Posts under ‘Malcolm Brinded’

By John Donovan

It seems that Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform has had another close call.

On Monday workers were evacuated and production shut down after natural gas began seeping out from under the platform.

All of the ingredients for a disastrous explosion, of the kind that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, which almost brought about the demise of BP and the explosion on Shell Brent Bravo, resulting from Shell management (Malcolm Brinded) failing to take adequate action after a safety audit exposed a “Touch F*** All” safety culture and falsification of safety records.

Printed below is a comment from a Shell North Sea Platform Safety & Maintenance Expert on the recent oil spill near the Gannet Alpha Platform.

…another example of reactive maintenance regime, i.e. allowing, through neglect, equipment to fail and then reacting to the failure rather than, as the Safety Case for Gannet prescribes, preventing failure in the first instance by application of appropriate maintenance, inspection and monitoring.

(Expert in question may be available to the media for comment)

It seems that not much has changed. Production, profits and FAT CAT bonuses take priority over the safety of offshore workers.

RELATED ARTICLES

Hypocrisy of Shell CEO Peter Voser on BP Gulf of Mexico disaster

Oil and gas spills in North Sea every week, papers reveal

Collusion between Shell and HSE in Brent Bravo cover-up

Bill Campbell quoted in Final Report on BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Gas leak evacuates Shell oil rig

POSTING ON SHELL BLOG 2 FEBRUARY 2012 BY ” AN OBSERVER OF SHELL”

Is Voser now also being jinxed by the famous Brinded spell?

This decent and down to earth Swiss financeman is trying to tell the world that Shell will increase production from North Sea fields by extending the life of these fields (Sky Sunrise interview).

I am taking bets with some friends this will not happen. All observable actions by Shell is that they are retrenching from the North Sea. Voser emphasised that there will be a lot of job creation in the UK….. Now, where have we heard this before????

And he says (Bloomberg story):
‘Shell will increase production to about 4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2017-2018. Last March, it said daily output would rise to 3.5 million barrels this year and 3.7 million barrels by 2014′.

Promises, promises, promises. This translates into bonuses and a bit later in ‘new insights’ or other factors that could not be foreseen. I give it to him he is not as audacious as Brinded who predicted 7-8 years ago that Shell would be doing close to 6 mln bbl/d around now.

I am not calling the man a liar. I would not dare to with his army of lawyers in Shell. But how should we call someone who ‘not speaketh the truth’?

Shall we keep it as ‘tarred with the same brush as Brinded?”

BLOG POSTING ENDS

Note added by John Donovan

Malcolm Brinded is the former Managing Director of Shell UK’s offshore oil and gas operations and is closely associated with the Shell “TFA” safety culture, which resulted in an explosion and deaths on the Brent Bravo platform. He is currently Executive Director Exploration and Production for Royal Dutch Shell plc.

POSTING ON SHELL BLOG BY “SirPhil” ON 31 Jan 2012

“Having read that the former RBS-CEO, Fred Goodwin, has been stripped of his knighthood by UK authorities. Makes you wonder if and when Sir Phil Watts will stripped of his one. No doubt Phil’s selfish behaviour at the helm of Shell did more harm to the industry and private investors than Fred.”

RELATED ARTICLES

Memos expose Shell’s years of lying

EXTRACT: The correspondence between Mr Watts and Mr Van de Vijver began in June 2001 when Mr Van de Vijver took over as head of exploration and production. He was promoted after Sir Philip was made chief executive partly because of his success with reserves. The two engaged in a “pointed dialogue”, with Mr van de Vijver complaining Shell had overbooked reserves throughout the 1990s.

‘It happened on my watch. I am determined to fix it’

EXTRACT: Shell chairman Sir Philip Watts is resisting pressure to quit following the oil giant’s devaluation of its reserves.

