In Sakhalin… Exxon has fared much better than rival Royal Dutch Shell, which has led the development of Sakhalin-2. In 2005 Shell disclosed $10 billion in cost overruns on the $20 billion project, and in 2007 it was forced by the Kremlin to sell half of its Sakhalin stake to Gazprom. Though Shell and Rosneft signed a “strategic alliance” in 2007, it has proven to be all show, no go. In May, Rosneft and Shell were reportedly in talks over a deal to explore the Arctic. The Exxon announcement indicates that those talks have ended.

Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff

From Houston 8/31/2011 @ 12:46PM

More than a black eye for BP, the Rosneft deal is a gold star for ExxonMobil, one that illustrates that the company is not only the world’s biggest international supermajor, but the only one that can claim any lasting success in Russia.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that Exxon is stepping into dance shoes that had been knocked off BP’s feet — the Exxon/Rosneft venture has been a long time in coming. What’s more, the lovey-dovey deal increases the likelihood that Exxon and the Kremlin might soon be able to come to terms on the development of massive untapped natural gas reserves held by Exxon’s Sakhalin Island development.

Sure it embarrasses BP, considering that back in January new Chief Executive Robert Dudley was heralding his $16 billion share swap with Rosneft as marking the start of BP’s comeback — only to see it waylaid by lawsuits from BP’s oligarch partners at Russian joint venture TNK-BP.

But remember that half of this “new” deal–the $1 billion exploration of Black Sea prospects — had already been signed by Exxon and Rosneft back in January.

Exxon and Rosneft have been partners in Russia for more than 15 years in development of the Sakhalin-1 project, which started up in 2005 and now produces more than 250,000 bpd. “Today’s agreement with Rosneft builds on our 15-year successful relationship in the Sakhalin-1 project,” said ExxonMobil Development Co. President Neil Duffin in a statement yesterday.

In Sakhalin (where current Chief Executive Rex Tillerson cut his teeth) Exxon has fared much better than rival Royal Dutch Shell, which has led the development of Sakhalin-2. In 2005 Shell disclosed $10 billion in cost overruns on the $20 billion project, and in 2007 it was forced by the Kremlin to sell half of its Sakhalin stake to Gazprom. Though Shell and Rosneft signed a “strategic alliance” in 2007, it has proven to be all show, no go. In May, Rosneft and Shell were reportedly in talks over a deal to explore the Arctic. The Exxon announcement indicates that those talks have ended.

What of the other supermajors? In June Chevron backed out of its JV with Rosneft to explore in the Black Sea, reportedly because geologists at the two companies couldn’t agree on the size of the resource. We’ll see if Chevron gets another chance to make inroads in Russia any time soon. Same goes for ConocoPhillips, which last year sold its stake in Russian giant Lukoil and exited the country.

As for France’s oil giant Total, it is a partner with Gazprom in developing the giant Shtokman gas field in the iceberg-strewn Barents sea — but it’s a big question mark whether that $15 billion-plus project will happen any time soon given Russia’s trove of more easily accessible riches.

Such as the 17 trillion cubic feet of as yet untapped gas reserves that Exxon’s Sakhalin consortium is sitting on in the Chayvo field. Exxon has for years wanted to sell the gas from Sakhalin-1 directly to China. But that conflicts with Gazprom’s desire to control all the gas from Sakhalin, and merge Exxon’s flow into that from Sakhalin-2 in order to fill a new pipeline to Vladivostok. In 2008, Rosneft said it would help convince Exxon to sell its gas to Gazprom — which is a funny concept considering that a majority of each company is held by the Kremlin.

This June, Gazprom said it expected to reach an agreement with Exxon on Sakhalin-1 gas by the end of the year. You can be sure that Exxon ironed out those details in advance of this week’s Rosneft deal. All that’s left is the official announcement that Exxon will put Sakhalin gas development into overdrive.

SOURCE ARTICLE

“Distributed Denial of Service attack, is when a server is bombarded with so many requests that it can’t respond to legitimate traffic.”

