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April, 2014:

BP and Shell exposed as US prepares first warning shot against Russia’s oil and gas industry

Apr 27th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Firms may be forced to curtail operations as G7 Screen Shot 2014-01-30 at 00.47.49powers prepare to launch new sanctions   

Extract from an article by  published1:28PM BST 27 Apr 2014 by The Telegraph

Britain’s top energy companies face an extremely delicate situation as the world’s G7 powers prepare to launch the next wave of sanctions against Russia, and may be forced to curtail operations or freeze certain commercial ties with the country. The US, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada have agreed to “intensify targeted sanctions to increase the costs of Russia’s actions” – possibly as soon as Monday… The G7 is for now holding back Iranian-style “stage 3” sanctions against the whole Russian banking system, mining industry, or the oil and gas nexus. This nuclear option… Both BP and Shell said they remain committed to their long-term investments in Russia but are monitoring the situation closely.   read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell, the Brunei Royal Family and Sharia Law

Apr 27th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei meeting Malcolm (TFA) Brinded, Shell’s then Executive Director, Upstream International

By John Donovan

There may be some relief by Muslim employees of Shell Brunei at the news that “Brunei has postponed the introduction of tough Islamic criminal punishments that were due to begin on Tuesday.”

Fortunately for Shell, the Sharia code appears vague on the subject of corruption.

Shell enjoys a so called symbiotic relationship with the scandal-tainted Brunei Royal family. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell to see profits slump by 38 per cent

Apr 27th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-02-10 at 16.29.29Extract from a Sunday Express article by: Helen Massy-Beresford published 

Royal Dutch Shell is expected to report that its profits have slumped 38 per cent year on year to $4.6 billion (£2.7 billion), when it unveils its first-quarter results on Wednesday. As part of his turnaround plans van Beurden has pledged to improve cash flow and cut costs.

FULL ARTICLE

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Alaskan Drilling: What could happen to Royal Dutch Shell in the USA

Apr 27th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-01-30 at 00.47.49…nothing has been as drastic as the company’s change in attitude toward the process it helped set up in 2012 to settle hundreds of thousands of economic damage claims. In full-page newspaper ads, interviews and a gusher of court filings, BP officials have insisted that their good intentions are being hijacked by greedy lawyers and underhanded claimants.

Extracts from a New York Times article by and published in print How a Gulf Settlement That BP Once Hailed Became Its Target”

NEW ORLEANS — Four years ago the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and exploded, killing 11 men, spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and staining, seemingly indelibly, the image of BP… Its reputation in free fall, the company set aside billions of dollars and saturated the airwaves with contrite pledges to make thousands of businesses and workers whole… nothing has been as drastic as the company’s change in attitude toward the process it helped set up in 2012 to settle hundreds of thousands of economic damage claims. In full-page newspaper ads, interviews and a gusher of court filings, BP officials have insisted that their good intentions are being hijacked by greedy lawyers and underhanded claimants. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Upstream and Downstream – always oil and water

Apr 26th, 2014
by Paddy Briggs.
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PADDY BRIGGS

RETIRED ROYAL DUTCH SHELL EXECUTIVE, PADDY BRIGGS

When I retired I was presented with a small silver Shell emblem which I still wear with pride from time to time. It once stood for excellence in marketing and was one of the world’s most familiar brand symbols. Now it’s a bit of a collectors item symbolising a world that has long gone…

By Paddy Briggs

Most of my 37 year Shell career was spent in the “Downstream” but from time to time I had contact with the Upstream operations and in my final assignment in the Middle East I was very close to Upstream issues. Both Shell’s exploration and production activities (the Upstream) and their refining and marketing business (the Downstream) had the Shell emblem (the “Pecten”) flying over them – but that was about the only thing they had in common!

