The elder Mr. Saro-Wiwa, who founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni Peoples in 1990, was one of the most vocal critics of Shell for the damage done to the delta communities, including gas flaring and the destruction of mangroves to make way for pipelines.

According to the lawsuit, a Shell official identified Mr. Saro-Wiwa as being “influential” in organizing the protest and sought the assistance of the Nigerian government to silence him.

The company is also accused of paying soldier who committed human rights abuses and providing them with transportation. During a military raid, one plaintiff, Karalolo Kogbara, was shot by Nigerian troops while she was speaking out against the destruction of crops bulldozed to build a pipeline.

“We are not saying that Shell just did business in a bad place,” said Jennie Greene, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Shell was an actor here. Shell wasn’t just standing by.”

Mr. Saro_Wiwa was arrested in 1994 and put on trial before a special military court along with the other Ogoni advocates, on charges that human rights groups and Western governments said were trumped up. Despite international pressure, Shell initially refused to intervene, saying at the time, ” the company does not get involved in politics.”

The lawsuit charges that Shell bribed at least two crucial witnesses to change their testimony during the trial. It also assert that Shell’s manager in Nigeria at the time, Brian Anderson, met with Owens Saro-Wiwa, Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s brother and also a plaintiff, and tried to pressure the jailed activist to abandon his struggle in exchange for help in securing his release. Mr. Saro-Wiwa reportedly refused.

The suit asserts that in the early 1990s, Shell became worried about Mr. Siro-Wiwa’s campaign to protestthe impact of oil production throughout the Nigeria Delta. The suit assert that Shell feared Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s activities would disrupt its operations and tarnish its image abroad, and “sought to eliminate that threat, through a systematic campaign of human rights violations.”

Shell said the allegations were “false and without merit.” In a statement, Stan Mays, a company spokesman, said : Shell in no way encouraged or advocated any act of violance,” and in fact, “attempted to persuade that government to grant clemency.”

The case could have global repercussions for the oil industry, said Arvind Ganesan, the head of the business and human rights practice at Human Rights Watch.

In the last decade, oil companies have been under increasing pressure to comply with strict standards of behavior while operating in countries with poor human rights records and few democratic controls.

“The lesson here is that these cases aren’t going away,” Mr. Ganesan said. “Ifa jury found Shell guilty, this would change the behavior of the industry pretty quickly.”

The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York law firm specializing in human rights, on behalf of Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s son and other plaintiffs who fled Nigeria’s military regime and did not trust they could sue Shell in Nigerian courts even after civilian rule returned in 1999.

The current suit was brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act, an arcane law written in 1789 to fight piracy, which is increasingly being used for lawsuit asserting human rights violations that occurred overseas. The Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in 2004 that foreigners could use American courts in limited cases, like crimes against humanity or torture. So far no corporation has been found guilty under the alien tort law, though human rights lawyers note that several cases are still moving through the court system.

In 2004, Unocal, a California oil company accused of using slave labor in the construction of a pipeline in Burma during the 1990s, agreed to compensate villagers there. The terms of the settlement were not made public.

Last year, Chevron was cleared of wrongdoing by a jury after being accused of complicity in the shooting of Nigerian villagers who occupied an offshore oil barge in 1998 to protest its environmental record and hiring practices.

Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta, a region of mangroves and swamps where most of Nigeria’s oil is located, have long been criticized by environmentalist. Shell drilled the country’s first successful well in 1956, and has since dominated Nigeria’s oil sector, through decades of civil war, military rule and authoritarian governments.

In recent years, protest against government corruption have become more violent. The operation of Shell, in particular, have come under attack from militant groups seeking a greater share of the country’s oil wealth.

to be continued . . .

The trial, scheduled to begin Wednesday, will examine allegations that Shell sought the aid of the former Nigerian regime in silencing Mr. Saro-Wiwa, a vociferous critic, an addition to paying soldiers who carried out human rights abuses in the oil-rich but impoverished Niger Delta where it operated.

Shell strongly denies the charges. But the trial is the latest in s series of cases aimed at some of the world’s biggest oil companies, asserting misdeeds in developing countries where they were once seen as unassailable. Oil companies are being sued on charges of environmental damage, collusion with repressive governments and contributing to human rights abuses, among others.

Chevron, for example, could face as much as $27 billion in liability in Ecuador for pollution of the jungle. Exxon Mobil is being sued by Indonesian villagers from the province of Aceh who allege human rights violations committed by soldiers hired to guard a natural gas plant.