By John Donovan

Apologies for this website being down earlier today. Our dedicated server may have been the target of a denial-of-service high load attack by an unknown party. This information comes from our hosting company in Dallas. DoS attacks generally involve organised efforts by a third party with malicious intent, to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all. Should this website disappear from the Internet as a result of legal or illegal action by a third party, please visit shellnews.net where we will post information. DoS attacks are unlawful.

The site was down for several hours in the last 24 hours due to what was described  by the hosting company as being “under severely heavy load.”

We cannot be certain if it a problem caused by the popularity of the site, or deliberate coordinated denial of service attacks by an unknown party.

By coincidence or otherwise,  it often seems to happen when we publish the most negative information about Royal Dutch Shell, for example about Shell’s highly sensitive activity in Syria.

It is a federal crime to carry out a cyber attack and we might consider notifying the FBI except for the fact that Shell has used specialist facilities in Pittsburgh, partly funded and staffed by the FBI, as part of its response to our activities.

There is also a possibility that it is a case of mistaken identity. It is the only Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com website in existence and some activists in a foreign land perhaps corrupted, polluted and plundered by Shell, may think that this is the official Royal Dutch Shell Plc website and wrongly believe they are attacking Shell.

Michael D. Goldhaber:  The American Lawyer August 31, 2011

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

A version of this article appeared in print on August 31, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition

MOSCOW — Exxon Mobil won a coveted prize in the global petroleum industry Tuesday with an agreement to explore for oil in a Russian portion of the Arctic Ocean that is being opened for drilling even as Alaskan waters remain mostly off limits.

The agreement seemed to supersede a similar but failed deal that Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft, reached with the British oil giant BP this year — with a few striking differences.

Where BP had planned to swap stock, Exxon, which is based in Texas, agreed to give Rosneft assets elsewhere in the world, including some that Exxon owns in the deepwater zones of the Gulf of Mexico and on land in Texas.

In announcing the arrangement at a surprise signing in the Russian resort town of Sochi, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin described a sweeping global alliance — and a potentially vast investment by Exxon in the Russian Arctic.

“The scale of the investment is very large,” Mr. Putin said. “It’s scary to utter such huge figures.”

But while Russian news agencies said Mr. Putin had stated the potential investments by both companies to be as high as $500 billion, Exxon officials said the figures, at least initially, would more likely be in the tens of billions of dollars.

For Exxon, which is America’s largest company and is a spinoff of the original Standard Oil, the deal means wading deeper into Russia’s risky business environment. As a result of the agreement, which is almost certain to require a review in Washington, more of the company’s investments and future earnings will partly hinge on policies set in the Kremlin.

Russia has reneged on deals with Western oil companies before. In 2006, for example, it compelled Royal Dutch Shell to sell 50 percent of a Sakhalin offshore development to Gazprom, a state company — after Shell spent a decade and more than $20 billion of its own money and that of other investors to build the project’s infrastructure.

Until now, Exxon’s principal investment in Russia has been a production sharing agreement on Sakhalin Island, on Russia’s eastern coast. That arrangement, which waives local taxes and provides the Russian government a share of the oil produced, is regarded as less risky than the deal made Tuesday.

Under the new agreement, the state-owned Rosneft could become a part-owner of drilling operations in the United States. Those operations could include two of the industry’s most contentious oil extraction methods — drilling for oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and using the so-called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, technique on land. The Russians want to learn about both types of drilling for use at home.

The Rosneft deal would also be among the most significant attempts by a company from a country that is not an American ally to acquire United States oil fields since Cnooc, the large Chinese oil company, tried to buy the California oil company Unocal. Although it was not formally banned, that deal fell apart in 2005 after members of Congress criticized the potential Chinese ownership of American oil assets.

Having an American company win the Rosneft deal could also suggest that the Obama administration’s policy of détente toward Russia, known as the reset, can benefit United States businesses, said Cliff Kupchan, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group, a consultancy.

The Exxon-Rosneft deal, if completed, would further a long-held goal of the Russian petroleum industry to diversify internationally. It would allow Russia to do that by using access to reserves at home to gain the necessary capital and technological expertise.

