Shell CEO Defends Arctic Operations: They Have A New Tech Center In Houston, See, With Computers .

[hatrack]

HOUSTON -- A day of celebration for the opening of Royal Dutch Shell PLC's revamped research and development center was clouded by lingering questions over the company's Arctic drilling program and worries over the future of its Alaska offshore drilling activity.

Yesterday, Shell opened a newly refurbished research and development hub here, the largest of three global hubs that will serve as the center of the company's worldwide initiatives to advance new experimental technologies in oil and gas extraction and petrochemicals. Shell also consolidated its scattered European R&D efforts into one similar center in Amsterdam, while a company facility in Bangalore, India, will serve as its third research and innovation hub.

The new Shell Technology Center Houston, located on the city's west side, now holds 44 buildings containing some 1.2 million square feet of offices and labs, 60 percent more than the previous Westhollow campus, where the new site was built. The newest facility lies close to where Shell is adding some 670,000 square feet of new offices for its exploration and production division (EnergyWire, Jan. 4).

To launch the new center, Shell invited media and business leaders from an array of industries to its first Innovation Summit, where executives discussed their future plans for the center and asked outside experts, like X Prize Foundation's Peter Diamandis, to offer their opinions on the best way to propel technological innovation. But first, Shell Oil Co. President Marvin Odum sought to clear the air regarding the situation in Alaska, where damage to an offshore drilling rig owned by Shell has cast some doubt on the company's ability to operate safely in the rough Arctic waters.

EDIT

http://www.eenews.net/public/energywire/2013/01/10/1

[JoeBlowToo]

1. With computers what could possibly go wrong?

Computers Gone Wrong on Global Weather Patterns


By Bruce Krasting Nov 18, 2012, 2:08 PM Author's Website


Computers Gone Wrong

I’m always happy to see evidence that the collective “we” are not as smart as is thought. The best and brightest climatologists (and their big computers) missed a big call on global weather patterns this fall


....So if we had been in El Nino conditions on October 29, Sandy would never have gotten as big as it did, and might just have blown out to sea. What a difference that would have made.

******

I think that smart guys and gals should continue to use big computers to forecast the future. It’s helpful to look ahead with some rational expectations of what should happen next. That’s true for weather, stock prices and macro economic trends/performance.

But we should also look askance at what the computers and sages are telling us. The machines, and their operators, are consistently wrong. The bad news is that unanticipated events almost always have negative outcomes. The good news is that we can’t foretell the future; if we could, it wouldn’t be interesting at all.

http://wallstreetpit.com/97856-computers-gone-wrong-on-global-weather-patterns/