And these legal challenges are just the latest test for an industry increasingly hard pressed to find new sources of petroleum.

The most prominent case of supposed company complicity the execution of Mr. Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Ogoni tribe led to fierce protest against Shell, which was already under heavy criticism from environmentalist for its record in the Niger Delta. The event, which ignited worldwide condemnation of Nigeria, prompted changes in Shell’s approach to community relations in Nigeria and elsewhere.

While civilian rule has returned to Nigeria, violence in the delta has escalated in recent year, fueled by poverty, corruption and graft. Over the last week, there has been a new round of fighting between government forces and militant rebel groups, which have declared an “all out war” in the region and threatened the operations of oil companies.

to be continued . . .

Throughout his eight years as president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin pursued the strategic goal of dominating natural gas supplies to Europe and the pipelines that deliver them. His success was underscored in January, when for the second time in three years a pricing dispute with Ukraine disrupted the flow of natural gas, leaving hundreds of thousands in Eastern Europe shivering in the deep winter cold.

But in his zeal to monopolize gas supplies, Mr. Putin, who is now the Russian prime minister, committed Gazprom to long-term contract with Central Asian countries for gas at a cost far in excess of current world prices. Now that the world economic crisis has sharply curtailed the demand for gas, Gazprom is saddled with a glut of expensive Central Asian supplies that it is forced to sell at a loss.

In a cruel twist, the company finds it-self forced to shutter its wells in Russia, which produce gas for a fraction of the cost of that from Central Asia, in order to balance its supplies with the declining demand. In effect, a strategy that made business and political sense in a time of high and seemingly ever-rising price is threatening to create years of losses and declining influence, if energy price fail to rebound.

“It’s an extraordinary turnaround from that everybody was expecting,” Jonathan P. Stern, the director of natural gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said of Gazprom’s quandary.

Demand for Gazprom’s fuel this year will plunge by about 60 billion cubic meters, or 2.1 trillion cubic feet, according to Mr. Stern about equal to the amount it is contractually committed to import from the former Soviet states.

The turnaround for Gazprom has been as swift as it has been devastating to the company’s business model. As recently as September Mr. Putin flew to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to personally sew up a pipeline deal and pricing agreement for Gasprom. The pact consolidated Russian strategic gains after the war in Georgia, ensuring supplies for Gasprom while keeping them out of the hand of potential Western competitors.

Under the deal, Gasprom will pay, on average, $340 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas in 2009, Mr. Putin said in a press conference in January. That price is arrived at through a complex formula based on world oil prices with six month delay. The Russian state news agency, RIA, said the deal was valid until 2028.

But the same volume of gas is selling this year in Ukraine for an average of about $230, while European prices have sagged to an expected average of $280 for all of 2009.

Gazprom, in a written statement, acknowledged losses this year but said the contracts would be valuable when demand recovered.

“Gazprom’s contracts with its Central Asian partners are concluded for many years into the future,” the statement said. “The world economic crisis, without doubt, is negatively influencing demand for energy. In the long term, however, demand for gas in Russia and abroad will grow.”

The declining fortunes are creating unaccustomed stresses for Gazprom, which strutted onto the world scene during the energy boom and came to symbolize the new might and swagger of russia under Mr. Putin’s leadership.

Investor once viewed Gazprom’s close ties to the Kremlin as good for business. For example, when Gasprom raised gas price in Ukraine after the street protests known as the Orange Revolution, the move supported the Russian foreign policy goal of pressure.

Investment may drop 55 percent to $50 billion because of the global credit crisis, the Rio de Janeiro-based company reported late yesterday. Net income declined 33 percent to $1.36 billion in the first quarter as iron-ore output and sales slumped, Vale said in a Brazilian regulatory filing.

Steelmakers such as ArcelorMittal scaled back investment plans and cut production after the global economic slump curbed demand. Vale said its own 2009 investment budget of $14.2 billion will “probably be revised downwards” this year.

“They’ve talked about the ability to be opportunistic at the right point in the cycle for longer term growth,” said Ric Ronge, who helps manage the equivalent of $1 billion at Pengana Capital, including Vale stock, in Melbourne. Still, “they’ve been winding back their own production and they are not immune to the operating environment.”

Vale fell 1.07 reais, or 3.2 percent, to 32.08 reais in Sao Paulo today. The shares are down 41 percent from a year ago, more than a 27 percent drop for the benchmark Bovespa Index.