Royal Dutch Shell still diddling its shareholders

EXTRACT: What a mad world we are in when the person most responsible for the fraud, Sir Phillip Watts KCMG, escaped with a severance/pension package of $18.5 million and also managed to retain his title and his Order of St Michael and St George, a British order of chivalry founded in 1818.

FSA Interrogation of Sir Philip Watts following resignation in disgrace as Shell Group Chairman

EXTRACT:

Transcript of Financial Services Authority Interview with Sir Philip Watts: 24 June 2004

Samantha Griffin for the FSA to Sir Philip:

“You are not under arrest and are free to leave any time. The interview is being conducted under caution. That is to say you do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in Court. Anything you say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”

Link for searchable Transcript of Financial Services Authority Interview with Sir Philip Watts: 24 June 2004: 75 pages – every page marked “CONFIDENTIAL”

Peter Voser, another Royal Dutch Shell CEO tainted by scandal

EXTRACT:

by John Donovan of royaldutchshellplc.com

Soon after Sir Philip Watts was escorted by security guards from the Shell Centre in humiliation and disgrace as a result of his leading role in the Royal Dutch Shell securities fraud, Shell directors appointed Jeroen van der Veer to replace him.

This was despite the fact that van der Veer and fellow Royal Dutch Shell Group Managing Director, Malcolm Brinded, “only narrowly avoided being sacked over their role in the oil giant’s reserves scandal.” Both had signed Form 20F Declarations submitted to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission containing materially false information. Both were subsequently co-defendants in a U.S. class action lawsuit settled by Shell in which Royal Dutch Shell, as part of the multi-million dollar settlement, made a range of commitments about future governance of the oil giant.

THE SADISTIC SACKING OF SHELL CHIEF EXECUTIVE WALTER VAN DE VIJVER

EXTRACT: He resigned as a result of the cumulative assault, shocked, humiliated and disgusted at the shabby inhuman treatment he received from his colleagues.

Minister of  Petroleum, Mrs Dizeani  Allison Madueke

03 Jan 2012

Federal Government’s total dependence on Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo) and its parent company, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, for the clean-up of the recent oil spill in Bonga deepwater oil field has exposed the weaknesses of Nigeria’s regulatory agencies – National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), in carrying out their statutory functions. Ejiofor Alike writes

Bonga Field Project

Nigeria’s oil industry witnessed a new chapter in November 2005, when Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo) began crude oil and gas production from the Bonga deepwater oil field, 120 kilometres offshore Nigeria.

Royal Dutch Shell’s former Executive Director in charge of Exploration and Production, Mr. Malcolm Brinded, had noted that Bonga would target an increase of about 10 per cent in Nigeria’s oil production and about 25 per cent increase in Shell-operated production in the country.

“Bonga begins a new chapter in Nigeria’s oil and gas production, and an important contribution to new material oil production for Shell. The project targets an increase of around 10 per cent in Nigeria’s oil production and around a 25 per cent increase in Shell operated production in the country. Nigeria’s deepwater is a frontier growth opportunity for Shell and we have several recent discoveries offshore and a strong acreage position. Bonga is a highly valuable asset for Nigeria and for Shell, and the field is coming on-stream to meet demand at a time when energy prices are high,” he said.

Former Managing Director of SNEPCo, who championed the development of the field, Mr. Chima Ibeneche had noted that the company pioneered the advance into Nigeria’s deep-water frontier, leveraging Shell’s global expertise to discover and develop producible oil and gas.

“Bonga will deliver excellent value to the Government and people of Nigeria, co-venturers, and to the shareholders for many years to come. I would also like to stress that the first oil from deepwater offshore Nigeria would not have been possible without the highly qualified and dedicated staff that have been working on this complex and challenging project within Shell, partner companies, contractors and government,” he said

With a development cost to first oil of some $3.6 billion, Bonga’s target was to attain the nameplate production of 225,000 barrels of oil and 150 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.

Located in Oil Prospecting License (OPL) 212, the 60 square kilometres field is situated in water depths of more than 1000 metres.

