Minister: Argentina Will Pursue Judge Order on Falklands Drillers
BUENOS AIRES, June 28 (Reuters) – Argentina will pursue in Britain and the United States a local judge’s order to seize assets of oil drillers operating in the disputed Falklands Islands, the foreign minister said in an interview published in local media on Sunday.
On Saturday, a federal judge in Tierra del Fuego ordered the seizure of $156 million in bank accounts, boats and other property of six European and U.S. oil companies operating in the islands.
A source with knowledge of the situation said the ruling was meaningless because the companies do not generally hold assets in Argentina or use Argentine waters.
Foreign Minister Hector Timerman told local newspaper Tiempo Argentino on Sunday that on Monday he will formally request that the stock exchange regulators in London and New York implement the judge’s order.
The companies named in the order are Premier Oil Plc , Falkland Oil and Gas Ltd, Rockhopper Exploration Plc, Noble Energy Inc y Edison International Spa.
“The companies can defend themselves in foreign courts, but that will have a cost or penalty to their market listing,” Timerman said.
He said that international law forbid altering the state of territory where the United Nations has accepted that there is a sovereignty dispute, and that the companies had breached the rule by drilling wells.
Argentina claims sovereignty over the South Atlantic islands which it calls the Malvinas, located about 435 miles (700 km) off the coast of Tierra del Fuego and occupied by around 3,000 people who mostly say they wish them to remain a British overseas territory.
Britain and Argentina fought a short war in 1982, after the then Argentine military dictatorship briefly seized the islands, and tensions have escalated again in recent years with the discovery of oil deposits.
Ahead of Argentine elections in October, rhetoric is heating up. “What the United Kingdom is doing is what it did in classic colonialism: appropriate resources from its colonies and take them back to their country,” said Timerman on Sunday.
Falkland Oil and Gas and Rockhopper declined to comment. Noble Energy, the British foreign office and the other mentioned companies could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Maximiliano Rizzi, Writing by Rosalba O’Brien; Editing by Diane Craft)
Israel’s gas sector counts the cost and waits
The new government must give top priority to making a decision about the ownership structure of Israel’s gas fields.
The development of Israel’s gas fields and natural gas sector, and private electricity production as well, has been frozen following a decision by the head of the Israel Antitrust Authority Prof. David Gilo in December 2014.
Gilo decide to retract a compromise agreement with the Tamar and Leviathan owners Delek Group Ltd. (TASE: DLEKG) controlling shareholder Yitzhak Tshuva and US company Noble Energy Inc. (NYSE: NBL). The agreement was designed to clear up the suspicion that Delek and Noble formed a cartel by purchasing the license to the rights to the Leviathan field in 2007. Gilo spent two years in talks with the developers to reach the compromise agreement, then a further nine months to decide that he had made a mistake and that he would not be able to defend the agreement in court. The three years of painful learning that we have paid for are probably just the start.
In the next stage, Gilo will probably have to again decide whether to open court proceedings against the gas developers in order to force them to part with Leviathan or try and reach a new compromise agreement. In the first instance there would be a delay of years in developing the field. In the second instance there would ‘only’ be a delay of six months.
For this delay there is a very clear and expensive price tag. Gas export deals worth billions that have been signed by Delek and Noble Energy with major Jordanian and Egyptian customers are disintegrating as the customers realize that there is nobody to talk to and they are rushing off to find alternative sources of supply. The process in which Israeli industry is converting to natural gas has ground to a halt. The developers of the new private power plants cannot move forward without holding agreements to buy the gas required to operate the plants. The timetable for developing the huge Leviathan field will be postponed for at least two years and the billions in tax revenues that the State had hoped to earn by 2018 will also be delayed.
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The growing damage intensifies the pressure on the government to take a decision. There is already a “regulatory document,” a position paper that was prepared by the Ministry of Finance, and which has the unique advantage in that all the relevant regulators (even Gilo) have agreed to it. The document, as is the way with committee documents, presents a new roadmap for Israel’s gas sector, which is a complex plan, difficult to understand that ensures limited competition while setting ceiling prices for gas, but only for new agreements.
In the face of this document, the gas developers are not presenting a united front. Delek Group controlling shareholder Yitzhak Tshuva is being more flexible the more he has his back up against the wall. But in contrast his US partners are only toughening their stand, and threatening international arbitration, which would cause Israel irreversible damage.
The question being posed for the new government is about the way ahead: what is the correct way to develop Israel’s gas sector. The Sheshinski Committee chose a path of cooperation with the developers. The State ensured for itself a majority percentage in dividing up the profits and encouraged the developers to move forward quickly and start making a profit.
The social lobby in the Knesset raised its voice and claimed that the ordinary citizen will be required to pay Tshuva (and the ministry of finance) an excessive price. Government officials began to zig-zag and the result was that Australian company Woodside, the only hope of creating real competition against Noble Energy, fled Israel as fast as it could.
Today Israel stands at a crossroads. Should it continue along the old route and take flak from the social lobby? Should it choose the competitive route and split the monopoly and hope that somehow genuine competition will be created here, or start out on a third way and impose supervised prices.
Meanwhile, a storm is raging on global gas markets. The price of liquid gas is plunging. Energy companies are reducing their operations and cancelling major projects. This storm can provide support winds for the government, if it knows how to put up the sails in the right direction.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on March 16, 2015
ThereAreNoSunglasses 
Reblogged this on Lolathecur's Blog Below are two very important entries from the "Jewish Encyclopedia". Read them VERY CLOSELY..
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