Junior employees of Shell Pakistan are scared, as their fate is unclear, as was the case of Shell Ethiopia, Sudan and Djibouti in 2008 and they may also end up being left to protest against being SOLD like slaves.

Dear John Donovan,

I joined Pakistan Burma Shell almost 30 years ago as a fitter. I used to repair dispensers installed at petrol pumps of Pakistan Burma Shell. When Burma Shell was purchased by, Shell Pakistan, all the technicians like me were removed from service without proper benefits, (some cases of which are still pending in court).

Because of that experience, I launched a small firm of my own and started doing repair and minor repair work projects as a contractor at Shell petrol pumps in city of Sargodha Pakistan.

About two years ago an incident of fire took place at a Shell petrol pump. In this incident a motorcycle caught fire while it was getting fuel. Tragically, the daughter of a motorcycle owner who was sitting on the fuel tank, during filling, died in the fire.

Unluckily my staff were working at that petrol pump when this incident took place, but were at a distance from the motorcycle which caught fire and had no connection with the motorcycle, the dispenser, or area near the dispenser.

Shell management at Pakistan, arranged an enquiry and officially held my firm responsible for this incident and black-listed it. I was however assured by Senior Shell management that they would re-register my firm under a different name if I took  responsibility for the incident.

I have left Shell and I am living a happy life and do not intend to join it back. But at times a question pricks my mind, i.e.

Had the same incident occurred in a developed country, say in America or in UK, could Shell have so easily avoided the publicity of its misdeeds by using trickery to escape a proper inquiry or judicial action. In other words, are the claims about Shell’s integrity, transparency etc just applicable to developed countries in which Shell operates?

Shell Pakistan has seen many reversals in all fields in last two years as a result of misdeeds by its management, and is facing the worst time of the history in Pakistan. The unethical dealings, and wrong policies of its management, have changed its attractive petrol pumps and agencies in to grave yards. Repairs at petrol pumps are delayed for years with no funds available for normal maintenance.

There is big financial problem for Shell Pakistan , its petrol pumps and agencies do not get fuel and lubricants for weeks, even after making payments in advance.

Managers at Pakistan are considered to be the worst enemy of company contracting staff and other stake holders.

Engineering branch, consumer sections and quality control units at regions have been done away with and the staff from sales department are running the show with no ethics and business codes.

There are rumors in the market that Shell is running away from the country and that Shell Pakistan is being sold to some other oil company.

Junior employees of Shell Pakistan are scared, as their fate is unclear, as was the case of Shell Ethiopia, Sudan and Djibouti in 2008 and they may also end up being left to protest against being SOLD like slaves.

Shell Pakistan policy bears no resemblance to official Shell CSR. Shell Pakistan management is instead busy covering-up its flaws, including entrapment of contractual staff / agency holders, deception of innocent co-workers of Shell. Their prime interest is in saving their own own skins through undercover moves, while setting aside ethical considerations chalked out by Richard Wiseman, instead of enforcing and upholding the Shell’s General Business Principles.

At your website I read following statement by Mark Moody-Stuart that, (“…the Statement provides, for our employees to follow and for the outside world to judge us by, an ethical framework which is mandatory, not optional… just having those principles is not enough.  In the past… an oil company could say ‘trust me’ and expect that to be enough.  Today, people say, ‘tell me – listen to me – show me’.   Trust has to be earned by transparency.  That’s one of the most important lesson’s we’ve learned in Shell…”)

Unfortunately this is not the reality of what is happening in Shell Pakistan. We have listened, we have seen and we have had enough of the double-talk. As Moody-Stuart also said: “It is deeds, not words, which count”. The actions of Shell Pakistan management do not match with the  words of Moody-Stuart or Richard Wiseman.

Please mark my words. With many of other cases like mine likely to be publicly revealed, and with present business policy being incompatible with claimed business ethics, Shell has many more reversals to see in the whole world and Pakistan might be the start of it.

Abdul Ghafar.

