Big oil isn’t the only game in town.

Big oil isn’t the only game in town. This is way I don’t want rush into anything I’m not sure of. What I’m sure and clear is that the enormous financial block at midweek has been removed. (GM – Magna/Sberbank). The “so-workers” should notice that there is less notable resistance to an alternative strategy. (I.e. ‘…signed, sealed, stamped and delivered…’). This hint serve well like a draft for Saint Andrews.

1). Repsol im Visier: Baukonzern will russischer Lukoil Tür nach Spanien öffnen. Heisser Streit ums schwarze Gold in Spanien. Der russische Erdölriese will via Einstieg beim spanischen Konzern Repsol im Westen Europas landen. Türöffner für den Deal soll der schwer verschuldete spanische Baukonzern Sacyr-Vallehermoso sein.

Big Oil Isn't the Only Game in Town. BY LIAM DENNING. Ten years ago, investors wanting exposure to oil were a bit like Soviet shoppers. Choice was limited to a few drearily similar products. At a combined $664 billion, the companies that became the three "supermajors" -- Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell -- accounted for almost half of the market capitalization of the global listed oil-and-gas sector. The landscape has changed significantly since then. Exxon, BP and Shell still are formidable, valued at a combined $714 billion. But Exxon apart, the supermajor tag looks superfluous. Energy investors now have a wider range of products to choose from. PetroChina, not even listed a decade ago, is worth more than BP or Shell. Taking the Dow Jones Oil & Gas TSM index as a proxy for the industry, adjusted to include newly emerged giants like PetroChina, its total market value has more than tripled in the past decade to almost $4.8 trillion. Overall, the supermajors now represent less than one-sixth of that. Besides new geographic frontiers, commodity funds currently provide direct access to energy futures. And in equities, the investable universe has expanded up and down the value chain. Oil-field-services firms, which provide equipment and data to the majors, have profited from the rise in exploration and production, or E&P, spending. The largest, Schlumberger, has doubled in value since 1999 and is now valued at roughly the same as ConocoPhillips, the No. 3 U.S. oil major. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 Oil & Gas E&P index has risen more than fourfold since the start of this decade. Anadarko Petroleum, worth $3.8 billion 10 years ago, commands a market cap of $32.1 billion today. Anadarko, which this week raised its guidance on production growth for 2009, symbolizes the competitive threat to the majors in more ways than one. Neil McMahon, analyst at Sanford Bernstein, says that while smaller companies have made big discoveries, "the majors seem to have missed the boat," playing it safe in regions already familiar to them. Witness them now playing catch-up, circling Anadarko's Jubilee field in Ghana. For now, the majors' size still offers some protection, particularly in discrete markets. In the U.K., Shell and BP still constitute four-fifths of the FTSE All Share Oil & Gas Producers index. And Western majors enjoy much higher free floats than large, emerging-market energy companies. The majors also are big dividend payers. That, combined with low valuation multiples, makes them interesting investments right now, says Jonathan Waghorn, who co-heads Investec's Global Energy fund. Even so, Mr. Waghorn estimates that the five biggest majors will boost production by just 0.3% annually over the next five years. Big Oil, with its low growth but reasonable dividends, is looking like a big yawn for investors -- more of a bond proxy than equity. That mattered less when it was the only game in town. Today, with the competitive field so much wider, it will take more than simply more of the same to attract the marginal investment dollar.

