www.theledger.com By DULUE MBACHU Associated Press Writer LAGOS, Nigeria Nigerian officials and leaders of two powerful oil unions opened talks Wednesday on a five-day-old strike threatening crude exports. Delegates reported progress on union demands after the first of two scheduled meetings. Workers were awaiting the outcome of a second meeting before deciding whether to end the strike, said Belema Osibodu, a spokeswoman with Nigeria's Department of Petroleum Resources. More than 800 white-collar workers of the department, which monitors oil loading at export terminals run by multinationals including ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Royal/Dutch Shell and TotalFinaElf, walked off the job Saturday. They were joined Tuesday by about 600 blue-collar colleagues. The strike further roiled the global oil market at a time when possible war in Iraq and a prolonged strike in Venezuela have pushed prices to two-year highs. Nigeria is the world's six-largest exporter of crude, with half of its output going to the United States. Oil companies said the strike had not yet affected loading at their export terminals. The government has sent in replacement workers. The strikers are demanding more than a year in some unpaid wages - including unpaid overtime, expenses and travel allowances. They also want greater autonomy and better financing for the department, which they say is crippled by inefficient bureaucracy. Osibodu said the first meeting, between leaders of the Department of Petroleum Resources and the unions, resolved the pay issues. The second round of talks concerned demands for autonomy, she said. Nigeria produces more than 2 million barrels of oil a day, more than 95 percent of which is pumped by joint ventures between the government and major oil companies.

www.canada.com GILLIAN LIVINGSTON Canadian Press Wednesday, February 19, 2003

TORONTO (CP) - With more international assets, Petro-Canada expects oil and gas production to rise 55 per cent over the next five years as the company consolidates previous acquisitions and looks at further expansion, a senior company executive said Wednesday.

Current projects under development, "will result in excess of 600,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day for Petro-Canada by the end of 2007," Petro-Canada vice-president Gary Bruce told an analyst conference. "That's a 55 per cent increase over the next five years."

Last May, Calgary-based Petro-Canada completed its $3.2 billion takeover of most of the international assets of German-based Veba Oil and Gas, giving the Canadian company new assets in the North Sea, Africa and elsewhere.

That integration is now done and Petro-Canada is producing "well in excess of 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from our international assets," said Bruce, vice-president of corporate communications and business development.

"These businesses provide us with a strong foundation and many opportunities for future growth," said Bruce,

Petro-Canada also said it sees big opportunities to expand its international operations in the wake of the Veba deal, which brought on people with expertise in international oil and gas production who can help the company take on new projects.

"We also are looking at other areas," he said. "So we do look at new areas if they fit with our capabilities and if they meet our investment criteria - and they are of significant size."

Looking ahead, Bruce said growth will come from Veba's assets in Syria, Libya, Trinidad, Venezuela, and the North Sea. In Canada, production growth is expected from Petro-Canada's Hibernia and Terra Nova oil projects off Newfoundland as well as the northern Alberta oilsands.

"Our strongest growth will come from East Coast oil, oilsands and international," Bruce said.

Petro-Canada (TSX:PCA) is one of Canada's largest energy companies, producing oil and natural gas as well as refining and selling gasoline and other fuels through a national chain of service stations.

In 2002, Petro-Canada's overall production averaged 382,400 barrels of oil equivalent a day, up from 196,500 barrels a day in 2001.

The company attributed that to the Veba acquisition and the higher production in its East Coast oil operations.

In 2003, overall production is expected to average 475,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day with the addition of production from offshore Newfoundland. That's up 24 per cent from 2002, Bruce said.

One asset Bruce said Petro-Canada will keep watch on is the Syncrude oilsands joint venture in Fort McMurray, Alta., in which the company already owns a 12 per cent stake.

Earlier this month, EnCana Corp. (TSX:ECA) of Calgary sold its 10 per cent stake in Syncrude to Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. for $1.07 billion in cash, making it the biggest shareholder of one of Canada's premier heavy oil projects.

The deal was done by the royalty trust that owns Canadian Oil Sands and gives it a 31.74 per cent stake in the project.

"We were a bit surprised that EnCana decided to sell - but I'm sure they have their reasons," Bruce said.

"It also is a bit difficult these days on the market to compete with these income trust companies, as you know they get a bit of a tax advantage over companies like ourselves," he noted, adding, "that wasn't really the case for us."

However, if any other partners in Syncrude want to sell off their stake, "we'd certainly look at it and we plan on being in Syncrude . . . for a long, long time," Bruce said, adding that Petro-Canada sees that "as a very long-term highly profitable investment."

www.forbes.com Reuters, 02.19.03, 2:56 PM ET BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Workers at Colombia's state-owned oil firm Ecopetrol began a 24-hour strike on Wednesday to protest both the firing of a worker for alleged vandalism and a joint-venture with ChevronTexaco Corp. (nyse: CVX - news - people), union leaders said. The stoppage by Workers' Union (USO), whose members make up almost half of Ecopetrol's 7,400 employees, was not affecting production or shipments of crude oil, officials said. The strike began at 6 a.m. local time (1100 GMT) to protest the firing of an employee in the refinery city of Cartagena and Ecopetrol's "Catalina" contract with ChevronTexaco, said Rodolfo Gutierrez, USO's president. USO broke off wage talks with Ecopetrol for the second time on Tuesday, angered by a contract under which the American firm will invest $150 million on Caribbean natural gas deposits to provide domestic markets in Colombia and export to Venezuela. The union believes that Ecopetrol should exploit the gas reserve itself rather than take on a foreign partner. Local television stations on Tuesday broadcast a video showing an employee vandalizing Ecopetrol machinery but Gutierrez said the video "did not provide categorical evidence" to justify his firing. USO strikes generally have little effect on work at Ecopetrol's oil fields or at its two refineries, the 235,000 barrel-per-day Barrancabermeja plant and the 76,000 bpd complex at Cartagena. The union, which went on strike three times in 2002, held a 24-hour work stoppage on Jan. 16 to protest an arrest warrant against its international representative, on charges of connections to Marxist guerrillas. If there is no agreement on a new wage deal by March 22, the government will appoint a compulsory wage arbitration tribunal to resolve the dispute.

money.cnn.com February 19, 2003: 2:33 PM EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. oil prices rose for the sixth straight day Wednesday, hitting 29-month highs ahead of government inventory data expected to show crude stocks shrinking in the United States.

