Posts from ‘February, 2010’

Published below is more email correspondence with Richard Wiseman, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. It concerns the Shell Global Address Book containing company and personal contact information for over 100,000 employees. I will leave to readers to decide whether Mr Wiseman is fit for purpose in his current role.

Published below is self-explanatory email correspondence involving Keith Ruddock, General Counsel, Upstream International, Shell International B.V. The emails are followed by a statement from Bill Campbell, the former HSE Group Auditor of Shell International. His statement is the subject of the emails.

By James Herron
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

09 Feb 2010 15.28 GMT

LONDON (Dow Jones)–A database containing contact details of tens of thousands of employees of Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) was passed to non-governmental organizations critical of the company and environmental groups that have targeted it in past protests, people familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

The database contains contact details, including mobile phone numbers and home postcodes, for every Shell employee, workers at the company’s joint ventures and some contractors. It isn’t clear if the groups will take any action with the data they received, the people told Dow Jones Newswires.

Shell wasn’t immediately able to comment.

“We are investigating and are raising this theft of information with the relevant data protection authorities…if you receive any nuisance telephone calls or emails then please contact your line manager, HR or security,” wrote Shell’s Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer Richard Wiseman, in an internal Shell memorandum posted on the Web site of John Donovan, a blogger critical of the company.

According to emails seen by Dow Jones, the leaked data could also compromise the personal safety of Shell workers. It includes the details of employees in dangerous locations like Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where Shell workers have been kidnapped.

“Some of the information is sensitive from the security point of view and in some cases personal safety could be compromised by its publication,” Wiseman wrote in an email to Donovan, whose blog www.royaldutchshellplc.com also received a copy of the data, but has decided not to publish it.

According to another email seen by Dow Jones Newswires, the data was leaked by a group of Shell employees in the U.K., the U.S. and the Netherlands who believe the company is abusing the environment and human rights in Nigeria.

Shell has recently finished a major restructuring program during which many employees had to re-apply for their own jobs and 5,000 people were made redundant. Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser said there will be another 1,000 job cuts this year aimed at cutting costs by $1 billion and improving profitability.

-By James Herron, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 (0)20 7842 9317; james.herron@dowjones.com

James Herron
Reporter – Energy
London Bureau
Dow Jones Newswires, contributing to the Wall St Journal
Email: james.herron@dowjones.com

SOURCE ARTICLE

Royal Dutch Shell, the oil company that suffered a humiliating defeat by shareholders on pay last year, made a mistake by under-estimating how fast the mood on executive salaries was changing, according to the new head of its remuneration committee.

In his first comments in his new role, Hans Wijers, chief executive of paint company Akzo Nobel and a former Dutch economics minister, said the Anglo-Dutch oil major had failed to see how tensions over bankers’ pay had increased investors’ concerns about executive pay.

The force of the rebellion left Shell directors shocked in spite of a previous revolt against pay the year before. Jorma Ollila, chairman, vowed not to make the same mistake again and to reform its pay policy.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

FULL FT ARTICLE (SUBSCRIPTION)

LEAKED SHELL INTERNAL WARNING FROM ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC CHIEF ETHICS & COMPLIANCE OFFICER RICHARD WISEMAN (RIGHT) REGARDING THE LEAK OF THE SHELL GLOBAL ADDRESS BOOK:

I do not feel that there is any need to be alarmed

Colleagues,

I am writing to inform you of an incident involving misuse of company data.

It has become clear recently that the Global Address List, containing contact information of everyone in Shell and some contractors, joint ventures and other third parties, has been downloaded without authorisation and distributed to some external parties.  We do not know who did this.   We are investigating and are raising this theft of information with the relevant data protection authorities.  The incident is receiving some media coverage.

I do not feel that there is any need to be alarmed.  However, as a precaution, if you receive any nuisance telephone calls or e-mails then please contact your line manager, HR or security.

Whilst writing about this incident, I would like to take the opportunity to remind us all of the requirements of the Code of Conduct relating to Information Management, including data privacy and communications.

