IR magazine

An anonymous group of CSR-crusaders are performing anti-investor relations for Royal Dutch Shell.

A database of the personal details of Shell employees and contractors has been leaked by  environmental and human rights campaign groups. The document, confirmed as genuine but out of date by Shell, contains the personal details of 176,000 individuals. Released on the evening of February 11, it comes with a 170-page ‘covering note’ from the vigilantes including plans for a campaign to educate the company’s institutional investors.

The covering note claims that all of Shell’s institutional investors are oblivious to the company’s supposedly maleficent activities in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. As the Financial Times notes, these claims are already well-known and it is unlikely that they would be news to investors.

If institutional investors were not aware of Shell’s difficulties in Nigeria, they should not be surprised by the covering note’s call for a change in policy. ‘Petroleum giant accused of poor corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Africa’ is a well-worn story. Nor does the appeal to CSR appear to affect investor behavior. The company’s share price fell slightly with the news, hitting £17.26 on Friday, down from January’s high of £19.50, but has recovered today.

SOURCE ARTICLE

LONDON (Reuters) – Consolidation is needed in the global oil refining sector, the chief economist of BP Plc said on Monday, indicating more tough decisions ahead for an industry beset by poor margins.

upstreamonline.com

Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell could sell more than $10 billion of assets including its North Sea oilfields operations, sources close to the company are reported to have said.

Upstream staff 15 February 2010 01:30 GMT

While most of the cuts are expected to come from the company’s downstream operations, which were hit hard during the global economic crisis, Shell is also is looking at a $5 billion disposal program for onshore fields in Nigeria, London’s Sunday Times newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources.

Shell has hired Credit Suisse to sell its $1 billion European liquefied petroleum gas arm, and first-round bids of about $500 million have also been lodged for a network of petrol stations across Africa, Reuters reported the paper said.

Shell, Europe’s second-largest oil company by market value, declined to comment.

It pledged $1 billion in cost cuts and to shave 1000 jobs in 2010, and upped its target for refinery divestments when it posted a 75% drop in fourth-quarter profits earlier this month.

Shell is also contemplating an exit from Sweden, and a $1.2 billion auction of three European refineries, the paper said, according to the Reuters report.

Published: 15 February 2010 01:30 GMT

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Multinational Shell “colluded” with Austrian oil company OMV by restricting the gas and oil they allowed to be produced from the Pohokura gas field in competition with gas from the Maui field, in which Shell holds a major stake, the Todd family claimed on Monday.

Written by Emmanuel Carabott on February 15, 2010 – 4:35 pm

This week the BBC reported that someone has disclosed contact details for 170,000 of Shell’s employees world wide. The disclosure comes with a note claiming it is being disclosed by former employees who can’t stand the damage the company is doing to the environment.  Shell has in turn downplayed the event claiming that the information disclosed does not pose a security risk to its employees since it does not include employee’s addresses.

Following this statement I really hope that such a statement is simply damage control on Shell’s part and that it does not truly believe the statement the company released. Whenever an organization is hit with something like this the implications are enormous and it’s definitely not something to take lightly. While the details published included names and phone numbers for the most part there is no guarantee that whoever perpetrated the leak doesn’t have access to additional information. Furthermore even with such limited information such as name and contact numbers a social engineer can use that information very effectively to infiltrate the organization.

Another thing Shell should definitely be concerned over is, if the attacker managed to get access to this data what else did he manage to get his hands on? How will this affect its workforce?  Will the resulting harassment lead to people leaving the company? Will the breach mean that some possible future employees will think twice before the joining the company fearing for their privacy? What about lost business? It is definitely to be expected that some companies will worry about their contractual and financial details being safe with the company! This can lead to lost deals and revenue.

What is definite is that such a breach causes one huge PR nightmare that will not go away by downplaying the breach; downplaying,  if anything, will make the situation worst.

As the proverb goes, prevention is better than cure and this was never more so than in the realm of security.  Once such a breach occurs the damage is done. Contingencies may limit the damage a little but in any case the resulting fall out is likely to be more expensive than protecting the system in the first place. I am obviously not claiming that Shell didn’t do its best to protect its data, that’s something I do not know and neither do I have a way of knowing. What I am trying to say is that one should do his best to avoid such an unfortunite situation. If one is to believe the disclosed letter, the attack was perpetrated by insiders. While Shell itself is sceptic of this claim it is really not that hard to believe. Time and time again researchers have placed insider threats very high on the security risks organization’s face.  Worse yet, often organizations spend the majority of their security budget protecting the inside from the outside and not the inside from itself. One would obviously do very well to remember that in security one loses as soon as the weakest link is compromised and not after the strongest measures fall.

Stories such as this should be an effective cautionary tale of what security is meant to avoid. While investing in end point security, the perimeter and access control might not bring any tangible ROI in the short term, if that one time cost can avoid an unpleasant situation such as this it would have more than paid for itself.

A spokesperson for the ICO said: “Shell has notified us of a security breach regarding a significant amount of people’s personal details. We are looking into how this data breach occurred and will decide what, if any regulatory action, is required.” Shell – if it is found guilty – may escape lightly. Fines levied by the ICO for failing to protect against the loss of personal data tend to be under £5,000.