Cold weather in the world's biggest heating oil market in the U.S. Northeast also underpinned prices, which are just $4.00 shy of the all-time high set after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

U.S. crude futures rose 39 cents to $37.35 per barrel in New York, the highest since September 2000.

International benchmark Brent crude oil was up 1 cent to $32.55 per barrel in London, and just below a two-year high of $33.10 touched last week.

Traders said the market remains wary as the United States and Britain, despite strong international opposition, are pushing for a new U.N. resolution that would authorize the use of force to disarm Iraq.

But the new resolution may not be put to a vote before early March, after another report by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, diplomats said Wednesday.

"The world is facing the prospect of losing Iraq's two million barrels per day of oil exports, and perhaps some of Kuwait's oil too, at a time when oil prices already are well above $30 per barrel and stocks are abnormally low," the Center for Global Energy Studies said in a monthly report.

President Bush shrugged off global anti-war demonstrations Tuesday, while Washington and London worked on a second United Nations resolution to sanction war if Iraq fails to disarm immediately.

The United States warned reluctant ally Turkey Wednesday that time is running out to agree to a deployment of U.S. troops on its soil as an Iraq invasion force as the two states wrangled over the size of a multi-billion-dollar aid package.

The U.S. Defense Department ordered another 28,000 troops to the Gulf region this week as it builds a force of more than 200,000 for a possible invasion of the Arab oil power.

Iraq is the world's eighth-biggest oil exporter, selling roughly two million barrels per day (bpd) into the international market, and traders fear war could disrupt supplies from other producers in the Middle East, which supply 40 percent of world exports.

The White House has said a new resolution could be proposed this week to the U.N. Security Council, where Bush has met opposition from France, Russia and China, who want more time for weapons inspections to continue. Tight supplies

Government data to be released Thursday are expected to show that U.S. crude oil stocks fell by a modest 1.0 million barrels, a Reuters survey of analysts showed.

Analysts also expected a draw of 3.0 million barrels in distillates, including heating oil, and a minor decline of 500,000 barrels in gasoline stocks.

Concerns over supply disruptions resulting from a war come at a time when strike-hit Venezuelan exports struggle to return to normal and senior oil workers in Nigeria walked out, although supplies from Africa's top producer have remained normal so far.

Venezuela's oil production was 1.4 million bpd Wednesday, roughly 50 percent of normal levels, despite government efforts to increase output.

Venezuela accounted for 13 percent of U.S. oil imports before the strike, aimed at toppling President Hugo Chavez, and the stoppage has severely dented U.S. fuel stocks.

U.S. stocks of crude oil already are below 270 million barrels, seen as the minimum level required to keep the nation's refineries running normally.

Supplies could be tightened further if there is an escalation in a Nigerian oil strike over pay and conditions that began Saturday but has not touched exports so far.

Nigeria pumps just over two million bpd and is the world's seventh-biggest exporter.  

www.alertnet.org 19 Feb 2003 19:00

NEW YORK, Feb 19 (Reuters) - An energy crunch that is dealing a blow to fuel consumers' pocketbooks proves the need for the United States to become more independent from unreliable foreign oil supplies, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said on Wednesday.

The Bush Administration has been attempting since 2001 to push through controversial aspects of the White House energy program that would increase domestic oil drilling, but it has met resistance from Democrats claiming the need for more petroleum does not justify the environmental costs.

"We're in the same fix we were in two years ago, and nothing's been done to fix the problems that existed then." said John Felmy, director of policy analysis and statistics at the API, which represents members of the oil industry.

"Our energy infrastructure is straining to meet the ever-growing demand, and when problems occur, like the ones we're seeing, we experience this volatility," he told Reuters.

Oil prices have spiked to within reach of two-year highs near $38 a a barrel, as a national strike in Venezuela cripples exports from the OPEC nation and the United States is hit with strong heating demand and fears over war on Iraq.

Retail gasoline prices have surged above record highs for February at $1.66 a gallon on average, while heating oil prices have hit three-year highs at $1.71 a gallon, leading to calls from petroleum distributors for a release from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

The Bush administration said last week it was monitoring a drop in U.S. crude oil inventories, now the lowest in 27 years, but indicated there would be no release of oil from the SPR, which is used only in cases of severe disruption.

Against this backdrop, the Senate is expected to vote in mid-March on whether to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling -- the most controversial aspect of Bush's energy plan -- with supporters hoping to reverse last year's defeat and stressing the need for energy independence.

The Bush administration is pushing to open the refuge and tap its potential 16 billion barrels of oil to reduce U.S. dependence on crude imports, particularly as fears mount that a possible war with Iraq could disrupt supplies from the oil-rich Middle East.

But most Democrats and environmentalists oppose drilling in ANWR and want to protect the reserve's wildlife. They say there is not enough oil in the refuge to justify disturbing the area's wildlife, and argue the government should raise fuel mileage standards for sport utility vehicles.