Major Energy Companies Shutting Operations in Egypt

According to news reports,  BP, the largest foreign investor in Egypt, began relocating workers, as did Russia's OAO Novatek and OAO Lukoi.

Italy's Eni SpA, on its part, is repatriating 250 employees from Cairo.

Shell has evacuated "non-essential" staff and their dependents from Egypt, company spokesman Kim Blomley said Monday in an e-mailed statement.

"Given the development of events over the weekend, it was decided to temporarily relocate expatriate staff, dependents and some non-essential expatriate staff," said Blomley.

A number of senior and key personnel, including the Shell Egypt country chair, remain in the country, the spokesman said.

A spokesman for Apache Corp said that its Egypt office in Cairo was closed due to problems employees were having navigating around the city, but that its operations in West Egypt are not impacted by the crisis.

However "All our people are safe. Transocean, with 1000 employees and Diamond
Offshore, with 12, had evacuated the families of its expatriate workers from Egypt.

Other companies including Shell, BP, BG Group plc, Statoil ASA have also followed and are moving their staff from Egypt for safety reasons.

An estimated 1 million barrels a day of crude and refined products moved north through the Suez Canal to the mediterranean in 2009.

As much as 8.00,000 moved daily southbound into the Red Sea during the period according to the U.S.  Energy Information Administration.

"The real concern from an oil and gas perspective is the risk of political unrest extending to other parts of North Africa," Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch unit said in a report.

The shares of oil and gas producers with operations in Egypt and North Africa dropped.

Investors continued to be concerned that the turmoil may spread to other countries in the Persian Gulf, which controls more than 50 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves.

Egypt's benchmark  EGX 30 Index plummeted 16 per cent in its last two trading sessions.

The stock exchange was closed Monday.