(RIGHT TO REPLY: IF ANYONE AT SHELL PAKISTAN WISHES TO REPLY, THE RESPONSE WILL BE PUBLISHED HERE ON AN UNEDITED BASIS – THIS OFFER TO SHELL, EXTENDS TO ALL ARTICLES AND BLOGS PUBLISHED ON THIS WEBSITE)

ABOUT SHELL PAKISTAN: The Shell began its operation in this region in 1899 by importing Kerosene from Azerbaijan. In 1970 Burma Shell divested 51% to the public and became a listed company. After acquisition in 1993 it was finally renamed as Shell Pakistan. With annual sale approaching $ 1 billion, Shell is one of the leading private sector companies in Pakistan and holds about 22% share of hydro-carbon business. It employs over 12000 persons in Pakistan and operates through a retail net work of 1100 petrol pumps. Being a responsible corporate organization The Shell has so far contributed over Rs.30 million in community development in Pakistan.

As of late Friday, besides the 4 people confirmed dead, 52 people were injured and 3 suffered third-degree burns, Mr. Maldonado said. A total of 37 structures had burned, and 7 more were damaged…

Vijay Duggal, 60, was watching a football game. “I thought we’d been attacked by a missile,” he said. “Everything was shaking. I thought, This is the end.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MALIA WOLLAN

SAN BRUNO, Calif. — For weeks, residents in this community of trim suburban homes in the hills near San Francisco International Airport had reported catching the occasional whiff of natural gas in the bay breezes. Utility repair crews were regularly seen driving around the neighborhood.

And on Thursday night, just around dinner, a 30-inch natural gas pipe running three feet under ground erupted and fueled a devastating explosion and towering walls of wind-whipped fire, killing at least four people and consuming dozens of homes with a blaze that moved so quickly that residents barely had time to gather their belongings and run.

Throughout the day on Friday, firefighters struggled to put out the remnants of the blaze, search parties with dogs hunted for more bodies and residents huddled in Red Cross shelters, confronting the loss of their homes and the realization that part of their neighborhood had been reduced to a deep crater filled with water.

“I need to know if my house burned down,” Steve Hoff, 38, implored a California Highway Patrol officer at a police barrier that cordoned off the 15-acre disaster site on Friday. “I don’t know if I have a home left or not.”

The National Transportation Safety Board, which also investigates natural gas explosions, sent a team of four investigators to this city 12 miles south of San Francisco to determine what had caused the blast. One of the board members, Christopher A. Hart, toured the site on Friday afternoon and said he had been stunned by the destruction he saw. He said a large portion of the pipe had been blown out of the ground and across the road. “My immediate assessment was the amazing destruction, the charred trees, the melted and charred cars, the houses disappeared,” he said.

Officials at Pacific Gas and Electric promised to cooperate, but declined to confirm reports from many neighbors of a history of complaints of gas odors, or that a Pacific Gas repair truck had been spotted the other day near the area where the blast occurred.

“We have yet to be able to get close enough to the actual source to be able to determine exactly why this happened,” said Christopher P. Johns, president of PG&E. “We’re working diligently to do that.”

Mr. Johns said that the company was aware that residents were saying they had called complaining of gas odors and that the company was now going through records to see what calls were made and what the company’s response was. PG&E also said it would provide temporary housing, food and clothing for the survivors.

Christina Veraflor, 41, said she had visited her mother, who lives here, six weeks ago and noticed the smell of gas in the air. “That happened a lot in that area: You would get a whiff of gas, and then it would disappear.”

Darlene Esola, 59, a teacher who has lived in San Bruno for 26 years, said she noticed an odd odor while walking in the neighborhood on Tuesday night. “It smelled a bit gaslike,” Ms. Esola said, as she spent the afternoon at a Red Cross shelter where people waited to talk to insurance company representatives and passers-by dropped off food and clothing.

She said she had mentioned it to her husband but did not think of it again until after the explosion, when several neighbors also mentioned smelling gas in recent weeks.

Jerry Hill, a member of the State Assembly who represents the area, estimated that the pipeline had been installed in 1948, a reflection of just how old and worn much of the gas system is in this part of the state. He criticized the company for the way it had dealt with maintenance questions and responded to the crisis.

“If the indication is that there is a problem, a pipe deterioration problem or a gas leak problem, this needs to be resolved quickly and statewide,” Mr. Hill said.

The utility has some history of problems with federal regulators, records show. The N.T.S.B. cited PG&E for shortcomings in its response to a 2008 natural gas leak in Rancho Cordova, one that eventually killed a resident and injured two more in an explosion.

The N.T.S.B. found that the company had used improper piping that allowed gas to leak from a mechanical coupling in 2006. When a neighbor smelled gas, the company delayed nearly three hours before sending a properly trained crew to identify the leak, and the slow response was a key reason for the explosion that same day, according to the N.T.S.B. report.