Production facilities comprise one of the world’s largest Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels and deepwater subsea infrastructure.

The field’s initial 16 subsea oil producing and water injection wells are connected to the two million barrel storage capacity FPSO by production flow lines, risers and control umbilicals. It was the first time inconel clad Steel Catenary Risers was used on an FPSO anywhere in the world. The Bonga concession was awarded in 1993 during the first round of bidding for the country’s deepwater frontier acreage.

It is operated by SNEPCo -55per cent, on behalf of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) under a Production Sharing Contract (PSC).

SNEPCo has a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) with Esso – 20per cent; Nigerian Agip Exploration Limited (NAE) -12.5per cent and Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited -12.5per cent.

Project Significance
Shell’s Bonga deepwater field was significant in a number of ways. The project was the first in the world where large steel catenary riser (SCR) was installed on an FPSO. Globally, Bonga project was also the first to use inconel cladding for a dynamic riser application.

The Bonga field also witnessed the first installation of a large diametre steel tube umbilical with bonded composite material cover as gas-lift risers.

These were arranged in dynamic catenary configuration, off a spread moored FPSO, and connected to the base of a steel catenary flow-line riser.

It was also the first, largest and most technologically advanced polyester moored deepwater buoy to be built in Nigeria.

The project also marks the first implementation of large size dynamic flexible pipe – 2.3km long; for oil transfer to a Single Point Mooring (SPM) offloading buoy.

Other the technological feats achieved with Bonga also include the fabrication and installation of the world’s largest deepwater Single Point Mooring Buoy at Nigerdock’s Snake Island yard in Lagos.

Samsung Heavy Industries constructed the 300,000 tonnes FPSO hull in South Korea while AMEC built and integrated the 22,000 tonnes oil processing topsides facilities. Stolt Offshore designed and built the gas export pipelines, the production flow lines, water injection lines and the risers that connect the sub-sea facilities to the FPSO.

SBM and Technip completed all the mooring and installation of the FPSO and SBM Loading Buoy together with the gas lift risers, well jumpers, control umbilicals, production manifolds, and subsea trees. Vetco Gray supplied the sub-sea wellheads, manifolds and control systems.

Militant Attack

Oil and gas production was first interrupted in Bonga in June 2008 when Shell shut down production from the offshore field, after members of the then most powerful militant group in the Niger Delta Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), fired at the facility during an unsuccessful attempt to destroy production infrastructure.

During the attack, an American oil worker, Capt. Jack Stone was captured on a supply vessel in the area by the militant group.

The incident shook the entire oil industry as it was surprising how the militants could penetrate an offshore facility, 65miles away from land.

MEND’s spokesman, Gbomo Jomo, claimed that the main computerised control room responsible for coordinating the entire crude oil export operations from the fields was the main target of the group.

“Our detonation engineers could not gain access to blow it up but decided against smoking out the occupants by burning down the facility to avoid loss of life. Our next planned attack on the oil field would be deadly. We therefore ask all workers in the Bonga field to evacuate for their safety as the military cannot protect them,” he said.

“The location for today’s attack was deliberately chosen to remove any notion that offshore oil exploration is far from our reach. The oil companies and their collaborators do not have any place to hide in conducting their nefarious activities. We use this opportunity to ask the oil majors to evacuate their expatriate staff from Nigeria until the issues in the Niger Delta have been addressed and resolved,” he added.

However, the attack was unsuccessful and after shutting down for few days as a precautionary measure, Shell resumed production in the field.

Maintenance Work
On February 28, 2011, production at Bonga field was again interrupted when SNEPCo shut the FPSO vessel for the first five- yearly mandatory turnaround maintenance.

As part of the efforts to ensure that the routine maintenance met global oil and gas standard, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) hired Lloyds as a consultant to certify the exercise.

SOURCE ARTICLE

By Eduard Gismatullin – Dec 7, 2011 12:01 AM GMT

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA), Europe’s largest energy producer, is weighing options for rising North American natural-gas output including exports and making liquid fuels, Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser said.