EP is a top down business. The experts in The Hague, mostly products of the best geology and technology Universities, built unrivalled expertise in the tasks of finding and exploiting hydrocarbon assets. They were also pretty good at building the necessary alliances with partners that virtually all upstream operations require. Their world was the world of oil reservoirs, horizontal drilling, fracking and all the other thousand and one technologies and techniques that made the business work. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Some Western firms could face Russian retaliation

Apr 26th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 11.34.57 Extract from an article by Adam Molon published by CNBC on 26 April 2014

Tougher Western sanctions against Russia would likely have dire consequences for that country’s monolithic, energy-reliant economy, but experts say the punishment also could trigger retaliation from Moscow against American and European multinationals. “There no doubt would be Russian retaliation,” said Justin Logan, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. “Companies with money tied up in Russia would have a tough time getting it back out.” The lion’s share of foreign money in Russia is from major energy sector players like Shell, Exxon, and BP… read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Posing with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin

Apr 26th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Shell's Ben van Beurden bows to Putin on Good Friday, 18 April 2014

Shell’s Ben van Beurden bows to Putin on Good Friday, 18 April 2014

Extract from a New York Times article by  and published in print 26 April 2014 under the headline:

European Firms Seek to Minimize Russia Sanctions

BERLIN — With the showdown over Ukraine escalating and President Obama warning Moscow of a tough new round of sanctions, Russia and its allies in the European private sector are conducting a separate campaign to ensure that they can maintain their deep and longstanding economic ties even if the Kremlin orders further military action. No European industry has been as open in its support of Russia as the energy industry. Executives have publicly voiced skepticism about the effectiveness of sanctions, lobbied behind the scenes to head them off and traveled to Russia, on at least one occasion to pose with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell embroiled in Russian oligarch machinations

Apr 26th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 10.44.49Extracts from an article by Josh Lewis published 25 April 2014 by upstreamonline.com under the headline:

“Rosneft ruffled over Gazprom”

Reuters reported that Igor Sechin, at a government meeting, said both Gazprom and Shell, which operate a gas project in the Pacific island of Sakhalin, were denying access to a trunk pipeline for its LNG project. Upstream reported on Friday that Shell is urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to step-in…

FULL ARTICLE

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Sanctions not enough to deter hydrocarbon-hungry firms

Apr 26th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Shell's Ben van Beurden bows to Putin on Good Friday, 18 April 2014

Shell’s Ben van Beurden bows to Putin on Good Friday, 18 April 2014

Extract from a BusinessDay article published 26 April 2014

Shell also expressed commitment to its expansion projects in Russia. Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell told Russian President, Vladimir Putin at a meeting recently. Shell plans to expand Russia’s only liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant with Russian partner Gazprom. Van Beurden said that Shell “are very keen to grow our position in the Russian Federation and we look forward with anticipation and confidence on a very long-term future here in Russia.” He confirmed that Shell had agreed with Gazprom to expand the Sakhalin-2 LNG plant which produces 10 million tonnes of LNG per year. The expansion plan is in line with Putin’s demand to boost production of LNG and double Russia’s global market share to around 10 percent by 2020. Putin said in his response said; “We, of course, will pledge all the necessary administrative guidance and support.” read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Leveraging Big Oil to resolve the Ukrainian crisis

Apr 26th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Shell's Ben van Beurden bows to Putin on Good Friday, 18 April 2014

Shell’s Ben van Beurden bows to Putin on Good Friday, 18 April 2014

Extract from an article published 25 April 2014 by allvoices.com

Bloomberg’s Business Week reports that even while Western governments and Russia squared off over Ukraine, relations between the major energy companies — such as ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP — and Russia grew even cozier as they pursued the half a trillion dollar oil and gas joint venture deal in the Arctic and Siberia concluded in 2011. The implications are clear: Any comprehensive sanctions against Russia will have adverse effects on major Western energy companies. The strenuous efforts by Big Oil CEOs to reassure Putin that Obama’s sanction threats are empty threats have been noted by close watchers of the energy sector. While Obama and US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice were threatening sanctions on Russia’s “very significant sectors,” Royal Dutch Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden met with Putin at his residence in the outskirts of Moscow and assured him, confidently, that his company’s business interests in Russia would not be sacrificed to international politics. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

John Browne, former chief executive at BP, becomes the face of fracking in Britain

Apr 26th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 00.38.16Extracts from an article by Edward Robinson published Friday 25 April 2014 by The Washington Post