Richard Wiseman
Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer

COMMENT BY JOHN DONOVAN

I note an important inconsistency between what Richard Wiseman is saying to Shell employees compared with what he has said to me in email correspondence.  Mr Wiseman claimed in an email that there is a risk to the personal safety not only to Shell employees but “considerable numbers of people not employed by Shell but who are employed by third parties”.  Contrast this with his message to Shell employees published above. Mr Wiseman does not mention any personal risk to the safety of people listed in the directory. Instead, the worst potential consequent of the database leak is downplayed to the possibility of the listed people receiving nuisance phone calls. So who is Mr Wiseman attempting to mislead: me, or over 100,000 people in the Global Address List?

POSTINGS TODAY ON SHELL BLOG…

It is Shell that has acted in a cavalier way with other people’s personal data, otherwise the Shell Address Book could not have been circulated to hostile parties, including Nigerian activists.

Posting by “Anonymous”
on Feb 7th, 2010 at 2:55 pm

Sun Feb 7, 2010 11:44am GMT

LAGOS, Feb 7 (Reuters) – A Nigerian militant group said on Sunday it had attacked a major Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) oil pipeline in the Niger Delta but the Anglo-Dutch company said it had no reports of any such sabotage on its infrastructure.

The Joint Revolutionary Council, a coalition of ex-militants and community leaders, said in a statement it had disabled a trunk line in the Obunoma area of Rivers state connecting several flow stations to the Bonny export terminal.

(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: af.reuters.com/ ) (Reporting by Nick Tattersall)

By John Donovan

Some strange events at Shell Brunei Petroleum (SBP).

Around four weeks ago we published an email from a senior official of the Brunei government writing from The Chairman’s Office of Shell Brunei Petroleum, explaining the mysterious absence of  the companies Managing Director, Dr Grahaeme Henderson. It said he was absent for medical treatment.

We understand from our sources that in November the head of SBP HSE left the country in a hurry and did not return.

Now we learn that a number of fraud investigations are going on, allegedly involving Nigerian expats.

Perhaps all of these matters are unconnected. Or it could be that Dr Henderson was pressing for action to be taken in relation to the corruption, when he encounterted a medical problem that necessitated his temporary exit from Brunei.

We have commented before on the corrupting relationship between Shell and the head of the Brunei Royal Family, the Sultan of Brunei.

Borneo Bulletin: Fraud probe at oil company

By Ignatius Stephen

Saturday 6 February 2010

In an effort to keep the country’s cooperate image clean the Brunei Anti Corruption Bureau has begun a series of massive fraud investigations against more than 10 senior oil company officials.

The amount probed, according to reliable sources, exceeds $5 million and both local and foreign employees are allegedly linked to what is quoted as “irregular material purchase procedures and related matters.”

The company Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) has already dismissed some of the officials after questioning while the affairs of others are still being looked into, informed sources said. Some of the others are under investigation, it is learnt.

The matter is still in its early stage and a thorough check has been on the way for some time and a source said that “no stone will be left unturned.” It is understood the alleged fraud was discovered during a routine audit check.

The authorities, it is understood, are looking into the allegations seriously, although no arrests have been made apart from the termination and suspension of some of the alleged miscreants.

Oil and gas are the country’s lifeblood and the authorities are determined keep the industry clean.

Rumours of the alleged fraud have been strong in recent times although no public announcements have been made so far.

The country’s oil industry is mainly based in Seria, in the south of the capital.

Oil and gas account for 48 percent of the country’s economic output that is helped by the country’s stability and an efficient and clean oil industry sector helping to maintain the country’s production levels.

Although there have been instances of petty irregularities in the oil sector in the past that brought about court action, instances have been rare.

In recent times other overseas oil companies have begun major operations here.

SOURCE ARTICLE

RELATED ARTICLE

Brunei launches investigation into fraud at Brunei Shell

Heath Aston, Daily Mail
5 February 2010, 9:51am

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell will cut jobs and refine capacity as it enters an ‘uncertain’ 2010 faced with weak gas prices and depressed refining margins for oil products.

