Randall L. Little and Joel F. Arnold issued the proceedings in the name of the United States Government. They allege that Shell filed false information on Form MMS-2014 returns with the intention of reducing royalties owed to the U.S. government arising from the production of minerals from leases on Federal land.

November 14, 2011

By Emma Amaize

WARRI- NO fewer than 200 members of Awhakia family of Olomoro community in Isoko South Local Government Area, Delta State, have besieged Olomoro Flow Station operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company, demanding that the oil company implement the terms of agreement reached with them.

They came with canopy and chairs.

The protesters said they would not leave until the company starts payment of adequate compensation, environmental clean-up, proper community development projects and creation of good and harmonious working relationship with the families.

Their spokesmen, Mr. Sunday Iderike and Godday Egbogbo, said over the years the company had taken the family for granted because of their peaceful disposition, adding: “We are sad over Shell’s lukewarm attitude and deliberate refusal to implement the resolution reached since October 2010. The company’s stand is clearly an invitation for confrontation.

“There had been regular oil spill incidents here in Olomoro Compressor Station since 2001. As we talk, another one had just occurred on the same spot. The soldiers and mobile policemen on guard here are witnesses.”

“They just came from the spot it happened yesterday (Sunday) morning. Shell should stop deceiving us.”

They wondered why the company was yet to obey the 2010 peace treaty reached by the family, Shell, Federal Ministry of Environment, security agencies and Isoko South council in respect of the family land where it is operating.

They said: “Our patience has been exhausted since the company was shying away from cleaning up the impacted land and compensating owners of the land.”

SOURCE ARTICLE

(Reuters) – Anglo-Dutch energy major Shell said on Sunday it was containing a new oil spill in Nigeria’s onshore delta, the latest in a string of leaks from the company’s pipelines, which it has blamed on sabotage attacks and oil theft.

The spill came from part of Shell’s Okordia/Rumuekpe oil pipeline in the Niger Delta, where a fire last week forced the company to cut out some production.

Oil spills are common in Nigeria and are often caused by oil thieves and saboteurs who tap into the hundreds of kilometers of unguarded pipelines that vein through the vast waterways, creeks and swamplands of the Niger Delta.

“SPDC (Shell joint venture) contained a spill on the Adibawa delivery line which was reported yesterday. We dispatched our spill containment team to the site as soon as we received the reports, and the leak has been contained,” the company said in a statement.

It did not give a reason for the leak or any details about the impact on output. Environment Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria said the latest leak was a result of operational failure and poor equipment maintenance by Shell.

The oil company is coming under increasing pressure to do more about oil spills in Nigeria after a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report in August was critical of how the company deals with the environmental damage it has caused in Africa’s most populous nation.

Shell agreed in August that a Nigerian community affected by one spill could claim compensation in a British court, setting a precedent for potential future claims.

UNEP said Ogoniland, one region in the Niger Delta, needs the world’s largest ever oil clean-up, which would cost an initial $1 billion and could take 30 years. Shell and the Nigerian government both pledged to investigate UNEP’s findings but have not yet announced any results.

(Reporting by Samuel Tife; writing by Joe Brock, editing by Bernard Orr)

SOURCE ARTICLE

Stumbled across a current US court case in which, for a change, Shell is suing other another companies for allegedly stealing its intellectual property. In our experience it is most often the other way round. Shell Global Solutions and Shell Oil Company are suing RMS Engineering, Inc., Tesoro Corporation and its named subsidiaries, for alleged willful and deliberate patent infringement relating to refinery equipment.

20 October 2011

EXTRACTS FROM THE ARTICLE:

The strategic application of Web 2.0 in the mining industry [Mining Engineering]

The introduction of Web 2.0 platforms (also referred to as social media), with their architectures of participation, has ushered in a new era of technological interaction and information exchange that is changing the nature of corporate-community communications. Web 2.0 platforms give users the ability to generate data collaboratively, meaning that more stakeholders maintain the expectation of being able to contribute to online dialogue. In light of these changes, it is important for business to consider how social media can be used strategically to enhance stakeholder relationships and increase business efficiencies.

Case 3 – Civil society and social media

In addition to using social networking tools for mobilization, blogs, another social media tool, can also be used for raising awareness. A respondent from the blog RoyalDutchShellplc. com discussed how the site was set up to highlight ethical issues in the business management of Royal Dutch Shell pic, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. The respondent outlined how the campaign had grown from letter writing and leafleting, to blogging. The blog now hosts masses of information, including 24,000 corporate documents, which have been useful to other claimants working on cases against the company. The respondent indicated that a result of sharing these controversial documents has had an overall cost of billions of dollars in lost sales to the company (Mullard, 2010, interview 10003). (The blogger indicated that massive sales have been lost to the company as a result of exposure of information from the blog, yet the cost of maintaining the blog is only $120/month for the server; the technical developer now volunteers time as a result of having become engrossed in the issues after 10 years of involvement.)

The website was used by lawyers in the “Reserve Scandal” of 2004, where several attempts were raised to initiate class action against the company as a result of its misrepresentation of oil reserves to the Security and Equities Commission (Mullard, 2010, interview 10003). Maintaining a strong reputation by controlling messages and verifying information through an informant network are ways that the gripe site maintains credibility and continues to have an impact.

Social media enables powerful broadcasting and allows people to access persuasive perspectives and opinions from an array of actors. Building a community of interest that is dedicated to active participation requires transparent, focused objectives, as well as personal disclosure and authenticity to build trust. Civil society movements have best demonstrated the use of social media for mobilization and this represents a challenge that should not be overlooked by mining companies.

Copyright:(c) 2011 Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc.