The company also said it focused on cost-cutting in the first quarter amid a “recessionary environment,” introducing greater “flexibility” in its operations in a move to help rebalance markets which suffered “unprecedented contraction.”

Plunging Prices

Three-month prices for nickel, Vale’s second-biggest source of revenue, fell 63 percent to an average of $10,637 a metric ton in the first quarter on the London Metal Exchange. Vale slowed development of nickel production projects in the period, including a year’s delay of Onca Puma in North Brazil.

Vale’s quarterly sales fell 32 percent to $5.32 billion.

“We don’t believe the scenario will improve in the medium- term, in the second or third quarters of 2009,” said Rodrigo Ferraz, of Rio de Janeiro-based Brascan Corretora, in a May 4 report. “There are no clear signs of recovery in world industrial activity, which would lead to increased raw materials demand.”

First-quarter global crude-steel production fell 22.8 percent from a year earlier, the Brussels-based World Steel Association said April 21. Crude output dropped 52 percent in the period in North America and 44 percent in Europe, the association said. The Americas and Europe represented 48 percent of Vale’s iron-ore sales in 2008.

Vale’s quarterly nickel output rose 7.3 percent to 65,200 tons, as the company continued some planned expansions and partially started up its Goro mine in New Caledonia.

Missed Estimates

The result fell short of the average $1.66 billion net income foreseen by four analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Five analysts polled had also forecast higher-than-reported average net revenue of $6.11 billion.

Vale sold 49.83 million tons of iron ore in the quarter, less than the 50 million-ton forecast by Ferrous Metals Director Jose Carlos Martins on a Feb. 20 conference call.

The quarter’s iron-ore sales fell 27 percent from the 68.3 million tons in the year-earlier period. The decline in sales was partly offset by average prices that were 37 percent higher after 2008’s annual contract settlements.

Most of the actions Vale has taken to minimize costs because of the crisis, particularly in its nickel operations, haven’t yet had noticeable effects, the company said. Vale incurred costs of $214 million in the quarter related to idling capacity, firings and nickel stocks management.

‘Still Struggling’

Vale “is still struggling to cut costs amid production shutdowns and labor redundancies,” Edmo Chagas, a Rio de Janeiro-based analyst with UBS Pactual, wrote in a report yesterday. Chagas forecast net income of $1.75 billion, or 33 cents a share, and revenue of $6.13 billion.

Early indications are that China slowed its iron-ore purchases in the second quarter following record first-quarter purchases, he said.

But more than a century of mining has left Iron Country scraped and scarred, a landscape dominated by vast quarries and basins of stony waste from processed ore - tailings, which sprawl across the land like a mighty river delta. Now largely covered by scrub vegetation, these tailings are the remains of a struggle to wrest a living from the earth that began with the great Iron Rush of the 1880s. Fortune hunters from far afield flocked to the rich hematite mines of the Vermilion and Mesabi ranges, which were soon minting millionaires so fast that by 1910 regional capital Duluth was reckoned to have more than any other city in the world.

Two world wars brought boom times as the Range answered the call for iron and steel to arm the nation. And there were busts too, notably during the Depression, when output crashed from 47 million metric tons in 1929 to just 2 million metric tons in 1932. And all the time those tailings kept accumulating - a buildup that will continue until the ore runs out. Then the Range will fall silent, closing a long chapter of American history.

Or maybe not. Just west along Route 169 from the Hull-Rust-Mahoning mine, near the town of Keewatin (pop. 1,164), a vast domed structure dominates a tailings basin left by the defunct Mesabi Chief mine. The dome can’t be seen from the highway, and few Rangers (and even fewer mining corporations) know it’s there. Inside sits equipment that could prove to be as significant to the region as the 1950s-era discovery of a way to extract iron from low-grade taconite rock. The earlier technique arrived in the nick of time for the Range, for its hematite - known locally as “natural” ore - was almost depleted. Similarly, the dome at Keewatin is home to a revolutionary process, dubbed “magnetation,” that can extract valuable iron from the tailings - just when the Range is in need of new sources of ore.

“Our process,” says Rod Hunt, 83, who, along with mining veteran Al Fritz, 78, co-founded upstart Magnetation Inc., “is the equivalent of the fabled philosopher’s stone of yore. We can’t turn base metal into gold, but we can process the millions of tons of natural-ore tailings and extract the iron that got missed the first time around.”