Shell will double North American gas production in the next three years to the equivalent of 400,000 barrels of oil a day as output from shale deposits rises, Voser said in an interview. Shell may channel gas into chemical production, an export project in Canada, and a program to use the fuel to power trucks, he said.

“We are getting now into production phase in a big way,” Voser said at the World Petroleum Congress in Doha, Qatar. “It’s about the right time to look for further options. We are really looking at the usage of gas in a much wider way in North America.”

Pumping gas trapped in shale rocks has transformed the U.S. into the world’s largest gas producer, cut prices about 75 percent from their 2008 peak and made exports to higher priced markets in Asia and Europe a viable option. The fuel will overtake crude oil to account for more than 50 percent of Shell’s global production next year, driven in part by the development of shale gas fields in Texas and Pennsylvania.

“This percentage goes up over the next years to come as most of our projects are actually gas projects,” Voser said. “Given our huge gas reserves in the U.S. we are looking at a possibility to actually build a gas-to-liquids plant.”

Largest Project

Shell has invested about $19 billion in its Pearl gas-to- liquids plant in Qatar to make transportation fuel. It’s the company’s largest project to date and it plans to build another “large scale” unit, Andy Brown, Shell’s chief in Qatar, said earlier this week.

The company has gas reserves in North America of 40 trillion cubic feet, about 12 percent of the continent’s total at end of 2010, based on data from BP Plc’s Statistical Review of World Energy. The company spent $4.7 billion last year to buy most of East Resources Inc., a shale producer with fields in Texas’s Eagle Ford area and Marcellus in Pennsylvania.

The Hague-based producer is working on the Green Corridor project in Canada to convert gas into 300,000 tons of liquefied natural gas a year to fuel long-haul trucks from next year. The fuel will be offered to operators along western Canada’s busiest truck route from Calgary to Edmonton, said Malcolm Brinded, executive director for exploration and production.

Shell is looking at using the LNG-to-transport technology in China and Europe, Voser said. It will be a smaller market than using gas to fire power plants, “but it’s a good usage of the gas,” he said.

“There is a great appetite for this type of solution,” he said. This market “will be growing. You can think of more, you can use it in the shipping industry.”

LNG Exports

The gap between natural gas and crude oil prices in North America is opening up the prospect of LNG exports to Asia and making chemical projects commercially viable. Today’s gas price is equivalent to about $27 a barrel of crude, while oil is trading at about $100 a barrel in New York.

Shell, together with PetroChina Co. and Japanese and South Korean partners, plans to develop an export facility in British Columbia in Canada to supply LNG to Asia.

In June, Shell announced plans to build an ethylene plant in Appalachia, the first so-called cracker built in the region in half a century, to tap low-cost natural gas for making plastics. The cracker would process gas from the Marcellus shale. The ethylene probably will be converted to polyethylene plastic at a second factory to be built at the site, Shell said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net;

SOURCE ARTICLE

From a Shell Insider: “…Malcolm Brinded is certainly lying when he states that he did not know”: Mon 20 Feb 2006 04:27 AM EST

Mr Donovan

After reading some contributions to your site of insiders it made me decide to share something with you and your readers. Perhaps you see it fit to publish, I have no other avenue to vent my frustration and very deep anger.

Of late the networks have highlighted the treatment of prisoners by Americans in their prisons for presumed terrorists. At least to me it has become very clear that there has been a fundamental flaw in the command structure of the armed forces. And I am cynical enough to believe this flaw was designed and knowingly created by the ‘brass’ and top politicians.