Evening Express: Group claims responsibility for ‘inside job’ at oil giant

PROBE: Oil firm Shell said an investigation would be launched into the data leak.

DAMAGING: Undercover activists could be working at Shell’s Aberdeen base in Altens.

By Jennifer McKiernan

Published: 15/02/2010

A DATA leak endangering oil workers was committed by undercover environmental activists, it has been claimed.

The Evening Express told how a database containing more than 100,000 personal details about Shell employees and contractors was leaked from the oil firm.

A 116-strong group claiming to be full-time Shell employees – some of whom could be working in Aberdeen – have claimed responsibility for the data leak.

And the group claims the Shell database leak was an organised “inside job” to highlight alleged human rights abuses in oil-rich Nigeria.

jmckiernan@ajl.co.uk

finally the internal tension of Shell’s Nigerian problem has, it seems, gone public

Published by Andy Rowell February 15th, 2010

Having written about Shell in Nigeria for over fifteen years, we have known that there was huge internal disquiet about the company’s operations in the country.

In the aftermath of the murder of Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995, Shell was pilloried in the international press for being complicit in his death and for being an integral part of the vortex of violence tearing the Niger Delta apart.

Amidst the criticism, the company has always tried to keep its employees on side. The morning after Ken’s murder a letter was on the desk of every Shell employee telling them how Shell was not to blame for his death.

Over a decade may have passed, but Shell has not managed to extricate itself from the violence of the Niger Delta.   And finally the internal tension of Shell’s Nigerian problem has, it seems, gone public.

Late last week a letter was supposedly leaked from 116 employees from Shell’s core countries: The UK, The Netherlands, and the US and sent to various environmental groups. It was then sent to the Financial Times. What has made the headlines is that fact that the letter was leaked with all the email contacts of Shell’s 170,000 staff.

The actual content of the letter has been glossed over in the furore over data protection.

If the remarkable letter is genuine and I stress we do not know if it is yet, it is truly remarkable.

In the letter, the employees say they are remaining anonymous “so that we don’t get fired by Shell’s brutal elite”. But they are asking for “to push for meaningful, sustained change on behalf of Shell’s exploited and abused victims in Nigeria.”

The letter says: “We are extremely concerned regarding Shell’s behaviour in Nigeria that they label “disgusting” and “repugnant.”

They do not mix their words and accuse Shell being “responsible for mass murder and human rights abuses against many different ethnic groups and communities in Nigeria through Shell’s assistance, employment, and financing of various military and paramilitary groups.”

“From as recently as 1999 to today, more than 20 communities have been wiped out completely and more than 50,000 people killed in the Niger Delta by a Shell-sponsored military,” they say.

“Ever since Shell started producing oil in Nigeria in the late 1950’s” they argue “it has operated in Nigeria with no respect for people and the environment. Any improvement in Shell’s operation has been insufficient, and to this day, Shell is still operating in a very abusive fashion in Nigeria.”

“We are disgusted by the injustices that Shell is committing in Nigeria. Shell’s repugnant behavior in Nigeria includes:

•    general environmental abuses (such as gas flaring, oil spills, and improper oil waste disposal);

•    unacceptable human rights violations (such as condoning / employing brutal military oppression); as well

•    as the massive poverty and suffering that engulfs the vast majority of Nigeria due to mismanagment

•    and waste from Shell’s production revenues to the government.

There is nothing new about these accusations – NGOs have been levelling them at Shell since the early nineties. But what is new is that the criticism is coming from within not from outside.

Finally the internal disquiet has become external disquiet.

Take one of the most emotive subjects: gas flaring. A whole plethora of Nigerian communities and environmental groups have been arguing for years to switch off the flares. But Shell has refused to do so.

But according to the employees: “The best solution with regards to gas flaring is to enforce an immediate end to gas flaring and an end to exploration and new oil field development until Shell constructs appropriate facilities for the utilization of all associated gas”.

Shell employees calling for an immediate end to gas flaring – this is a big step forward.

The employees argue that “It is of our opinion that the only people who know the truths as to what Shell is doing in Nigeria are a few activist groups, Shell’s brutal management elite, and nobody else.”

However they argue that “the reality is that Shell will do next to nothing (or very close to nothing) for as long as it can, for as long as it can get away with it. We strongly believe that general public (and insider) ignorance and apathy is by far the largest reason why Shell can keep getting away with the way it is behaving in Nigeria.”

They argue that “the only way to have real, meaningful change within Shell is to launch and sustain a peaceful Royal Dutch Shell  Corporate Revolution”, that includes a public boycott of Shell’s products, and investor disinvestment.

Meanwhile Shell said that it does not believe the letter is genuine.

But then Shell would say that, wouldn’t it…

We may never know if it is genuine, but if it is, it shows the level of concern inside Shell.

SOURCE ARTICLE

The Register

Posted in IT Director, 15th February 2010 09:20 GMT

By John Oates

A lobby group that includes BP and Shell in its membership has launched a legal challenge against low-carbon legislation in California that in effect rules out the use of oil from Canadian tar sands. The action by the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA) comes amid growing political, investor and consumer pressure on US oil companies not to participate in the carbon-intensive tar sands of Alberta.