“Shale gas could be very, very important for this country; it could be transformative,” says Browne, 66, who’s now chairman of Cuadrilla Resources, a British exploration firm that plans to frack the English countryside. “It’s like the opening of Alaska or western Siberia or the Gulf of Mexico.” Even as evidence mounts that fracking operations drain aquifers and spew methane into the air, energy firms are fanning out across mammoth shale deposits in China, Russia, India, South Africa, Australia and Argentina. Royal Dutch Shell has joined forces with China Petroleum & Chemical, or Sinopec, in China to exploit the world’s largest shale-gas-laden formations. Even relatively small Britain is sitting on a gas mother lode. The Bowland-Hodder formation, a belt of shale that stretches across Britain’s midsection, holds more than 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the British Geological Survey. That’s almost the same size as the Marcellus deposit under the Appalachian Mountains, the No. 1 U.S. shale gas find. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Dirty rotten scoundrels?

Apr 26th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 00.17.24

FROM PETROLEUM ECONOMIST

A new book, The Secret World of Oil, tries to shed light on some of the industry’s darker corners. Review by Derek Brower

Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 00.19.21OIL is the world’s most traded commodity. Getting it out of the ground, shipping it around the world and making money from the process is a dirty business, in which middlemen grease the palms of tyrants and lobbyists work behind the scenes to win political protection for the bad guys. If you want to trade oil, you need to leave your morals out of it. That, at least, is the premise of The Secret World of Oil, a new book by journalist Ken Silverstein, a fellow at the Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Corruption is a ‘constant’ in the energy business, writes Silverstein. “Fixers funnel money to dictators to obtain concessions for oil companies, set up shell firms and front companies to move money, and line up firms to explore for oil,” he says. When they can’t do that, they buy influence for their miscreant masters… read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Judge suspends Arctic drilling, orders new environmental report

Apr 25th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-04-04 at 09.49.25Extracts from a Los Angeles Times article by Paresh Dave published 24 April 2014

In the ongoing battle over offshore drilling, a federal judge in Alaska told regulators Thursday to redo an environmental impact study that underestimated the amount of recoverable oil and, potentially, the risks to delicate Arctic habitat. The decision by U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline stopped short of scrapping the $2.6 billion in leases, however. In light of the new analysis, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will have to decide whether to move forward with or cancel the agreed-upon leases with Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and other companies. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell sucked in to Russian gas pipeline politics

Apr 25th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-03-10 at 23.56.16Extract from a Reuters article published Friday 25 April 2014 under the headline: “Russia’s Rosneft says Gazprom hinders its LNG project”

Last week, Putin approved expansion plans for an LNG plant, operated by Royal Dutch Shell and majority-owned by Gazprom, on the Pacific island of Sakhalin. Analysts have said that would hinder implementation of Rosneft and Exxon’s LNG project. Sechin told the meeting, presided over by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, that both Gazprom, a monopoly owner of trunk pipelines, and Shell were denying his company access to a pipeline from Sakhalin to the mainland for the LNG project. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Royal Dutch Shell’s failed Arctic campaign

Apr 25th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2013-11-01 at 09.31.18Extract from an oilprice.com article by Nick Cunningham published 24 April 2014 under the headline: “Why Alaska Increasingly Resembles A Petro-State”

In an attempt to arrest the decline in oil production, Alaska’s legislature, governor, and representatives in Congress have aggressively supported offshore oil drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, which hold an estimated 29 billion barrels of oil. But Royal Dutch Shell’s failed Arctic campaign has doomed those hopes for now. Shell cancelled drilling plans for 2014 and hinted that it may not return next year. With new CEO Ben van Beurden’s decision to steer the company away from so-called “elephant projects,” the Arctic is seemingly not a priority. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Kashagan project closed indefinitely

Apr 24th, 2014
by John Donovan.
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Screen Shot 2014-04-06 at 21.01.34Extract from oilprice.com article by James Burgess published 23 April 2014 under the headline: “Kashagan Field Plans Pipeline Replacement”

After weeks of review, the operators of Kazakhstan’s giant Kashagan oil field have concluded that pipelines carrying oil and gas will need to be replaced due to extensive damage. The consortium — which includes Eni, Total, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil — has been repeatedly frustrated by delays and engineering obstacles. With the discovery of the severely corroded pipelines, the project, which was shut down in October 2013 after a brief start, is now closed indefinitely. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
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