They first brainwashed the soldiers (mostly non professionals and reservists who only joined the army to have medical insurance and get an education) via direct messages and via the various media that are under their control to prepare them psychologically to commit acts that most of them would never dream of doing in a normal life, whether or not these acts comply with the Geneva Convention. I am a mere engineer and not a psychologist so I am out of my depth here. But I am convinced that if you repeat messages time and again that your enemies are all evil terrorists, people will start to believe this, especially if they are in an elevated state of stress such as a war in Iraq. Next the brass (from the president down) says that no stone must be left unturned to get the truth out of the prisoners to defend the nation of good citizens and god fearing Americans, and the foundation is laid to get excesses. To top it off you put reserve personnel in charge of these prisons and interrogation and on purpose do not arrange for extra controls to check how things go, and you have disasters in the making.

Praise the interrogators if they come up with some ‘confessions’ beaten out of prisoners, real or simply made up, remove anyone that wants to say that this is wrong, and the result is very easy to predict. No instructions to do bad things will be on paper so the brass can always blame the little guys at the coalface. They overstepped and need to be punished. And you hand out severe prison sentences to simple soldiers who thought they were merely following orders. I guess this happens in all wars and if you quickly score a victory, it can all be covered up many years, enough to erase the tracks of the real culprits. The winner takes all and is right!

However, in this era of digital cameras and internet, there are fewer secrets. Images can be circulated globally and instantly. And then there is real trouble and on a global scale. It is totally beyond me that the advisors to the president and top brass did not see this coming. I leave that to psychologists to analyze and explain.

Why this long story and what does it have to do with Shell?

The whole reserves problem as well as the extremely poor project management that Shell is experiencing the last few years is almost a carbon copy of what happened to the armed forces. Great changes, such as the large reorganisation started by Herkstroeter in 1994, created great stress in the workforce. These changes were considered unnecessary by Bob Sprague, one of the cleverest people who ever worked for Shell. But initially this was still fairly positive stress and it led to a feeling of freedom and desire to conquer and improve the world. Remember, at that time we were the biggest and the best oil company and had been since the mid 70s! So there was still a lot of latent know-how and professionalism around, which the company cannibalised in creating a ‘new Shell’ with ‘self managing teams’, ‘Olympic targets’, ‘unleashing talent’ and other trendy nonsense. It even led to record profits in one year, I believe it was 1997.

But by then the company was getting (with the explicit knowledge of the top brass) into the hands of people who were only motivated by personal rewards, and who smelled their chance. None of that ‘Enterprise First’ stuff. It was ‘Me first’ and all the snouts were in the trough and nobody wanted to take their snout out of the trough. Anyone complaining or making remarks that things were not right was publicly destroyed and removed. And those with their snouts in the trough started to make promises and ever more ridiculous demands. When Watts came to power (he actually stole that job at the time with his gorilla talk and behaviour) the pigs were truly feeding. Explicit instructions to cook the books or ‘err on the high side’ were hardly given in written form or were at least well disguised. It was said and whispered in meetings, conferences and workshops and personal discussions during the annual staff evaluation time. There were clear instructions to aim for the impossible with those stretched targets and anyone who said he could go even further or higher was handsomely rewarded with promotions or fat bonuses.

Brinded was a real champion of this, he was #2 and later MD in Shell Expro and I believe they missed their business targets for 7 years in a row under his reign!

So, the foundation was laid and Watts started his circus with new and bigger promises every year. And then it became unsustainable and the truth came out. We have internet, everyone knows what has happened and why it happened.

But to prove that in a court of law will be very difficult. And with the vast profits created by high oil prices, the top brass can buy all the time they need and hire the most expensive lawyers to keep them out of prison. All paid for with the shareholders’ money.

To illustrate how difficult it will be to prove, consider the following story. I recently confronted a colleague who works on the Sakhalin project and told him that I had known that the project would be severely over budget in early May 2005. The word was out and a figure of $15.5 billion was being suggested by project managers from Sakhalin. How come, I asked him, that Malcolm Brinded and Jeroen van der Veer claim they did not know? The answer was very simple: Brinded was told there were severe problems and his response was: ‘give me a report as soon as you have the exact details and know precisely how much and what’. This led to a further delay and a week after the deal with Gazprom was announced, out came the surprise statement of the $20 billion and enormous time overrun. But there are probably no documents showing that Malcolm Brinded and Jeroen van der Veer knew. They are genuinely clever people. But in my simple world, the boss should know how his most expensive project is progressing, even if it is not exact all the time. So, Malcolm Brinded is certainly lying when he states that he did not know. He means he had no formal report.