Russia’s economy is dependent on petroleum for about 60 percent of its export revenue. Policies here are also important for world oil supplies, as Russia now pumps more oil than Saudi Arabia. Yet Russia’s onshore fields in Siberia are in decline, threatening the prosperity and geopolitical clout that has come with oil wealth in the last decade.

Despite the varying accounts of the overall potential value of the agreement, a fact sheet released by the companies indicated an initial commitment to invest $3.2 billion in exploration in the Kara Sea, the body of water between the northern coast of European Russia and the Novaya Zemlya island chain.

Once seen as a useless, ice-clogged backwater, the Kara Sea now has the attention of oil companies. That is partly because the sea ice is apparently receding — possibly a result of global warming — which would ease exploration and drilling.

This summer, Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant, moved a rig into a shallow part of the sea. Still, Russian scientists say the extent of the ice floes varies greatly from summer to summer, and conditions remain formidable during the polar night, which lasts months.

In the waters off Alaska, drilling has remained largely off limits because of environmental restrictions and lawsuits by conservation organizations.

Rosneft’s attempt to strike a similar pact with BP this year fell apart because the British company had a joint venture with a separate group of private Russian investors, who blocked the Rosneft deal in an international court. The collapse was an embarrassment for Mr. Putin, who had endorsed the BP-Rosneft deal.

After the failure of that deal, the onus fell on Russia to demonstrate it could uphold an agreement, Mr. Kupchan, the analyst, said. “They got away with BP, because the deal was seen as BP having two Russian wives,” he said.

Exxon, in contrast, has no exclusivity clause with a competitor in Russia that could come up in court.

Still, if Rosneft’s participation in American projects leads to objections in the United States, Exxon’s investment in Russia could also be vulnerable. Russian officials say reciprocity, or mutual dependence, is a condition for foreign investment in their petroleum fields.

Igor Sechin, a deputy prime minister in Russia and one of the country’s top energy officials, said Rosneft would obtain shares in at least six of Exxon’s oil fields in the United States. He said that the value of these assets would be “in proportion” to the ones Exxon would own in Russia.

Alan T. Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon, said Rosneft would be subjected to the same regulatory oversight in the United States as any other oil company.

For Russia, the agreement is a result of a new openness to foreign investment in its oil industry that is meant to address the declining output in Siberia. The Kremlin opened discussions last year with Western oil companies whose prospects on the other side of the Arctic Ocean — above Alaska and Canada — had at least temporarily dimmed with the moratorium on offshore drilling in the aftermath of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

This summer, the American Interior Department eased the restrictions somewhat by granting Royal Dutch Shell conditional approval to drill exploratory wells in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska’s coast starting next year.

But American and Canadian regulators worry about the special challenges in the Arctic. The ice pack and icebergs pose threats to drilling rigs and crews. And if oil were spilled in the winter, cleanup would take place in the total darkness that engulfs the region during those months.

Still, the United States Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds one-fifth of the world’s undiscovered, recoverable oil and natural gas.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Royal Dutch Shell PLC… declined to comment on the Exxon-Rosneft deal and had no update on the status of Shell’s talks with Rosneft. Shell CEO Peter Voser said in July that his company was in early-stage talks with Rosneft over Arctic exploration opportunities.

Exxon, Rosneft Sign Global Pact To Jointly Drill For Oil

By William Mauldin and Isabel Ordonez of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

MOSCOW -(Dow Jones)- Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Russia’s OAO Rosneft (ROSN.RS) Tuesday announced a global partnership that would grant the Texas oil giant more access to Russia’s vast oil riches and provide Rosneft a piece of the red-hot U.S. oilpatch.

The deal, which includes $3.2 billion in exploration offshore of Russia, marks Russia’s most decisive step forward to attract international oil heavyweights since the demise of a similar venture between Rosneft and BP PLC (BP, BP.LN).

The agreement, signed in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, would undertake new investment in the Kara Sea of the Russian Arctic and a Black Sea project, according to a joint statement from the two companies. It also gives Rosneft the opportunity to gain equity interest in a number of Exxon’s North America exploration projects, including the deep-water Gulf of Mexico and unconventional oil fields in Texas. The companies also agreed to conduct a joint study of developing tight oil resources in Western Siberia.

