News and information on Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
In Iraq, companies such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and Total will now receive stakes of 75 per cent rather than 49 per cent if their bid wins. Iraq has also lowered the production targets it initially demanded that companies achieved before they were paid for their work.
Click to continue reading “Iraq takes lead by easing terms for oil projects”
Enron, Lehman Brothers, Royal Bank of Scotland…Royal Dutch Shell – what have these corporations got in common? Quite a lot actually but what I was thinking of in particular is that they all have issued glossy and self-promoting documents extolling their “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) – and all of them have been brought to their knees by the grotesquely dysfunctional actions of their most senior executives. 
I have written before about the illusionary myth that is CSR and I suppose that the one good thing that might come out of the global financial crisis is that none us will ever again trust the disingenuous garbage that corporations choose to throw at us from time to time. The idea that, say, a tobacco giant like BAT can be socially responsible is absurd but they still peddle this nonsense even though they surely can’t expect us to believe it. Do they really believe it themselves? – I doubt it.
But of all the current areas of public disquiet about the behaviour of the top men in multinational corporations it is the obscenely high levels of remuneration that they pay themselves that comes out top. Here is how it works. The Board of Directors appoints one of their number – usually a Non Executive Director – to head up some sort of Remuneration Committee. That Committee is charged with ensuring that the Executive compensation of the CEO and his colleagues is competitive with the remuneration of executives in other corporations. If it isn’t then it is adjusted – always upwards of course! The fallacy of this whole process is for all to see – it creates a spiral of remuneration excesses. To illustrate this I looked back ten year to the late 1990s when I was a middle ranking Shell executive and Mark Moody-Stuart was the CEO. At that time Mark was paid ten times what I was paid. Fair enough you might think – he had a pretty big job. Roll forward to today and the same ratio is now fifty to one! If I was in the same job in Shell, and allowing for inflation of my salary as well, Jeroen van der Veer would be paid at least fifty times what I would be paid – probably much more than this.
But as we have seen with the case of Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS the excess doesn’t stop even when a failed CEO is unceremoniously booted out of his job. Sir Fred qualifies for a pension of £693,000 a year – an entitlement that has caused a furore in Britain, and understandably so. And back in 2002 Sir Philip Watts’ (shown in photograph) severance payment following his forced removal as Managing Director of Shell consisted of a lump sum payment of £1,057,971 and an (index linked) pension of £584,070 per annum. Goodwin and Watts and their ilk would no doubt have justified their extraordinary levels of remuneration by reference to “the market” – that spiral of excess that I described above. And perhaps they would also have said that extremely high levels of responsbility require extremely high rewards – and perhaps they do, but only if these responsibilities are discharged with competence and with honour – which in both their cases certainly did not happen.
Morning Edition, February 27, 2009 · As oil companies plan for the future, they are expecting prices and demand to be higher. Oil company executives were on Capitol Hill this week to discuss offshore drilling, which they say needs to be part of America’s long-term energy policy. Shell Oil Company President Marvin Odum tells Steve Inskeep that he expects demand throughout the world to double by 2050.
Video clip available at… npr
Steamboat Springs — The Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District filed a statement of opposition on Friday to Shell Frontier Oil and Gas’ Dec. 30 request for substantial water rights on the Yampa River.
Click to continue reading “Water district opposes Shell Oil request”
The only woman to enter the top 20 pensions list was Linda Cook, Shell’s gas and power boss. Ranked number 83 on the Forbes list of the world’s most powerful women recently, she is under 50 but already looking forward to a pension of £513,057.
Click to continue reading “Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer to receive pension of £828,923 a year”
OTTAWA -(Dow Jones)- Project costs for a 100,000-barrel-a-day expansion at Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s (RDSA) Athabasca Oil Sands Project have climbed to $13.7 billion, partner Chevron Corp.(CVX) said in a filing with the SEC.
Click to continue reading “Athabasca Oil Sands Expansion Costs Jump To $13.7 Billion”
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest company, has amassed a $207 billion stockpile of its own shares that exceeds the market value of all but one of its publicly traded rivals.
Click to continue reading “Exxon’s $207 Billion Shares Cache More Valuable Than Shell, BP”
Oil giants BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil plan to invest upward of $30 billion apiece this year to gather assets, either through the drill bit or through buying outfits that run out of cash and refinance options.
Oil and natural gas development off the coast of Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East could have forced endangered whales to leave their habitat in the area, a local WWF spokesperson said on Thursday.
