Posts from ‘August, 2009’

Hugh Mitchell, Shell’s Chief Human Resources & Corporate Officer and member of the Royal Dutch Shell Plc Executive Committee

By John Donovan

We are in possession of current Shell internal emails involving senior Royal Dutch Shell executives, including Tom Botts Shell’s Downstream Executive Vice President for Global Manufacturing and Hugh Mitchell, Chief Human Resources & Corporate Officer (and member of the Royal Dutch Shell Plc Executive Committee).

The emails reveal disgust at how the proposed sale of the Shell Stanlow Refinery was leaked to the press and refer to the “despicable” treatment of the Stanlow workforce.

Once again, Shell employees are being sold like slaves in a public auction. Last time it was 3,000 Shell IT staff.

An article containing detailed information will be published on royaldutchshellplc.com later today.

It will contain comment from Shell insider sources whose identities will of course remain secret.

It must be dawning on Shell employees around the globe that they are working for a particularly ruthless and callous senior management, which views employees as mere commodities.

(Wall Street Journal image of Alfred Donovan, the 92 year old co-owner of the website royaldutchshellplc.com.)

We have assembled by far the worlds largest online library of Shell related news articles, confidential Shell documents and Shell internal email correspondence leaked to us by insider sources. Our readers appetite for Shell news and insider information is fed by a network of Shell insider sources around the globe. Emails from senior executives including Peter Voser have been supplied to us on the day they were sent. We have even published the top secret minutes of meetings held by its most senior executives.

Over 24,500 articles/docs are stored here and on our sister website: www.ShellNews.net

17,300 can be searched on this website by using our SEARCH facility.

For access to over 7,200 further articles/documents, click on the link below

http://shell2004.com/blog/royal_dutch_shell_plc-news-archive-2004-2005.htm

There are no charges of any kind.

Whatever you think of the deal to allow the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to end his days with his family in Libya, British business interests are a big factor. Energy companies such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell and BG have been making steady inroads into Libya, where there are an estimated 44bn barrels of crude beneath the desert sands…

Exxon, BP, Shell, Conoco Phillips, Total and Chevron have in the past 18 months, according to figures compiled by the investment bank Jefferies Broadview, spent $75 billion on share buybacks, which are designed to prop up share prices by reducing the amount traded in the market. That comes on top of $54 billion paid out in dividends over the same period.

So, shortly after Libya accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack in 2003 and agreed to compensate the families of the victims, Britain put down a resolution to remove the sanctions and, the following year, Mr Blair extended “the hand of friendship” to Colonel Gaddafi, who has now ruled Libya for 40 years. Huge trade deals followed for BP, Shell and others.

Richard Wiseman, Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer (Photo supplied by him for display on this website)

EMAIL MESSAGE SENT BY JOHN DONOVAN TO OVER 400 SENIOR SHELL EXECUTIVES

Congratulations!

I am writing to offer our best wishes on your appointment/new title, as announced on our website royaldutchshellplc.com within the lists of Shell senior executive appointments we published on 22 June and 3 August.

The unauthorised publication of leaked Shell confidential information on our site has become a news event in its own right, regularly reported by The Wall Street Journal and other news organisations.

In a front page lead story in the Financial Times, our site was credited with breaking news of the restructuring plans of Peter Voser. Our role was acknowledged in many other news stories including, for example, the London Evening Standard which reported:

“Meanwhile, staff flocked to Royaldutchshell.com to attack the group’s management.”

Reuters also acknowledged “The Royaldutchshellplc.com website was the first to reveal news of the planned restructuring.”

Our insider sources know that we will protect anonymity.  If you ever feel the need to supply information, please contact me and I will advise on setting up secure communications.

SHELL BLOG

Comments posted by Shell employees on our “Shell Blog” have been quoted in many news articles.

If you want to keep in touch with uncensored grassroots opinion of Shell stakeholders, I would strongly recommend regular visits to the facility, as the comments are often insightful and reflect all shades of opinion. Why not post your own views? You can do so anonymously. What do you think about Shell executives being forced to reapply for their jobs? What do you make of the callous comment by Peter Voser that asking staff to reapply had been “an interesting exercise“?

You are also welcome to supply Shell related articles for unedited publication under your own name. We have published numerous articles on this basis from eminent Shell retirees, Shell executive Paddy Briggs, Shell International HSE Group Auditor, Bill Campbell, and Royal Dutch Shell Global Chief Petroleum Engineer, Iain Percival.