Source: Proquest LLC

FULL ARTICLE

By John Donovan

“France’s state energy firm EDF has been fined €1.5m by a Paris court for spying on Greenpeace.”

“The energy company’s former security chief was sentenced to three years in prison for employing a firm to hack into the energy watchdog’s computers.”

See Guardian article “EDF fined €1.5m for spying on Greenpeace” from where the above extracts are taken.

This is not the first time that energy giants have resorted to spying operations against Greenpeace.

The Sunday Times reported in 2001 that Hakluyt & Company, Ltd., a “British private intelligence agency … staffed almost entirely by ex-intelligence services staff,” hired Manfred Schlickenrieder, a German foreign intelligence operative tasked by the firm to spy on Greenpeace at the behest of oil giants BP and Shell.  (Extracts from the article “When Corporations Spy“)

Titled Shell directors were the founding major shareholders and directors of Hakluyt & Company Ltd and the supposed oversight organisation: The Hakluyt Foundation. Shell directors were the ultimate spymasters.

During this same period my father and I were the subjects of intense spying activity by Shell (and that remains the case). We caught one undercover agent red handed and cornered a Shell UK Director Richard Wiseman into admitting that the spy was working for the company.

At the time, we had no knowledge of Hakluyt and wrote to Sir Peter Holmes in his capacity as a director of Shell Transport & Trading Co complaining about Shell’s uncover spying activities, completely unaware that Sir Peter (now deceased) was a major shareholder in Hakluyt & Company Ltd and President of the Hakluyt Foundation. He did not respond.

We were in fact besieged by sinister undercover activity.

Our own home and the homes of people associated with us, including our solicitor, were all burgled and Shell documents examined, including a document that a Shell lawyer had vowed to obtain, even after the High Court refused to allow Shell access to it.

My family and our witnesses were subjected to threats and intimidation, which got so out of hand that Shell carried out an internal investigation at Shell Mex House.

It was my impression that Mr Wiseman was surprised at what he considered to be an overreaction on our part to Shell’s admitted spying activities. I can only guess that this was because such spying activity – digging for dirt – was commonplace in relation to litigation involving Shell.

As a result of his loyalty, experience and skill, Mr Wiseman was appointed as Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. He retired from the company earlier this year.

Shell spying against us has continued through recent years in an expanded form and now covers the globe in an attempt to identify Shell employees visiting our website from Shell premises and trace people supplying us with insider information. This is confirmed from Shell internal documents we obtained from Shell following a series of applications under the UK Data Protection Act. It is also confirmed from a senior source inside Shell Global Security.

As a result, we have some idea of how the growing number of victims of corporate spying feel.

BBC says Murdoch tabloid spied on Prince William in 2006

Rupert Murdoch newspaper spied on lawyers for phone hacking victims

Murdoch under fire over lawyer spying

Murdoch tabloid spied on victims’ lawyers

News Corp admits spying on hacking lawyers

The dirty history of corporate spying

)

Mark Lewis, who has represented victims of phone hacking including the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, was one of the lawyers targeted. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

The News of the World hired a specialist private investigator to run covert surveillance on two of the lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an operation to put pressure on them to stop their work.

(Photo and extracts from Guardian article: News of the World hired investigators to spy on hacking victims’ lawyers)

FINANCIAL TIMES

November 10, 2011

Syria has stopped paying for oil produced within the country by Royal Dutch Shell and Total, highlighting the economic tensions affecting Bashar al-Assad’s regime after months of pro-democracy protests.

“Their continued domestic oil production in Syria is fuelling government tanks shelling peaceful protesters,” said Wissam Tarif, of Avaaz, a campaign group.

FULL FT ARTICLE

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

By GURDEEP SINGH

SINGAPORE—Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas company Petroliam Nasional Bhd. said Friday that it has agreed with Royal Dutch Shell PLC to jointly develop oilfields in Malaysia using enhanced oil recovery techniques.

The companies say the $12 billion project will help the Malaysian national explorer extract a greater portion of oil from its existing reserves and extend the lives of its oilfields.

The Malaysian company, also called Petronas, has been grappling with shrinking output from aging fields and targets capital expenditure of 50 billion ringgit-55 billion ringgit ($15.89 billion-$17.47 billion) a year over the next five years to replace and refurbish them.

Many of its producing Malaysian oil and gas fields are between 19 years and 28 years old.

Last year, Malaysia unveiled a package of tax incentives to boost oil output from mature fields, including cutting tax rates for the development of new oil and gas resources and enhancing recovery from depleted fields.

Petronas said it signed a deal with Shell for two 30-year production-sharing contracts under which the companies will employ enhanced oil recovery methods at oilfields offshore Sarawak and Sabah states in East Malaysia.

They will also develop nine oil fields in the Baram Delta offshore Sarawak and four in the North Sabah development area.

The two projects together may yield an additional 90,000 barrels to 100,000 barrels a day and could be the largest offshore enhanced oil recovery development in the world.

Malaysia, which produced 658,000 barrels of oil and condensates a day as of Jan. 1 last year, is expected to become a net oil importer by 2013 because of declining domestic output.

The projects will increase the average recovery factor in the Baram Delta and North Sabah fields to about 50% from around 36%, halt the decline of Malaysia’s oil output by improving production in the fields and extend the field life beyond 2040, Petronas said.

Write to Gurdeep Singh at gurdeep.singh@dowjones.com

SOURCE ARTICLE

Rights group says oil giant’s 2008 spills have wrecked livelihoods of 69,000 people and will take 30 years to clean up

• Reuters
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 November 2011 18.04 GMT

LONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Oil majors Royal Dutch Shell and Total have slashed Syrian oil production as international sanctions make exports impossible, industry sources told Reuters.