2). Exxon-Shell consortium wins West Qurna 1 deal. Posted: Nov 05, 2009 11:38 AM GSTUpdated: Nov 05, 2009 3:38 PM GST. By SINAN SALAHEDDIN. Associated Press Writer. BAGHDAD (AP) - A consortium grouping U.S. and European oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC on Thursday signed a $50 billion deal to develop one of Iraq's most prized oil fields, as the OPEC nation looks to revamp its battered energy sector. The deal to develop the 8.6 billion West Qurna Stage 1 field is the third such agreement in less than a week between a foreign oil consortium and Iraq, which sorely needs foreign company expertise and funding to revive an oil sector hammered by years of neglect, sanctions and, most recently sabotage. Although Iraq sits on the world's third-largest oil reserve, with at least 115 billion barrels, the country is producing and exporting far below its potential. Daily production has ranged between 2.3 million and 2.4 million barrels per day, with exports at slightly less than 2 million barrels per day. But the agreement also offers a new opportunity for Exxon Mobil and Shell which, like other international majors, had been kept out of Iraq following the nationalization of the sector in the 1970s. Exxon Mobil Upstream Ventures Ltd.'s president, Richard C. Vierbuchen, said the company was looking forward to soon finalizing the deal and to an enduring partnership with Iraq. The West Qurna announcement comes two days after Iraq finalized a deal with British oil giant BP PLC and China's CNPC to develop its biggest oil field, the 17.8 billion barrels Rumaila in the south. BP and CNPC - who were the only winners in a much-touted, but ultimately disappointing oil licensing auction in June - will be paid $2 per barrel produced to raise production from the current 1 million barrels a day to 2.85 million barrels a day. On Monday, a consortium led by Italy's Eni SpA signed an initial agreement to develop the 4.1 billion barrel Zubair oil field, which lies near West Quran and Rumaila. Eni and its partners, the U.S.'s Occidental Petroleum Corp. and South Korea's KOGAS, aim to boost output to 1.1 million barrels per day within seven years, up from the current 200,000 barrels per day. According al-Shahristani, the combined project output from Rumaila, West Qurna Stage I and Zubair will exceed 6 million barrels a day in six to seven years, with the companies expected to invest a total of about $100 billion in the projects. Two other consortiums were bidding for the West Qurna Stage 1 project - one headed by Russia's Lukoil and U.S. giant ConocoPhillips and the other was headed by China's CNPC. The field was among five oil and two gas fields left over from the June bidding round, Iraq's first such oil auction in more than 30 years. Iraq is planning a second bidding round on Dec. 11-12. Forty-five international oil companies will compete for development right for 10 oil projects.

3). Large Hadron Collider stalled again... thanks to chunk of baguette. November 5, 2009. The rehabilitation of the beleaguered Large Hadron Collider was on hold tonight after the failure of one of its powerful cooling units caused by an errant chunk of baguette. The £4 billion particle-collider faced more than a year of delays after a helium leak stymied the project in its first few days of operation. It is gradually being switched back on over the coming months but suffered a new setback on Tuesday morning. Scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva noticed that the system’s carefully monitored temperatures were creeping up. Further investigation into the failure of a cryogenic cooling plant revealed an unusual impediment. A piece of crusty bread had paralysed a high voltage installation that should have been powering the cooling unit. The cooling systems are in place to keeps the collider functioning at a temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero. As soon as there is a small rise in temperature the super-conducting magnets stop functioning and fail safes come into operation to control the collider. A spokeswoman for CERN confirmed that baguette was responsible for the latest hiatus, but she conceded that mystery surrounded the way it got into the vital power installation, which is protected by high security fences. “Nobody knows how it got there,” she told The Times. “The best guess is that it was dropped by a bird, either that or it was thrown out of a passing aeroplane.” “Obviously this was slightly surprising. Within the team there was some amusement once they had relaxed after initial concerns.” The bread was discovered on a busbar - an electrical connection inside one of eight buildings above ground on the 17-mile (27km) circuit in the Swiss countryside. The spokeswoman said: “The collider extends over a very large area – you have to have a very comprehensive system to try to avoid problems of this kind. We’re talking about a couple of days down time.” Scientists hope that the temperature will be restored by around midnight tonight allowing work to continue. The failure of the cooler meant the temperature rose around 5 degrees to the equivalent of about -266C. The first beams were injected into the LHC on September 10 last year, but nine days later a connection between two magnets failed. This caused a huge leak of the helium that cools the ring around which protons will be fired against one another at 99.9999991 per cent of the speed of light. The leak inflicted further damage, and the accelerator was mothballed so that 53 magnets could be replaced. Engineers have since found and replaced other magnet connections that could have been at risk of causing a repeat of the fault, and installed other safety features to prevent another fault.