The 2008 episode had been the worst of 65 gas pipeline accidents involving PG&E since 2004; cases that include nine other injuries, according to federal Department of Transportation records. Seventeen incidents were deemed “significant” by federal regulators because large amounts of gas escaped from leaking pipes, ruptures and other failures.

More than half the time in all the accidents, the gas either ignited or led to an explosion. At least 16 episodes also spurred evacuations of dozens of homes and businesses, in part because of threats to public safety.

Mr. Hart, the member of the N.T.S.B., said it could take up to 18 months until the board issued its finding on what caused the blast, but he said that if it discovered any safety lapses, it would not delay announcing them and recommending changes.

Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, who was running this state while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was on a trade mission to China, said the authorities had gone through 75 percent of the disaster site. The rest, he said, was too hot to confront.

As of late Friday, besides the 4 people confirmed dead, 52 people were injured and 3 suffered third-degree burns, Mr. Maldonado said. A total of 37 structures had burned, and 7 more were damaged, he said. There was one arrest on Thursday night for looting. As many as 400 firefighters from local and state crews responded to the blaze, which began about 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

The explosion comes as the fossil fuel industry is reeling from a succession of deadly and costly accidents, including the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It also comes two months before California is to vote on a proposition backed by the oil industry that would suspend a tough law intended to curb carbon emission and push the state to explore different forms of energy.

Whatever the cause of the explosion, the effects were devastating. On this sparkling late summer day, residents walked up and down the streets, many with sweeping views of the hill and bay, peering over police lines to get a glimpse of the damage. They traded stories of what happened when they heard the explosion; even in this part of the state, hardened by living in the heart of earthquake territory, residents seemed rattled by the randomness of the destruction.

“I got the dogs, kids and wedding pictures and started running,” said Rhonda Boone, who emerged from her house to see walls of flame higher than the trees.

Vijay Duggal, 60, was watching a football game. “I thought we’d been attacked by a missile,” he said. “Everything was shaking. I thought, This is the end.”

Reporting was contributed by Andrew W. Lehren, Anahad O’Connor, Liz Robbins and Tom Zeller Jr. from New York. Gerry Shih and Shoshana Walter of The Bay Citizen contributed reporting from San Bruno, Calif.

SOURCE ARTICLE

COMMENT RECEIVED: This should give the Irish new ammunition in their struggle with Shell, et al. While pipelines can be engineered to be very safe, if operated properly, there are always safety issues associated with less than responsible operations. There must be a sufficiently wide buffer zone along the length of any pipeline in any developed area to prevent property damage and casualties. High pressure gas line blow like an extremely large bomb/ and the effects of the concussion can knock windows out of homes many kilometers away from the point of detonation.

The award winning documentary “The Pipe” has become an International hit  and is having its International Premiere tonight at the Toronto Int Film Festival at AMC 2, 9:45 pm.

The festival page is..

http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2010/pipe

..with trailer, ticket info and everything else displayed on it.

YouTube Video Clip of “The Pipe”

Related article:

Shell Corrib pipeline documentary an International hit

The economic status of Alaska is identical to that of an undeveloped third world country. And their State politics and politicians are not much different either. They are mouthpieces for the oil and gas industry, bought and paid for by the oil industry through the vast royalties paid to the state.

Comment on Alaska and the oil and gas industry from a former employee of Shell Oil Company USA

John,

I have a few comments about Alaska and the oil and gas industry.

Thirty odd years ago the mainstay industries of Alaska, if you can call them that, were fishing, logging and mining. There was some oil production from Cook Inlet, but it was not a significant contributor to the states economy. Then along came Prudhoe Bay and the North Slope. Suddenly, the State of Alaska was awash in royalty revenues.

That gravy train has chugged along for thirty years, but it is beginning to run out of steam. If significant new reserves of oil and gas not discovered in the National Petroleum Reserve and if development of known oil and gas reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are not permitted, and if it is not possible to produce the known oil and gas reserves, and undiscovered reserves from the Arctic Continental Shelf, which is a real possibility, then Alaska and Alaskans have a serious problem. They will have to fund their State government like every other state in the continental US. Through sales, income and property taxes. And State services will have to be curtailed dramatically.