The deal was signed by Rosneft and Exxon executives in a meeting attended by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Exxon Chief Executive Rex Tillerson, according to the press release.

Rosneft’s global agreement with Exxon is a setback for BP, which had sought to work with the Russian state-controlled company in the Kara Sea but faced determined opposition from its partners in its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP. BP declined to comment Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the deal represents a major victory for Exxon, the world’s largest oil company by market value, as it gives it potential access to vast oil reserves at a time when oil companies have been struggling to keep their production growing. It is also a boon for Putin and his deputies, who have sought to lure a global oil giant with offshore expertise and technology in order to develop fields in the Arctic and elsewhere in order to boost Russia’s oil production, which has leveled off at about 10 million barrels a day.

Morningstar Inc. analyst Allen Good says that cross-ownership of assets between Exxon and Rosneft is a key element of the deal, as it reduces the political risk for Exxon of doing business in a country where fiscal terms could change over time.

The companies didn’t disclose details about the development plans for the area or the size of the Arctic fields, but it could take at least four years until Exxon Mobil and Rosneft start drilling and until the end of the of the decade to see first production, said Jason Gammel, an analyst with Macquarie Capital. The huge amount of oil reserves that are at stake, however, are worth the wait, he said. BP early this year said the Russia’s Arctic fields could hold as much oil and gas as the oil-rich North Sea. Rosneft estimates the Arctic fields hold 4.9 billion barrels of recoverable crude reserves, while the one in the Black Sea has reserves of 1.2 billion barrels.

“This could be really significant for Exxon in a decade,” Gammel says.

Exxon already works in the Sakhalin-1 project on Russia’s Pacific Coast and earlier this year had signed a Black Sea agreement with Rosneft. The company has had a long-standing interest in Russia, where Tillerson served as an executive in the 1990s, and it once engaged in a failed bid to acquire Russian oil giant Yukos.

Workers from Rosneft and Exxon will develop an Arctic Research and Design Center for Offshore Developments in St. Petersburg, Exxon said.

The companies will work on blocks 1, 2, and 3 of the East Prinovozemelsky project on the Arctic shelf, the same project offered earlier this year to BP in an abortive deal that had involved a share swap with Rosneft.

Exxon will get a one-third equity interest in both the Prinovozemelsky project in the Kara Sea as well as in the Tuapse Block in the Black Sea, with Rosneft holding 66.7%.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA.LN), which has also held talks with Rosneft about Kara exploration, said it remains keen to work in Russia’s Arctic, along with opportunities it has in other Arctic areas such as Alaska, a company’s spokesman said. The company declined to comment on the Exxon-Rosneft deal and had no update on the status of Shell’s talks with Rosneft. Shell CEO Peter Voser said in July that his company was in early-stage talks with Rosneft over Arctic exploration opportunities.

Peter Hutton, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said the Exxon deal was a major setback for BP and Shell.

“This is as much a blow to Shell as to BP,” said Hutton. “I think BP knew it was lost, that the opportunity was gone.” But the exploration opportunity in the Kara Sea remained for other companies, “in a package that was available, offered and quantifiable” he added.

Rosneft rose 1.4% to RUB224.10 rubles in Moscow. Exxon shares were off 83 cents to $73.50 in recent trading.

-By Isabel Ordonez and William Mauldin, Dow Jones Newswires; 713-547-9207; isabel.ordonez@dowjones.com

–James Herron in London contributed to this article.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 30, 2011 14:27 ET (18:27 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

SOURCE ARTICLE

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, August 30, 5:00 PM

The Irish Times – Monday, August 29, 2011

OF ALL the big questions facing the State, few have more profound long-term implications than the management of our natural resources. Official estimates suggest a potential reserve of hydrocarbons equivalent to 10 billion barrels of oil off the west coast alone. Were all of this to be recovered, it would be enough to supply Ireland’s gas and oil needs for a century.