That’s good news for the hardscrabble region (March unemployment there was 13.5% - the highest rate since 1992) and explains why Iron Range Resources, a state development agency, has backed the company with $2.5 million in seed money. But magnetation technology also is good news for the iron industry globally. U.S. Geological Survey data show that global reserves of economically recoverable iron ore could eventually run out. “Magnetation is a transformational technology,” says former regional development consultant Mike Andrews. “If it didn’t exist, it would have to be invented.”

Behind the invention stands a grizzled bunch of veterans with more than three centuries of mining, construction, and engineering experience among them. Magnetation’s iron men seem more like Minnesota’s answer to the Buena Vista Social Club than mining messiahs, but they apparently have developed a technology that has defied the best efforts of bigger players.

Process inventor Fritz is characteristically modest about his achievement. “The last half-century hasn’t seen many new developments in mining,” he says. “I guess we lucked onto one.” But it wasn’t so much luck as dogged determination that enabled Fritz, formerly superintendent of the Hill Annex mine, to tweak the process during his retirement. The breakthrough came three years ago when Fritz and Hunt, who first met prospecting for gold in Alaska back in the 1980s, bench-tested a prototype machine - which they dubbed the “ferrous wheel” - that finally solved the problem of creating a magnetic field capable of extracting enough of the weakly magnetic hematite to make commercially viable iron-ore concentrate.

“We weren’t getting any younger, so we decided it was time to go into business,” recalls Hunt, who had the additional motive of recouping enough funds to repay the mortgage he had taken out on his house to pay for the prototype.

They were soon joined by Ed Shaughnessy, 57, a mining project manager for 30 years when he wasn’t racing dragsters, who just happened to own some tailings - about 4 million metric tons of them that came his way in 1998 when the businessman who hired him to build a drag-racing strip on the tailings failed to pay up. Next came two other Range veterans: haulage and construction contractor Tom Hammerlund Sr., 67, who had heard about Magnetation’s contraption through Shaughnessy, and engineer Eugene Bergstrom, 71, who liked the sound of it so much that he sold his resort business on nearby Lake Winnibigoshish to invest in the Keewatin startup.

The big coup for Hunt and Fritz was persuading Larry Lehtinen, the youngster of the group at 53 but with 30 years’ experience in the iron and steel business, to come onboard as CEO. A man of vision and energy in the mold of the Range’s early pioneers - like his great-grandfather Albert, who arrived from Finland in 1896 - Lehtinen has a reputation for making things happen. Recalls Hunt: “Al and I had faith in the process, but Larry and the others got us out of the lab and into production.”

Magnetation’s first challenge was to show that its patent-pending technology could indeed extract the “lost” iron. This it has done emphatically - since Feb. 23 its plant has been shipping concentrate rich enough for blast furnaces to turn it into pig iron, the raw material for steel.

Now it must compete price-wise with the world’s mining giants. Magnetation will never match them on volume: Brazilian mining behemoth Vale (VALE), the world’s largest iron ore producer, ships about 250 million metric tons annually, compared with Magnetation’s tiny initial target of 300,000 metric tons. But Lehtinen is certain that Magnetation can compete on price. Although he won’t discuss costs, Lehtinen insists that Magnetation is already the lowest-cost producer in the U.S. and can match Vale, as well as mining giants BHP Billiton (BHP) and Rio Tinto (RTP), all of which must ship their ore long distances to their main customers.

“Our raw material is all around us,” Lehtinen explains. “It’s easy and cheap to extract, and it has already been crushed.” Indeed, the main input is the water needed to convert the tailings into a mudlike slurry that can be fed through the magnetation process, where, as the name suggests, giant magnets separate the weakly magnetic hematite from the nonferrous elements of the tailings - mainly silica. And thanks to Shaughnessy’s 150-acre tailings basin, getting started was relatively easy.

“I got a whole lot of grief from my wife for those tailings,” recalls Shaughnessy, “but now they don’t look so worthless.” Far from it. Shaughnessy’s tailings could yield as much as a million metric tons of concentrate, worth around $90 million at current prices. And Magnetation has lined up enough tailings to produce 104 million metric tons of concentrate, worth just under $10 billion.

Daewoo International Corp. plans to start building facilities for gas offshore blocks A-1 and A-3 in Myanmar as early as October, company officials said. The company aims to receive approval from the Myanmar government by October to commercialize the gas field.

Company officials said the construction will involve building basic platforms and a 980-kilometer long pipeline from Myanmar to China.

Last June, Daewoo International agreed with China National Petroleum Corp., China’s largest oil company, to sell gas the from the Myanmar field to CNPC.