The economic status of Alaska is identical to that of an undeveloped third world country. And their State politics and politicians are not much different either. They are mouthpieces for the oil and gas industry, bought and paid for by the oil industry through the vast royalties paid to the state.

Don’t expect rational and responsible judgments from Alaskan politicians on environment policy or resource development. They have a ‘drill baby drill’, ‘dig baby dig’, and ‘log baby log’, and ‘suck’m out of the sea’ mentality when it comes to the exploitation of Alaska resources.

And these are resources now largely Federally owned, i.e., owned by the entire nation, not the State of Alaska or Alaskans. Only Federal authorities have the authority to set resource development policy for these resources, whether Alaskans like it or not. Alaskans will not exercise responsible judgment when it comes to the development of these resources, and fortunately they don’t have that legal authority.

Alaskans need to come to terms with the idea that the great oil industry gravy train may be coming to an end in the not too distant future, like it or not. They will then have to run their State government responsibly and frugally, off sales, income and property tax revenues, etc.

The next new industry will be environmental remediation of the damage done by the oil industry on the North Slope.

RELATED ARTICLE

Alaska seeks to overturn delay in Arctic drilling

REUTERS

Thu Sep 9, 2010 8:57pm EDT

* US Interior Department says no formal moratorium exists

* Says go-slow Arctic policy separate from deepwater ban

* Royal Dutch Shell has been denied drilling permits

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sept 9 (Reuters) – The state of Alaska on Thursday filed a petition in federal court to overturn the Obama administration’s moratorium on drilling in federal waters of the Arctic, even though Interior Department officials insist that no such formal moratorium exists.

The state’s legal petition, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, says the Interior Department “arbitrarily and capriciously imposed” a moratorium on drilling in federal waters off Alaska after the Deepwater Horizon disaster “without considering and weighing the potential effects on Alaska, including economic harm to the State of Alaska and Alaska residents.”

The unusual move is backed by Alaska Governor Sean Parnell, who railed against the economic damage a moratorium would cause in the state.

“Development of Alaska’s (Outer Continental Shelf) resources is of critical importance to Alaska’s future and the economic and security interests of the United States,” Parnell said in a statement. “We are taking this action to ensure that the federal government abides by applicable federal law, including its legal responsibility to make the OCS available for expeditious and orderly development.”

But Interior Department officials said the drilling moratorium imposed on deepwater Gulf of Mexico operations is separate from a policy decision to take a go-slow approach on new Arctic offshore drilling.

“There is no moratorium in Alaska and therefore nothing to sue on. The moratorium is on deepwater drilling and there is no deepwater drilling in Alaska,” Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said in an email sent Thursday.

“We are taking a cautious approach to offshore oil and gas development as we strengthen safety and oversight of offshore oil and gas operations. This includes the Arctic, which presents unique environmental challenges.”

Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) had planned to drill up to three wells in the Chukchi Sea and up to two wells in the Beaufort Sea during this year’s summer and fall open-water period. Those prospects are in waters no deeper than 150 feet (45 meters), considered shallow.

But in response to the blowout and massive spill at BP’s (BP.L) Deepwater Horizon well, the Interior Department announced that it would not issue drilling permits to Shell until more study was completed. Shell has said it hopes to drill the Chukchi and Beaufort wells next year.

There has been confusion about whether a moratorium on Alaska drilling exists.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said at an Anchorage news conference last week that the existing moratorium on deepwater Gulf drilling does affect Alaska, but later in the news conference he and other Interior officials clarified the statement to make a distinction between the formal Gulf of Mexico moratorium and the related decision to delay any issuance of drilling permits for federal waters in the Arctic.

Aside from any Interior Department policies, a court ruling has blocked any Chukchi Sea drilling in the near future.

U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Beistline ruled on July 21 that a 2008 Chukchi lease sale held by the Minerals Management Service was conducted without proper environmental review, and that no exploration activities on the leases issued could be permitted until deficiencies are remedied.

(Editing by Bill Rigby; Editing by Gary Hill)

REUTERS SOURCE ARTICLE

Bill Campbell, former HSE Group Auditor of Shell International, answers questions put to him concerning the BP Report published on 8 September 2010.

(Extracts from Bill’s response)

I was asked by both BBC TV and Channel 4 to comment on the BP report in last night news features but couldn’t manage due to other constraints.

