Energy Blast – Oct 13, 2010

TNK-BP’s proposed massive interim shareholder dividends (worth roughly $4 billion) ‘will be reinvested to finance the group’s Russian operations‘: analysts say the company must be ‘desperate to raise cash‘.  Lukoil is expecting that its overseas production will overtake its domestic output, but is banking on its Filanovsky field to boost home efforts.  It will begin drilling at Iraq’s West Qurna field next year, with production targets of 120,000 bpd.  Madeleine Albright writes in the FT on the delayed New Start nuclear treaty between Russia and the US.  Gazprom is planning to increase investment next year, but is apparently receiving criticism for ‘spending too much‘, says Reuters. Petronas Chemicals is anticipating a price of $4.2 billion at its upcoming IPO.  No official moratorium remains on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has been ‘extremely reluctant to issue approvals‘, prompting grumbles from the corporate world.