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Tuesday, 24 November, 2009, 19:05 GMT  | last updated: Tuesday, 24 November, 2009, 19:52 GMT

Gulf boost: Shell eyes bigger plans offshore US.

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“Both the companies have reached consensus on several issues regarding the deal and supply and product offtake agreements have been signed. Essar will supply products to Shell from the refinery after the takeover,” said a source close to the development. He, however, refused to divulge the financial details of the deal saying negotiations were underway on that front.

Britain’s oil and gas giants, its mining companies and its arms manufacturers have a powerful and ongoing relationship with government and an effective lobbying influence in the office of successive Prime Ministers.

John

I like to share this with you. The results of 15 years of complete mismanagement.

Shell has now degenerated so much that we have to endure nonsense like this. Brinded has always believed in ‘processes’ regardless of the impact on business (mostly negative, remember ‘Overpromise-Underdelivery’?). Because nobody has dared to fire him, he has been around for eons and so his band of followers has increased and invariably Shell has deteriorated from a first class and caring organisation to a computerlike organism.

Staff MUST apply in a process called MOR (Managed Open Resourcing). The idea behind the much hated Open Resourcing is to generate competition and transparency. But if you take away the critical control mechanisms (= checks and balances), as has been the case since about 10 years ago, you have a system that is open to abuse and very prone to nepotism and cronyism.

One opens oneself completely by sending a well thought through CV that invariably contains a lot of personal information. In other words you become vulnerable in being transparent. Open Resourcing, and especially Managed OR demands that unsuccessful applicants receive feedback so they know where they stand in the picking order but more importantly, they know where the weak points are and how to improve those.

But MOR has become a total farce and you get replies like this below. Needless to say, this is for a very senior position. It feels like dealing with a call centre or worse, a Q&A session with a computer.

People are our most important asset…..

Please read the final sentence in the email below. And if I have received this, thousands of these messages will have been sent to others.

And before I forget, the incumbent in the job has simply been reconfirmed.

From: Duncan, Analies RB SI-HRA
To: Duncan, Analies RB SI-HRA
Subject: UPDATED: OR – Application for xxxxxxxx
Sent: Nov 23, 2009 16:49

Dear all,

Thank you for your interest in the  xxxxxx  job advertised as part of the EC-3 round.

We regret to advise that you have not been selected for this position.

Your application was reviewed by a Selection Panel consisting of senior managers, facilitated by HR. The Selection Process was set up and finalised according to the published People Principles. However due to the scale of the resourcing operation, the competition was very strong and you were not successful.

Should you need further clarification, please refer to the People Principles on the Transition 2009 website.

The scale of this operation also means that we have “system generated messages” like this one which can obviously feel not very personal but this is in no way meant to diminish the care and respect with which your application was handled.

Once again, thank you for your interest in the position and your effort for this application.

Regards,

Open Resourcing
https://myor2.shell.com

Please do not reply to this message as it is generated automatically.

ARTICLE ENDS

INFORMATION ON MALCOLM BRINDED WANTED NOTICE

November 24, 2009

Martin Waller: City diary

Last year, as part of the merger of the Dutch and British units of Royal Dutch Shell, their corporate headquarters was established in The Hague. This meant that all the head office functions, for example human resources, public relations (PR) and investor relations (IR), moved there, under the leadership of Jeroen van der Veer, the Dutch chief executive. However, it seems to have dawned on someone that most of the reporting on Shell is done by British or American media and bits of the PR side have been quietly moved back to London. Some now wonder how long IR can remain in The Hague. Most fund managers are also in London and the only significant investor in the Dutch capital is Queen Beatrix. She can probably be relied on to look after her own investments without too much help.

TIMES ARTICLE

LONDON (Dow Jones)–Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) said Monday it was making good progress with the Pearl GTL and the Qatargas 4 projects in Qatar.

“The Corrib gas dispute in many ways tells the story of modern Ireland,” Mr Murray said. “The result has been an erosion of civil liberties and the emergence of corporate rule, where multinationals appear to have greater rights than Irish citizens,” he said.

LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) said it had delayed one of its largest schemes by around a year with start-up for the $8 billion Qatargas 4 liquefied natural gas project now planned for late 2010 and the first cargo possibly pushed into 2011.

proactiveinvestors.com

Monday, November 23, 2009

Dutch oil supermajor Royal Dutch Shell (LSE: RDSB) updated the market on its progress in Qatar, where  it is developing the Pearl GTL and Qatargas 4 projects in cooperation with state owned Qatar Petroleum, which operates all oil and gas activities in the country. While Pearl GTL was progressing in line with expectations, the US$ 8 billion Qatargas 4 project has been delayed by 10 months with startup now planned for late 2010.

The company has now entered into the testing phase at Pearl GTL, having inaugurated the plant’s control room that comprises about 1,000 control cabinets hosting 179 servers programmed with 12 million lines of software code.

Testing will begin on the equipment that has already been installed at the plant with the rest of it still being under construction.

The construction schedule and budget were in line with expectations, the company said in the statement. Major construction at both Pearl and Qatargas 4 is scheduled to conclude by the end of 2010, with production ramp up from late 2010 into 2011. These deadlines represent a 10 month delay from Qatargas’ previously planned startup date.

Pearl is expected to reach 320,000 boe/d, while Qatargas 4 is expected to reach 280,000 boe/d.

Pearl GTL will use Shell’s proprietary Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) technology to convert some 1.6 bfc/d (billion cubic feet per day) of gas into clean burning oil products like gasoil, high specification lubricants base oils and chemicals feedstock, which are normally produced by oil refineries. The project is designed to produce 120,000 bbld (barrels per day) of natural gas liquids (NGLs) and ethane, and 140,000 bbld of GTL products.

All of the development costs of Pearl GTL are being covered by Shell.

The Qatargas 4 project is designed to convert 1.4 bcf/d of natural gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG) and NGLs, adding to Shell’s current LNG capacity of 18.5 million tonnes per year (mtpa). The project is expected to have a capacity of 7.8 mtpa of LNG and 70,000 boe/d (barrels of oil equivalent per day) of NGLs.

Shell has a 30% stake in Qatargas 4 with Qatar Petroleum holding the remaining stake in the project.

“I am very pleased with the progress that we are making with Pearl GTL and Qatargas 4…on today’s basis these two projects alone would represent over 10% of our world-wide production. Qatar underpins Shell’s growth plans to 2012 and will be a heartland for decades to come,” said Chief Executive of Shell Peter Vosier.

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