http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/991231/i9.html

Friday December 31, 11:43 am Eastern Time

No bugs for Australian oil refineries, producers

SYDNEY, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Australia's four oil refiners said on Saturday the Y2K computer bug had not affected their operating systems and production was proceeding as normal.

Esso Australia (NYSE:XOM - news), the operator and half owner of the 200,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Bass Strait oilfields off the southeast coast of Australia, also said it was operating free of any Y2K problems.

``No issues here whatsoever,'' said Esso spokesman Ron Webb.

The BHP Co Ltd (Australia:BHP.AX - news) is the other half owner of the Bass Strait fields.

``We have seen absolutely no problems,'' said Mobil Australia (NYSE:XOM - news) spokesman Alan Bailey.

The company operates the 110,000-bpd Altona refinery west of Melbourne and the 72,000-bpd Port Stanvac refinery in Adelaide.

Caltex Australia Ltd (Australia:CTX.AX - news), which has a Y2K crisis room in operation, said operations had not been affected.

``At this stage all systems within Caltex Australia are okay and no problems to report. There have been no problems from our overseas affiliates,'' a recorded message from the operations room said.

Caltex, which is equally owned by Chevron Corp (NYSE:CHV - news) and Texaco Inc (NYSE:TX - news), operates the 100,000 barrels-per-day Lytton refinery in Queensland and the 116,000 bpd Kurnell refinery on Sydney's southern shores.

Rob Hart, a spokesman for Shell Australia (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: SHEL.L), said the company did not face any Y2K problems in Australia, or elsewhere in the region.

``All our refiners, even Shell Japan, have said no problems,'' Hart said. Shell operates the 125,000-bpd Geelong refinery west of Melbourne and the 86,000-bpd Clyde refinery in Sydney. BP Australia (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: BPA.L) said it was waiting for feedback from its operations in Western Australia but elsewhere there were no problems to report.

``We have had green lights from New Zealand, the east coast of Australia, Adelaide, and we are waiting for feedback from Perth. But on that basis we are not expecting anything unusual there,'' said BP external affairs director Ian Fliedner.

BP Australia operates the 80,000-bpd Bulwer Island refinery in Queensland and the 138,500-bpd Kwinana refinery near Perth.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), December 31, 1999

Answers

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/ 991231/i8.html

Friday December 31, 11:35 am Eastern Time

Mobil Singapore says refinery unaffected by Y2K

SINGAPORE, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Mobil Singapore said on Saturday that its refinery operations were running normally after entering the new year.

``The refinery is running fine,'' a Mobil spokeswoman told Reuters after the clock struct midnight to herald January 1, 2000.

    Mobil operates a 300,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) 
refinery in
Jurong.
    Mobil recently merged with Exxon to form Exxon Mobil Corp
(NYSE:XOM - news).
    

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), December 31, 1999.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/ 991231/hm.html

e="Get Quotes">Friday December 31, 11:15 am Eastern Time

US major oils say no Y2K problems in Far East ops

NEW YORK, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM - news), the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said Friday it had no reports of problems related to the millennium bug in any of its operations, including its operations in the Far East where the year 2000 has already begun.

``We have forty command centers throughout the world and there are no reports of any glitches in any operations, including refineries, service stations, and terminals in the Far East. At this point in time, everything is running fine,'' said Tom Cirigliano, a spokesman for the company.

The millennium, or Y2K, bug stems from mainly older computer systems which were programmed to read only the last two digits of a year. If the glitch is left uncorrected, it is feared systems will misread 2000 as 1900, causing systems to malfunction or even crash.

ExxonMobil has operations in Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore.

Caltex, a joint venture between U.S. oil majors Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CHV - news) and Texaco Inc. (NYSE:TX - news), also had no problems related to the new year.

``Caltex operations in Australia, New Zealand and Korea have rolled over with the new year and all operations are running smoothly,'' said Tyra Metoyer, a spokeswoman for Texaco.

Caltex has operations in over 60 countries in the Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East regions.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), December 31, 1999.

What can I say? Woo hoo!

Thanks Hoff!

Jonathan

-A computer glitch yadda yadda-

-- Jonathan Latimer (latimer@q-a.net), December 31, 1999.

Well HOT DAMN!!! I hope these reports are accurate; they sound good. Perhaps it was the uh testing that busted stuff? Wishful thinking huh? Gotta wait it out...

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), December 31, 1999.

What wonderful news! I depend on my vehicle to commute to work. (There is no other alternative here.) I was so worried that I would be unable to make a living!

-- anon (anon@anon.calm), December 31, 1999.

Thanks for these posts, Hoffmeister.

Yes, very good news. Also, Asia has now rolled over without any widespread infrastructure problems being reported. The one sour note is that CBS News just reported a possible problem in the monitoring system at a nuclear reactor outside of Tokyo.

Moscow just rolled over without reported incident.

All in all, quite good so far. Of course, even Koskinen concedes that it's several days too early to declare victory on the Y2K infrastructure front, but based on the "early returns" I'd say there's excellent reason to hope that the infrastructure/embedded system threat has been greatly exaggerated. Let's hope the same eventually turns out to be true about the enterprisewide mainframe systems, networked PCs, etc. Whatever our personal analyses of Y2K have been to date, we should all be rooting for a boring outcome to Y2K. (I know about boring outcomes: witness the "punch lines" to my jokes.)

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), December 31, 1999.

Is there any indication of when these press releases were written? Was it, say, any time in the past three months? And do we have any idea of the legal liability, or lack thereof, of those making such announcements at this time... in case they should prove to be somewhat... inaccurate?

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), December 31, 1999.

Keep clutching for straws, Lane.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), December 31, 1999.