With the stakes so high, it is imperative that the State gets its approach right. It has to balance the need to get companies to spend vast sums drilling wells with the public interest in maximising benefits from resources that belong to the Irish people. There is some urgency. A new round of applications for exploration licences in Atlantic waters closed at the end of May. Fifteen applications were received – the largest number of any licensing round to date and an indication that Irish waters are an increasingly attractive prospect.

Once these licences are issued, the holders will be, in effect, entitled to develop any finds they make under the current terms. It is widely acknowledged that these terms are extremely generous to the energy companies and produce a very low return for the State. An Indecon report, commissioned by the State in 2007, noted that “the current fiscal regime . . . yields among the lowest government take in the world”. Since then, the regime has changed slightly, with the potential for a higher tax take on very profitable fields.

By international standards, however, the terms remain very generous. Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte argues, in line with his Fianna Fáil and Green Party predecessors, that such terms are necessary to stimulate exploration activity. He may well be right, but the issue is too important to be left solely to the judgement of an individual minister.

The economics of energy and the technologies for recovering oil and gas from deep waters have changed so radically that it is time for a proper public review of this whole issue. That review should be undertaken by the Oireachtas committee on communications, natural resources and agriculture. It should be both open and open-minded, seeking not least to give the public some clarity on key questions. What is the status of the many discoveries made in recent decades that are still “under assessment”? How well do the current terms guarantee security of supply? Do they ensure the maximum amount of employment for Irish workers?

Mr Rabbitte’s position in this regard seems oddly contradictory. In April, when Éamon Ó Cuív suggested such a review in the Dáil, Mr Rabbitte replied that “I will agree. I will accept the spirit of his proposition.” Subsequently, however, he said he would go ahead and issue the licences under the current round, regardless of what the Oireachtas committee decides to do. This is an absurd approach to such a serious question: decision first, debate afterwards. It is not the way a healthy democracy considers issues of vital public importance. There should be a pause in the issuing of licences until the end of the year, to allow the Oireachtas committee to conduct a rigorous review.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Nigeria’s then acting President Goodluck Jonathan with President Obama in 2010

By KORNEBARI NWIKE

8/28/2011

President Goodluck Jonathan constituted a special committee on oil pollution in Ogoniland recently, according to him; to perform a “holistic review of the UNEP report.” The committee is chaired by Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum Resources and former Shell Oil Company employee. The committee also has Mr. Austen Oniwon, Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) as a member. Technically, this committee is a consortium of oil conglomerate. NNPC and Shell Oil Company are partners in the operation of oil business in Nigeria. A child of circumstance, the ad hoc committee was born as an aftermath of the recent shocking revelation in the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) report that almost all the Ogoni environment is contaminated by oil pollutants.

Public policy analysts expected the Nigerian Senate to invite Shell Oil Company and NNPC executives for questioning in respect to their firm’s role in the environmental tragedy in Ogoniland; instead the firm’s representatives were invited as part of the government talk shop. With this initial flaw and ethical conflict of interest, one wonders how government works in Nigeria. The presence of these two oil giants on the committee is like the presence of two eight hundred pound gorillas that kill and suddenly empowered to decide what to do with the corpses. The presence of this duo on such a committee is testament to the fact that Nigeria has long ago lost her independence to corporate multi-national oil corporations. Will the committee give a fair assessment of the UNEP report? It is yet to be determined.

Although Ogonis are very patient people, it can be felt that their patience is running thin and limited time exists to kid glove with Shell Oil Company over the contamination on their land. The Ogoni people has cause to be angry because they have stomached so much from Shell even before the era of General Abacha. In whatever the Federal government may consider as compensation to the Ogoni people for plundering their environment; such consideration should be comprehensive to include demands in the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR), creation of Bori state, and a Trust foundation. On the other hand, MOSOP should be ready to play hardball because Shell Oil crimes against Ogoni must not be swept under the carpet. The case may eventually end-up in international court of adjudication. It is necessary that MOSOP retain the services of reputable international real estate and environmental law firms such as Slagle, Bernard, and Gorman or Wyrsch Hobbs and Mirakian, P.C. in preparation for the coming environmental and social justice that may follow.