Click to continue reading “WWF says whales leaving Sakhalin waters due to oil, gas projects”
In yet another example of Kremlin energy politics that so unsettle Western investors, in late 2006 Gazprom wrested control of the huge oil and gas field from Shell after it was accused of breaking environmental laws. Gazprom then became the majority owner.
Click to continue reading “DALY: Russia eyes Asia as gas customer”
: Dear IMBer, or IBMer, or whatever - if you can explain to me the difference between the two quoted press release examples of geophysical applications in reasoned scientific terms, I shall be more than happy to admit to being a amateur geophysicist (not geologist). Perhaps it is you who is confused. Geophysics and Geology are not the same - close bed fellows, yes - but not the same. If so, then it is you who should get out your needles, wool and get on with "one plain, two purl" rather than embarking on such a commentary.
: Shellwaarbenjijnu has no clue what he/she is talking about. Probably some amateur geologist who wants to be important on the blog. Try to stick to your knitting!
: Paying over 7 mln $ to get rid of this monster of a woman shows how deeply Shell has sunk. She was a stealer of ideas. She was the ultimate token woman, a disgrace to her gender and it has put off many high quality women to pursue a career in Shell. Her disgusting behaviour of being the slave of Watts was evident to all. This latest scandal makes it clear she should never have been promoted to were she ended up. Another costly mistake of Shell. And the top echelon? They know no shame anymore and carry on with more spin stories as usual.
: Perhaps Voser will pull the same trick on Brinded as Watts did on v.d.Vijver. Watts announced that reserves would grow by 5% and that Walter would explain how.... The rest is history. I can only hope that history will repeat itself and Brinded finally gets fired for his gross underperformance and sustained bullshit. Perhaps I have said so before: never trust a man with facial hair.... I shall be watching the announcements how they will increase production with great interest.
: THE ARTICLE "Donovan email to Gavin White, Shell International Limited: 10 March 2010" has been updated with a self-explanatory email reply received on 11 March from Richard Wiseman, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer, Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
: The Forbes article implies that by stopping sales of gasoline to Iran, Shell is complying with US sanctions. Shell's investments in the upstream sector in Iran are not mentioned, even though these are of far greater significance for both Shell and the Iranians.
: Amnesty International has been an informed and courageous critic of Human Rights abuses around the world for many decades and they are certainly not adverse to criticising governments in Nigeria, Burma, Zimbabwe and all around the world. The point about international companies like Shell is that they have a choice. They are not obliged to operate anywhere if they find that the local conditions are in conflict with their principles. Amnesty’s recent criticisms of Shell have certainly been strong and I am aware that in Shell there is a feeling that they have been unfair and to some extent uninformed. So a dialogue between Amnesty and Shell is very much to be welcomed. Amnesty is a highly respected organisation – indeed a former top executive of Shell, Sir Geoffrey Chandler, was a senior officer of Amnesty in his post Shell years.
: Same old, same old. Amnesty International and their human rights again go for the soft underbelly of the international companies rather than the real problem in Nigeia which is their corrupt Government. Good on Shell for attending and agrreing to being questioned. BUT, surprise, surprise nobody from the Nigerian Government (perhaps they didn't get enough of a bribe to appear or perhaps Amnesty knew they would get nowhere with them). Pollution in the Niger Delta remains a problem, albeit that conditions are slowly improving. Living conditions, infrastructure and most other normal day-to-day things should be the responsibility of the corrupt Government not international oil companies. These evil governments such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Burma need to be bought down by the UN so that their people might have a better chance of a reasonable life.
: Very polite correspondence between Wiseman and the Donovans. I estimate Wiseman's hourly internal tariff at around 500 U$ per hour (his salary plus support plus extensive overheads). Over the years Shell must have spent a fortune discussing the Donovans, putting the most expensive lawyers on the case, and developing policy how to battle them. It becomes Churchillian: 'we will fight them on the web, and in the courtrooms, and in their own offices and on the streets. But we wil NEVER surrender. With unlimited funds this maybe so, but it is wasting shareholders money and it solves nothing. I do not see the Donovans give up anytime soon. So perhaps a new paradigm needs to be developed? Any ordinary man or woman at the coalface would solve this problem within minutes and for less money than what is being burned now. But the Shell kings are no ordinary people, they live in cloud cuckoo land. I will keep following with great interest how all this develops, it is even better than the daily Dilbert!!!
: W.E. Pratt knew it already a hundred years ago when he said "Oil is found in the minds of men" But he was one of the founders of the Standard Oil company, whereas the people who try to make us believe that IBM can come to the rescue of Shell appear to be only good at getting rid of their most experienced minds.
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