Under pressure from better performing rivals such as BP, Shell chief executive Peter Voser conceded that the Anglo-Dutch company had become bloated during the good times of sky-high oil prices before the financial crisis.

He said: ‘We’ve had four years of record profits. You know yourself when you have a good time you eat a little too much and you get a bit fat.’

In a bid to trim the company down, Voser will axe 1,000 staff, mainly executives, and sell about 15% of Shell’s oil refineries dotted across the globe, raising up to £1.9bn.

The deeper cuts come after Shell got rid of 5,000 staff last year and reduced its refining capacity, especially in established western markets where fuel consumption has dwindled since the recession. Last week the company closed a refinery in Montreal, Canada.

The need to strip back and kickstart Shell’s operating performance was illustrated by earnings figures showing annual profits in 2009 at $9.8bn were just a third of the $31bn bagged in 2008.

By comparison, BP’s annual profits halved.

n what one analyst described as a ‘truly awful set of figures’, Shell’s fourth quarter earnings on a current cost of supplies basis wilted to $1.2bn from $4.8bn in the same quarter of 2008.

Excluding one-off items – mainly the $900m cost of redundancies – earnings fell to $2.8bn from $3.9bn, below what the City had anticipated.

Oriel Securities analyst Andrew Whittock described the result as ‘disappointing’.

Voser warned there could be no quick fix, with refining capacity in the market outweighing demand and refining margins at their lowest point in 15 years.

Shell’s move to increase its exposure to the lower carbon natural gas market has backfired in the short term, with prices falling much harder than oil since their peaks.

Echoing statements from BP, Voser said the rebound in the global economy would take longer than many people expected.

He said: ‘On the outlook, I wouldn’t call it a rosy one. I would be quite cautious.’

Voser said Shell’s $28bn capital expenditure programme would be directed more at expanding Asian markets although building new refineries was not on the agenda after India and China opened refineries that have added two million barrels a day of oil supply in that region.

Royal Dutch Shell’s A shares ended the day in the doldrums and down 43p at 1732p.

DAILY MAIL ARTICLE

• BP board in Williamsburg squashed proposals in 2004
• Ex chief claims merger could have been worth $9bn a year
• Tie-up with Yukos rejected after ‘untoward’ encounter with Khodorkovsky

Terry Macalister
Friday 5 February 2010 16.24 GMT

Lord Browne claims the merger proposals had the support of his team, which would have included current BP chief executive Tony Hayward (above) who was then head of exploration. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

Lord Browne took BP to the brink of a mega-merger with Royal Dutch Shell six years ago only to be thwarted at the last minute by opposition from a handful of his own board members, the former chief executive has claimed.

“We missed the boat” argues Browne in his autobiography, which is published on Monday.

The Shell deal would have involved selling off the whole of BP’s downstream refining business – an operation that is currently struggling to make money.

“We estimated that a merger could create synergies of around $9bn [£5.8bn] a year in three to five years’ time. It also would have been a significant boost to the oil industry outside of the US,” he argues in Beyond Business, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

There was much speculation at the time that BP and Shell had held casual talks but the oil companies denied it had been anything other than early soundings that quickly led nowhere.

But Browne, who stepped down in 2007 in favour of his head of exploration Tony Hayward, planned to put detailed proposals to the BP board at a meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia. Browne claims he had the support of his own executive team, which would have included Hayward.

“On the plane there I knew the answer even before the meeting started. The sentiment was ‘why rock the boat’. The Shell merger was not discussed. It was not going to be done and that was that… In the end we did not rock the boat; we missed it,” he says.

Browne also revealed how he also thought about buying into Yukos rather than TNK as his entrance point to Russia. But he claims a meeting at his house in Cambridge with the now-imprisoned Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky put him off because the Russian talked about his political influence in that country. Browne said: “It is easy to say this in hindsight but there was something untoward about his approach.”

GUARDIAN ARTICLE