If Alaskan residents in the United States can enjoy yearly dividends from oil through the Alaska permanent fund; if Germans slave laborers continue to receive payments through a foundation established with $5 billion by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in 2000; and if British Petroleum was able to sacrifice $20 billion as a result of the deepwater horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, then Ogonis should not succumb to crumbs. The $5 billion settlement of Adolf Hitler’s slave laborers by the German government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in 2000 was intensely negotiated by representatives of United States, Israel, four European countries and their lawyers. While German government transferred $2.5 billion to the foundation the other half was borne by companies that were involved. The augment is that the Ogoni people should be ready for negotiation when duty calls with reputable attorneys.

As part of his Oath of office, President Goodluck Jonathan swore to defend Nigerians and the constitution in case of aggression. Shell Oil Company has shown aggression toward Ogoni as presented in the UNEP report. Mr. President, this is an opportunity to show leadership more so as an indigene of the Niger Delta.  He should seek justice for the Ogoni people by directing the Ministry of Justice to commence felony proceedings against Shell Oil Company. Grounds for criminal suits are environmental degradation, ecological poisoning and oil spills, neglect, deception about oil reserves, murder and supply of arms to the Nigerian military.

Other grounds for criminal indictment can be found in the Shell report titled “SPDC in the Niger Delta 1996/97. The firm admitted arming Nigeria’s military against Ogoni. Secondly, for 55 years, Ogoni people have seen terrifying new twist in their lives and environment. The fish, birds, and animals in the wild are disappearing because of oil exploration, gas flaring, and spills. The trees, fruits, flowers, and grasses, etc.that gave Ogoniland a unique landscape and from which the region earned the accolade “food basket of south- eastern Nigeria” have unfortunately disappeared. Sadly, birds that orchestrate melodious songs that bring Ogonis closer to nature have migrated to Northern and Western Nigeria where there is no oil pollution. The rich savannah mangrove forests habitats for seafood and aquatic creatures are either dead, replaced by Nipa palm, or are submerged in crude oil.

Nigerians and the world should rally around Ogoni at this time of sadness as they mourn the extinction of their heritage. Together let us seek recompense and justice for Ogoni. The demand for justice should include a seat behind bars for Shell oil executives as long as it takes to clean the Ogoni environment. This is necessary because no nation on earth has ever been manipulated, cheated and duped by oil firms like Nigeria. Shell Oil Company manipulates Nigerian laws, lies to Nigerian governments, and commits atrocities against Nigerians for five decades and counting and no crime supersede these acts of aggression.

A felony charge is unavoidable considering that Shell Oil Company has world class engineers, operational, technical, and administrative crews that has full knowledge of the presence of benzene and other pollutants in Ogoniland but conceal and fail to disclose this information to the government as required by law. According to research, benzene is a class A carcinogenic chemical whose link was traced to leukemia in 1897. It is predominantly found in the petroleum industry as well as cigarette smoke. The impact include ailments, such as “fatigue, malaise, abdominal bleeding, excessive bruising, weakness, weight loss, bone or joint pain, infection and fever, abdominal pains and discomfort, enlarged spleen, lymph nodes, and liver.” The precarious health hazards these chemicals pose to the Ogoni people make some walking corpses and the result is that they are dying slowly. Shell oil would rather play games by engaging in cover-ups, deceptions, corrupting locales, states, and federal officials to protect her business to the detriment of the generality of the population, than keeping to the tenet of Nigerian laws.

President Jonathan should demonstrate that he could lead Nigeria by engaging the United Nations, United States, Britain, and others to assist Ogoni through technical expertise and funds to address the tragedy. His comment, “if the United Nations can intervene in places where there are civil wars, then environmental pollution calls for its attention” should be echoed beyond Aso rock. He should go above and beyond, should not retreat but join forces with Niger deltans and Ogoni to champion their cause. Record of World leaders who sided with citizens to synchronize matters exists and he should be remembered as one. For instance, in 2005 former President Nestor Korchner of Argentina called for a national boycott of Royal Dutch Shell Plc for raising fuel prices forcing the company to back down. In Nigeria late President Musa Yar-Adua took extra-ordinary steps by telling Shell Oil Company, that it was no longer wanted in Ogoniland.