What do you think of the timing of BP’s report into Deepwater Horizon?

Given the limitations put on them I think it looks reasonable.  Cannot understand the open hostility to BP with comments like BP share the blame.  The fact is ref my article A Can of Worms there is a lot of blame to be shared around.  In the ambulance chasing Society that is the U.S. you seek out the guys with the deepest pockets.  The report is at least an opportunity away from the face to face confrontation for BP to state their case and I think they do that well.  Whether they are right or not remains to be seen.

Their Achilles heel is clearly the well design for which they were accountable.  I cannot judge this being not competent to do so but their case is clearly that a significant proportion of the 2000 wells drilled in Deepwater in the last few years were drilled using this design in the Gulf (and elsewhere) with no apparent problems.  That is a powerful argument and their case will be robust if the cement tests confirm that the cement job was sub-standard.  For operating with the BOP in the condition it was, a TransOcean principal responsibility, BP must share some of the collective responsibility and I think in the report they accept that there were failures on their side.

You need to remember that whilst in civil proceedings guilt can be assessed on the balance of probabilities, in criminal proceedings (where I think all this will end up) it needs be established beyond all reasonable doubt.

Do you think it’s proper and correct to release such a report before the authorities?

Yes -  again as stated above who exactly is investigating this thing.  Compare it with Piper Alpha, Law Lord appointed, team selected, Inquiry held with wide remit with evidence provided in a Court Room atmosphere without the feeding frenzy that we see post Deepwater Horizon.

The Release of the Report at this time – probably not the right time but what alternative did they have.   It seems like everybody and his dog is being employed investigating this thing and we even now have the FBI guarding the BOP.  Where are the CSB in all this, they hardly get a mention?  What single authority has the overview, who will pull it all together?

Is the Report probably a ploy to influence society, media, a PR stunt?

Well since they have had the world against them and since they have agreed to pick up the clean up costs they have every right to state their case.  You cannot say that the US president, the Congress or the US media have handled this event in a balanced way.

Many make reference to it being a Transocean owned and operated rig, but to pretend that a Company man cannot and does not influence an OIM is naive.

Having been an OIM from 1984 to 1990 followed by Asset Manager for three years, I agree that at times pressure is put upon you but that is why great care needs to be taken in the selection and training of folks put into this key position.  The TransOocean position is that after the event they want to transfer their accountabilities back to BP.  Lets put it another way, if you were the OIM on Deepwater would you have accepted that a BOP had its functionality altered so that it would not be as reliable in an Emergency, would you have accepted that the redundancy provided by the yellow pod was missing but lets just carry on, would you have accepted that rubber from the annular was coming back to the surface but ‘don’t worry’;  would you have accepted that fire and gas alarms were constantly inhibited etc etc.  No. I agree with you, I do not think you would.  In the last analysis the OIM should provide the line in the sand over which no person or activity can cross.  If this is not the case then such a person should not be in position because we had moved on Deepwater Horizon away from a regime with any system of risk awareness and hazard management to that of a regime more akin to casino gambling.  Gambling not for chips, but for the lives of all those who looked to him for protection.

Bill

Sep 8th 2010, 19:29 by The Economist online

THERE is plenty of blame to go around, at least according to BP. The company’s report on September 8th into the causes of the accident that led to the loss of the oil rig Deepwater Horizon, the death of 11 of its crew and the biggest oil spill in American history contains a litany of mistakes, many of which, if they had been caught, might have averted the catastrophe. Some of those errors, the report concludes, were BP’s. But its finger also points at Halliburton, which worked on the cement seal at the bottom of the well and Transocean, which owned and ran the rig, and maintained the crucial blowout preventer which so signally failed to live up to its name.

The stakes here are high. If BP is found to have been grossly negligent in its role as operator the fines it faces would increase by billions, and its chances of recouping money from its junior partners in the project, Anadarko and Mitsui, would be badly damaged. On the basis of this report, hardly the last word, such a finding seems unlikely. The likelihood of protracted suits and countersuits between the companies involved, though, remains high, with damage to the reputations of all of them.

With events and errors ticked off day by day, hour by hour and then minute by minute as the implacable oil rises from below, the report makes eerie reading. Its tragedy unfolds in four acts, each containing a number of errors: the initial penetration of hydrocarbons into the well through cement seals and physical barriers meant to be impermeable; the subsequent failure to spot that the seals had not worked and that oil and gas were building up in the well as rig workers turned, unaware, to other tasks; the subsequent rig-wrecking explosions; and, at the sea floor, the failure of the blowout preventer to cut off the flow of oil as the rig toppled and its connection to the well below broke open, releasing oil into the Gulf for the next three months.

