACCORD," Harper blasted.

Finally, a politician who tells it like it is.

‘FAIR’ RETURN
Except that Stephen Harper is no longer with us – replaced since before Christmas by the Prince of Appeasement who is trying to out-green the Liberals, or at least leave the impression he is.

Back to Alberta and the struggling Stelmach government. The premier campaigned in the PC leadership race to get a "fair" oilsands return for the owners of the resource. And to stop shipping raw bitumen (Stelmach compared it to "topsoil") down the pipeline to Illinois and Texas.