Mr. President, procrastination could result in a mass health epidemic but decisive and bold initiatives could overturn a catastrophe in Ogoni and the Niger delta. History will judge your legacy as a Nigerian president of Southern extraction by the vigor and decisive steps you took to solving the Ogoni environmental dilemma. The UNEP environmental report has provided a window of opportunity for you to set a record for yourself and Nigeria.

In summary, as the world awaits the report from the special presidential committee, President Godluck Ebele Jonathan should slam a criminal lawsuit against Shell Oil Company, establish compensation funds for Ogoni, push through Ogoni demand for Bori State, begin immediate clean-up of Ogoniland as recommended by UNEP, abrogate decree No. 6 of 1978 otherwise known as Land Use Acts, and Petroleum Acts of 1969 (both of which drove Nigeria into the fox hole she finds herself today). These acts should be done in harmony with the establishment of Ogoni Restoration Authority, Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Center, and Center of Excellence in Environmental Restoration as recommended by UNEP. The world is ready to rally around Nigeria but compelling leadership is desired.

KorneBari Nwike: An Accountant, consultant, and Public Policy Analyst reside in the United States.

Comment added by John Donovan

We now know from Wikileaks that Royal Dutch Shell executive Ann Pickard boasted to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that Shell had embedded spies throughout the Nigerian government. How on earth can Nigeria trust such a duplicitous evil company?

By John Donovan

Here we are again in the midst of a major Shell advertising campaign with huge colour adverts in the UK national press for a new Shell wonder fuel, this time invented by “Shell Fuel Scientists”: Its called Shell FuelSave

Shell’s Fuel Scientists are being rather cagey about the secret formula -- Shell Efficiency improvers -- inviting drivers to “guess what they do.” Doesn’t Shell know?

The adverts claim: “Our Fuel Scientists are more than satisfied with the results” described as “a remarkable benefit.”

What results????? What benefit?????

There is a clue. The blurb says “DESIGNED TO SAVE FUEL”

Is Shell claiming that FuelSave does save fuel? If so, provide testable figures. Is Shell frightened to do so. Perhaps the design has not proven successful in practice? The claim is completed unsubstantiated.

Overall assessment: BS piled upon BS.

Once again Shell is treating the public like gullible fools.

Is FuelSave being used in Syrian tanks to crush protestors engaged in non violent demonstrations?

Its like a walk down memory lane for those of us who remember the launch of another wonder fuel by Shell in 1986, Formula Shell, based on new technology and with a scientific image deliberately conjured up by Shell.

There was only one small problem. The new wonder fuel ruined many car engines and it did so on an international basis.

Here is a video clip from the Formula Shell advertising blitz when everything looked promising.

I have been unable to find any media reports of the subsequent debacle. Shell news management team must have been working overtime.

However, we have an account by Shell historians.

Extracts from pages 204 & 207 from ‘A History of Royal Dutch Shell, volume 3.’

To create brand distinctiveness, Shell launched two new brands on the basis of new technology and supported by heavy advertising. Helix motor oil in 1985 and Formula Shell in 1986.  The word Formula in the new brand for gasoline was chosen for its scientific connotations. Also, it appeared unchanged in many languages, which was important for international advertising.

In the UK, Formula Shell was launched with the punchline:

‘From today not all petrol is the same.’

The launch of Formula Shell in Europe resulted in higher sales. This early commercial success, however, became qualified when it appeared that in a small number of cars the new gasoline caused inlet values to burn. Negative publicity was inevitable, though the damage occurred in only four countries, Denmark, Norway, Malaysia, and the UK.

It took Shell technical experts in collaboration with the motor manufacturers more than a year to establish the cause of the problem. In the meantime, the Formula Shell brand was withdrawn from a number of markets, including the UK.  Once the problem had been identified, the product was reformulated and relaunched, in some markets under a new brand name.

The degree of spin is self-evident -- damage in ONLY four countries…

Lets hope for the sake of the motoring public that Shell “Fuel Scientists” have got it right this time.