The Shell Blog has replaced “Tell Shell”, the official Shell Internet forum for open and lively debate, “temporarily suspended” (permanently) after we exposed the secret censorship of postings considered too open and too lively.

Shell General Counsel Richard Wiseman (now RDS Plc Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer) confirmed to us in an email dated 11 November 2005 Shell’s censorship of Tell Shell postings.

In the same email, Mr Wiseman stated:

The extraordinary tolerance shown to your internet activities ought to demonstrate better than anything else the fact that we are uninterested in, and unmoved by, your current activities

Richard Wiseman subsequently, at his own initiative, sent us an updated photograph of himself to display on our website.

In a further development revealing the truth, as opposed to the spin, we found out from documents obtained under the Data Protection Act that Shell set up a team in an attempt to counter our activities. The relevant internal email exposes the hostility towards us and the fact that it is is held in check by fear of reprisal on our part. If you find this difficult to believe, read the email.

So much for being uninterested and unmoved!

SAKHALIN-2

General David Patton resigned as Project Director of SEIC after we obtained a leaked email from him to his troops, which ended up as a major story in the FT newspaper. It was not however just a question of Shell being once again humiliated and its reputation damaged. Shell also lost a ton of money – literally billions of dollars – as a direct result of our intervention in the Sakhalin-2 project. The Russian government minister Oleg Mitvol publicly acknowledged our pivotal role in supplying leaked Shell internal email correspondence which turned out to be the only evidence he had to support a threatened $10 billion lawsuit against Shell. The evidence, which included high level Shell internal emails, cost Shell its majority stake in the venture.

THE FUTURE

Given the number of disgruntled employees certain to be generated from the latest transformation process, we anticipate even more leaks and revelations in coming months.

We look forward to our continued role as the unofficial Shell website for Shell employees and will contact you with news of interesting developments from time to time.

In the meantime, we wish you well in your new appointment.

Best Regards,

John Donovan

Malcolm Brinded, Royal Dutch Shell Executive director of Upstream International

By John Donovan

In view of current events, it is timely to consider the real motives of the UK government’s complicity in the release of the Lockerbie bomber – a development said to be “casting a long shadow over relations between Britain and United States, where senior figures in the Obama Administration have voiced dismay over the Government’s failure to take a stand.”

The White House condemned the decision by Scottish authorities to release al-Megrahi as “outrageous and disgusting”. A senior US official said: “The UK has been extraordinarily silent on this issue.”

The compilation of articles accessible below provide the answer to why Blair, Brown, and Brinded, have sucked up to the Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi ultimately responsible for the Pan-Am 103 bombing and other terrorist atrocities. They include the murder of a British police constable Yvonne Fletcher shot outside the Libyan Embassy in London while policing an anti-Gaddafi demonstration. A burst of machine-gun fire from within the building was suspected of killing her, but Libyan diplomats asserted their diplomatic immunity and were repatriated. The incident led to the breaking off of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya for over a decade. (paragraph includes extracts from Wikipedia article)

The motive for the current duplicity and hypocrisy is of course the same as for the invasion of Iraq: Oil and Gas.

COMPILATION OF ARTICLES

Related current articles…

The Foreign Office has strongly denied claims by Gaddafi’s son that Abdelbasset al Megrahi’s release was linked to lucrative trade deals with Britain. (Sky News)

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif, claimed the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, was linked to trade deals between Britain and Libya. (Telegraph)

Lord Mandelson faces the prospect of a sleaze investigation after he met Colonel Gaddafi’s son days before it emerged that the Lockerbie bomber was to be freed. (Daily Mail)

Gaddafi hugs Lockerbie bomber and thanks Britain (Reuters)

Extract: European governments including Britain’s are lobbying hard for business in Libya as it emerges from years of sanctions. Oil companies such as BP and Shell are among several British firms hoping to make big profits in the desert country.

“Shell has been stalking the Libyans ever since relations thawed”

Shortly after the former Prime Minister Tony Blair flew to Libya to meet Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2007, BG Group, Shell and BP secured substantial contracts with Libya.

Shell and Exxon say their advances will make tar sands no more polluting than conventional wells in such locales as Texas and the North Sea. Whether that proves true may affect the marketability of crude from Western Canada’s tar-soaked bogs, home of crude worth more than $10 trillion at current market prices, the largest oil deposits outside Saudi Arabia.