And Jeroen van der Veer should step down because he either knew and lied or he did not know and that is just as bad for someone in his position.

I apologise for this longish note but it helped to reduce my anger. I hope others will follow and you will publish this on your great site. I think the top echelons in Shell by now know there are no secrets anymore.

RELATED ARTICLES

Offshore workers died as a result of a “Touch F*** All” safety regime at Shell, 25 Jul 2007

Royal Dutch Shell Fat Cat Malcolm Brinded: Big Brain but no scruples

By John Donovan

It is interesting to read the current articles (1) (2) from the Brunei Times highlighted by a contributor to our Shell Blog. They concern allegations of irregularities in a Shell tender process.

Some years ago I stumbled across evidence in Shell’s own internal documents of a rigged contract tender process involving several Shell executives, led by Andrew Lazenby, a then Shell National Promotions executive. I was in the process of suing Shell in the High Court for the fourth time (Shell had already settled the first three cases) when I found the amazing array of evidence in discovery documents supplied by Shell. All of the cases involved the same Shell executive, Andrew Lazenby. All involved IP theft by Shell. The company settled all four claims and paid all legal costs, said to be over a £1 million in respect of the last case.

Lazenby was also a bungler. Two of the promotions secretly produced by Shell without our knowledge or consent and launched by Shell on a national basis, were potentially fatally flawed due to being insecure. Shell staff could potentially identify and remove winning game pieces before they were given out to drivers on Shell forecourts.

THE SHELL SMART CONTRACT TENDER SCAM

PDF file containing selective extracts from cross-examination of retired Shell Executive Frank Leggatt regarding a rigged contract tender for the SMART scheme masterminded by Shell executive Andrew Lazenby, in a conspiracy involving several Shell managers, some of whom still hold senior positions at Shell. The objective was to steal information from several companies lured into confidentiality agreements under false pretenses.

Witness Statement of Mike McMahon, the CEO of one such company, Concept Loyalty Limited.

*RELATED APPROACH LETTER TO Mr McMahon dated 19 March 1999 DETAILING THE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE FOUND IN SHELL’S MOUNTAIN OF “DISCOVERY” DOCUMENTS

*Includes examples of two items listed in the letter: (1) a handwritten note dated 23 October 1992 by Shell Manager Andrew Lazenby circulated to his management colleagues notifying them of his intention to deceive companies in the tendering process for the multimillion pounds SMART scheme by keeping them holding as long as possible when in fact he had already decided to reject them (2) a standard letter dated 27 October 1992 subsequently sent by him to Mr McMahon (and other “rejects”) pretending they were ALL still in contention. Lazenby requested considerably more information on the false premise that they were still in the running for a multi-million pounds contract. This caused considerable time and expense to be incurred by all the “reject” companies involved. They were enticed into supplying Shell with commercially valuable information. It was a carefully planned con trick on the part of Shell management.

On the same date, 27 October 1992, Mr Lazenby sent letters to the two companies he had short listed – the sole runners left in the race as Mr McMahon put it, Geoff Howe & Associates and Senior King Limited. Lazenby requested more information from them before ultimately awarding the contract to “Option One”, a company which was NOT IN THE TENDERING PROCESS or as Mr McMahon described it, a horse which was not even running in the race.

Option One was the same company to whom Andrew Lazenby funneled all of our confidential proposals – he had a close personal relationship with Option One directors outside of business activities.