Daewoo International will have a 51 percent stake in the area, followed by Oil & National Gas Corp. with 17 percent, Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise with 15 percent, GAIL India with 8.5 percent and Korea Gas Corp. with 8.5 percent.

The gas reserves in the area are estimated at around 4.53 to 7.74 trillion cubic feet - equivalent to five years of Korean gas consumption - according to the company.

Daewoo International will become the first Korean private company to integrate development, production and sale of natural gas overseas, it said.

“There was no precedent in Korea that a private firm could produce gas as a major operator,” said Rim Chae-moon, vice president of Daewoo International.

The company estimates that the commercialization of the gas field in 2012 will enable the company to produce 500 million cubic feet of gas per day for 25 to 30 years. The Myanmar field is expected to give Daewoo a total profit of $10 billion, according to the company.

LG International Corp. is also making a quick move to tap the overseas oil fields. The company said it plans to sell crude oil in West Buhka oil field in Oman by opening an international bidding.

“The annual oil sale of the West Buhka oil field is expected to reach 1.8 to 2.2 million barrels this year,” an LG official said.

“We will be able to sell the oil at a better price in the second half, as oil prices are stabilizing.”

LG International Corp. started commercialization of the West Buhka oil field in February and sold 300,000 barrels of oil to a refiner in the United Arab Emirates. The Korean company is to sell another 300,000 barrels within this month, company officials said.

Along with the crude oil, LG International will produce up to 30 million cubic feet of natural gas a day for the next 20 years, they said.

SK Networks said it would begin a plantation business in Indonesia from the second half of the year, as it won the approval from the Indonesian authorities in March to develop 28,000 hectares of land.

The company plans to construct facilities for annually processing 24,000 tons of natural rubber by 2013 through forestation.

Samsung C&T said it plans to carry out renewable energy projects in North America and coal and copper mining businesses in South Asia.

The contracts are with customers including BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, with the majority of the contracts are in central Queensland.

In a first for the company, Monadelphous will be working on two dragline shutdowns for BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) at its Blackwater coal mine in the Bowen Basin in central Queensland.

Also in the Bowen Basin, the company has been awarded a contract to fabricate and construct a radial stacker for BMA’s Peak Downs coal mine.

In Gladstone, central Queensland, Monadelphous has been awarded a package of work to install an Automated Alumina Delivery System and associated infrastructure as part of Rio Tinto’s Boyne Smelter Development Project.

The company has also received a notice of award from Rio Tinto for construction of a Coal Handling Preparation Plant (CHPP) and associated coal handling plant as part of its Clermont Mine Project.

In Western Australia, Monadelphous has been awarded a contract with BHP Billiton Iron Ore for structural and mechanical pre-works at Nelson Point as part of its Rapid Growth Project 6.

All projects are scheduled for completion in the second half of calendar 2009, except for the work at Boyne Smelter which at this stage is expected to end in second half of calendar 2010.

Minister of Energy and Oil and Gas Resources (ESDM) Purnomo Yusgiantoro said that the basin CBM found in the Barito Basin, Berau Basin, Kutei Basin, Central Sumatra Basin, and the South Sumatra Basin and the basin in several South and West Java. “We hope this can be developed to the future,” Purnomo said in Jakarta on Tuesday (27 / 5), to the signing of the agreement.

Meanwhile, Director General of Oil and Gas Luluk Sumiarso, on the same occasion, said that the industry is to follow the rules will be temporary, and oil and gas will continue to be enhanced through various inputs. Luluk also not mentioned the number of target esplorasi production of CBM. “How much production, not to know. It’s a stage where the exploration of gas as soon as usual. The more we take into account is that contracts will be signed,” said Luluk.

Regulation first used for the CBM, the Peppermint 33/2006, is also considered to cause many problems, mainly related to the spill yag up land. Peppermint mentioned in that if in a region has been an oil and gas industry, the industry has the first right to dtanyakan on the management of CBM. However, this is also considered to cause masaah new berkatan with permission from local governments that eksploras only mngeluarkn a permit, for example, only to coal.

In such conditions, Director General of Oil and Gas will try to add the first right to the company for the CBM process. “The improvement in the regulations, we will be more careful, given some specific restrictions. For example, how the oil and gas industry which will have first right to manage the fuel. In addition, if an area also feel this need to be developed even if there is oil and gas industry and coal, the government has the right to ask it to the industry, “said Ivita be trusted to handle the repairs CBM regulations.