In the first act, the report claims that Halliburton supplied a cement slurry of its own devising which it should have recognised was not fit for the purpose. Subsequent testing showed that the cement produced by a similar slurry (Halliburton’s own was apparently not made available) would have been likely to break down. BP’s well team, the report goes on, failed to appreciate the challenges of the cementing, to assess the risks and to make sure it knew what was going on. Analysis by Halliburton suggested that extra “centralisers”, which keep the pipe that transports the oil in the right position, were needed. BP procured them but did not use them, its well team suspecting, wrongly, that they were the wrong sort. The report concludes that this error is unlikely to have been key to the cement failure, but it is a pretty striking mistake and others will likely differ on its significance. The team then failed to run a test, or log, to show that the cement seal was OK, a failure that has already been criticised by others.

In the second and third acts, after the hydrocarbons had got through valves at the bottom of the well, the focus shifts to Transocean, and at times to decisions made by people who died in the disaster. When the heavy drilling mud that provides the pressure needed to keep things from coming up the well was removed, first as a test, then as part of procedure for closing down the well and moving the rig, telltale signs that something was wrong were missed. When the oil and gas reached the rig, they were diverted not overboard, as might have been wiser, but to a system called the mud-gas separator which was overwhelmed and spewed gas back on to parts of the rig that did not have safeguards on their electronics to minimise the chance of ignition, as the systems on the drilling floor did.

Then there was the blowout preventer, a huge stack of valves on the sea floor. When one of its valves was activated, after people realised something was wrong and just before the explosion, it did not stop the flow. Nor did it shut off the flow when its connections to the rig were lost, as it should have. Nor when a remotely operated vehicle activated it later. Studies of the blowout preventer’s control pods suggest that a flattish battery and a dodgy valve meant that neither was in a fit state to close off the well automatically when they should have, which BP takes as evidence of poor maintenance by Transocean. This does not explain why the great valves failed even when they were activated by other means. More answers may be forthcoming now the blowout preventer has been raised from the sea floor; currently in the custody of the Department of Justice, it may be a forensic treasure.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Transocean rejects the report as self-serving, and points to issues with the well’s design, as well as to the cement log, as deserving much more scrutiny. Other oil companies have also pointed to BP’s decision to run a single “long string” of production pipe from the top of the well to the bottom as a problem, claiming that an alternative approach which puts a physical barrier around the production pipe at an intermediate depth offers greater safety. The issue is clearly an important one, but it is not clear that in itself it made a crucial difference. If oil got into the production pipe from the bottom, then barriers that would have impeded its flow up the cavity around that pipe would have made little difference.

The BP report points to pros and cons of the long string approach and its alternatives; subsequent analysis may be less even handed—stressing, perhaps, the way that the long string approach made centralisers all the more important. And other reports, both from Transocean and the various boards of investigation, not to mention court rulings, will be flowing for years to come.

SOURCE ARTICLE

By John Donovan

As prominent Internet based critics of Shell senior management, we have received a large number of Shell internal emails over several years. Some have been leaked to us by our network of Shell insiders while countless others, spanning several years, have been obtained from Shell after we made applications to the company as provided under the UK Data Protection Act.

I would now reveal for the first time that our Shell insider sources of leaked internal emails have over the years received alleged threats, including alleged death threats. I have evidence from our sources confirming alleged threats. One such threat for example relates to the Sakhalin2 project. Evidence I provided to the Russian government supplied to me by an insider, cost Shell billions of dollars and also resulted in the resignation of a Shell Managing Director David Greer, who was Project Director of Sakhalin2 and Deputy Chairman of Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Limited. The last message received from the source informed me that they had received a credible serious threat. The source disappeared without trace.

The above and other related information has been added to my recent article: Royal Dutch Shell and the dark arts

BP blamed a poor cement job and mistakes by contractors for the worst oil spill in US history, in an internal report into the Deepwater Hiorzon disaster.

Shell has suffered setbacks this year in Norway, including a 24 percent cut in the estimated reserves at its Ormen Lange gas field, Europe’s third largest.