In a Typewritten confidential “SHORTLIST SELECTION RATIONAL” dated 28 October 1992 circulated by Andrew Lazenby to his managerial colleagues, Tim Hannagan and David Watson (both still at Shell), Lazenby provided a “Listing of reasons for rejection” as per his handwritten note of 23 October 1992. It is further proof of double dealing with Lazenby rubbishing the four companies who he had decided to reject, but had written to the previous day pretending otherwise, to “keep rejects holding as long as poss” as per the same handwritten note.

In his Witness Statement, Tim Hannagan confirmed the shortlist process, with what Hannagan described as “the players” being first listed, then “narrowed down” to a shortlist of six, then two, before the remaining “players” were also rejected in favour of Option One, the company enjoying a special relationship with Andrew Lazenby which, was never a participant in the tender. It is notable that in his Witness Statement, Hannagan tried to distance himself from the actions of Andrew Lazenby. He should have disassociated himself at the time from the rigged process.

Several months later, Lazenby was still conspiring with his immediate boss, David Watson, on how to keep Mike McMahon and his company holding on. This is self-evident from a draft letter addressed to Mike McMahon dated 4 May 1993, which Lazenby sent to David Watson (“DW”) for comment, prior to it being mailed. It contained suggested amendments and an additional clause. Lazenby asked McMahon to put Shell in “as the exclusive petrol retailer” in “your smardcard loyalty scheme”. Lazenby stated that “Final commitment” would depend on positive results after extensive consumer testing. The implication being that a commitment had been made, but not a “Final commitment.”

McMahon and his company must have been overjoyed at the news, but were unaware that on the same day, 4 May 1993, Lazenby also sent an email to several Shell colleagues, including David Watson, discussing the sharing out of roles on the “blossoming” Shell SMART project. Shell had not the slightest genuine intention of moving forward with the scheme offered by McMahon. In the email to his Shell colleagues, Lazenby described himself as “machiavellian.”

Some definitions of “machiavellian”:“cunning and unscrupulous: using clever trickery, amoral methods, and expediency to achieve a desired goal”; “Suggestive of or characterized by expediency, deceit, and cunning.“; “using clever but often dishonest methods which deceive people..”:

Some synonyms: plotting; deceitful; sly; cunning; calculating; insidious; unscrupulous; wily; underhanded; contriving; artful; devious

How apt and appropriate given the circumstances.

Lazenby and his colleagues deliberately conned innocent smaller companies to invest time and money and disclose proprietary information, all under false pretenses, after the decision had already been made not to use them.

The mind set of Lazenby is evident from an incriminating email relating to the Shell SMART multi-partner loyalty card project which he circulated to Shell managerial colleagues.

Extract: “NB: To answer your last point: My note of 25/10 is the official position, my note of 9/9 expressed a personal and pragmatic view of how to handle the problem - it is in fact illegal and is certainly unofficial, and if we were discovered then we will enforce the official legal position - which is that all volume must currently be rewarded with promotional points”.

Companies in a tender process for a SMART loyalty card contract were deliberately drawn into confidentiality agreements supplied by Pamela Marsh who worked for Richard Wiseman in the legal department. Proprietary information was extracted from the companies under false pretenses and they were held back from approaching other oil companies in the belief they were still in the running for the SMART contract, when in fact, the decision had already been made to reject them from the tender.

The Smart contract was miraculously awarded to an agency – Option One – which I stress again had not even run in the contract race. As indicated, Lazenby had a close private relationship with senior directors of Option One. His diaries revealed that he also had an offshore bank account in the Channel Islands (Jersey). As far as we could tell, all confidential ideas disclosed to Lazenby and subsequently adopted by Shell were channeled to Option One. This included a series of proposals we put to Lazenby including a rerun of the Shell Make Money game we had devised for Shell and held joint rights with Shell.

Never guessing that his hand-written diary entries would be exposed to scrutiny in a High Court case, Lazenby made entries which revealed that he was a disgruntled employee and was intent to “Set up personal business while @ Shell 35 yrs = exit date.” It was his apparent objective to exploit his position to create enough personal wealth to exit Shell at the age of 35.

Despite his lack of integrity, Andrew Lazenby was given full backing from the highest levels of Royal Dutch Shell senior management, including Malcolm Brinded and Mark Moody-Stuart, even though the evidence of his conniving and unscrupulous predatory treatment of smaller companies was brought to their attention.

That should tell you all you need to know about Shell senior management support for Shell’s claimed business principles, which supposedly includes honesty, integrity, transparency, and respect for people, in all of Shell’s dealings. Pure propaganda BS in our experience.

Detailed information about the SMART contract scam is contained in the article ALARM BELLS RING OVER TENDERING FOR ROYAL DUTCH SHELL CONTRACTS

From pages 42 & 43 of “Royal Dutch Shell and its sustainability troubles” – Background report to the Erratum of Shell’s Annual Report 2010

The report was made on behalf of Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands)
Author: Albert ten Kate: May 2011.

In May 2005, Shell signed an agreement to start a joint venture with the Libyan National Oil Corporation. The joint venture would revamp and expand the existing liquified natural gas (LNG) Plant at Marsa el-Brega on the Libyan coast. It would also explore for gas and subsequently develop five areas totalling 20,000 square kilometres located in the heart of Libya’s Sirte Basin. Shell was committed to invest USD 637 million in the first phase of the joint venture.

Already in March 2004, Malcolm Brinded, head of exploration and production at Shell, stated: “We were in Libya in the Fifties and we were in Libya in the Eighties for an exploration programme, but for this one we came back in 2001 and so this is the culmination of discussions over that.” International sanctions on Libya were lifted in 2003 and 2004. Thus, Shell had been fishing for contracts from Gaddafi a long time before international sanctions were lifted.

In April 2010, documents obtained by the UK newspaper The Times revealed that the former UK prime minister Tony Blair lobbied Colonel Muammar Gaddafi on behalf of Shell. Shell had written a letter in draft form for Mr Blair to write to Colonel Gaddafi. In May 2005, shortly after Mr Blair’s official letter was written, Shell secured the deal.

Both letters were released after a lengthy Freedom of Information process. The Cabinet Office of the UK government would release only a part of Mr Blair’s official letter. In its draft-letter, Shell tells the Prime Minister to congratulate the Libyan leader on Revolution Day and to comment on the “remarkable year of progress for Libya”. In relation to its deal, the draft letter from Shell said: “Understand that all the terms of the agreement have now been negotiated and approved now waiting for [Libyan] Cabinet approval.” The section on Shell in Mr Blair’s official letter sounded very similar to the draft: “I understand that the necessary technical discussions with the relevant authorities in Libya have been completed satisfactorily. All that is needed now are final decisions by the [Libyan] General People’s Committee to go ahead.” Shell declined to comment to The Times. The journalist of The Times, David Robertson, later characterised Shell’s draft- letter “unusually informal or unusually forward in the way that Shell thought it would be able to dictate British foreign policy.”

In September 2009, The Times requested all communication between the UK Department for Business and the following companies: BP, BG group and Shell (all oil and gas companies), and defence company BAE Systems. A limited number were released in December 2009. One was an email from Shell to UK Trade & Investment dated September 2004 complaining of slow progress with its Libyan deal. Just months earlier Mr Blair and Colonel Gaddafi had met in a tent outside Tripoli to end Libya’s diplomatic isolation.

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Royal Dutch Shell Executive Director Malcolm Brinded and Gaddafi.

Following the demise of his friend Gaddafi, Royal Dutch Shell Executive Director Malcolm Brinded (center figure in photo immediately above) has turned his attention to the Chinese government. Jia Qinglin (Front, R same photo), chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), listens to the introduction of a senior manager as he visits the research and development center of Royal Dutch Shell in The Hague, the Netherlands, Oct. 28, 2011. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

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