Posts under ‘Sakhalin II’

By Yuliya Fedorinova – Feb 8, 2012 4:53 AM GMT

Sakhalin Energy, Russia’s liquefied natural-gas producer, increased its revenue by $1 billion last year after raising prices, Vedomosti reported today, citing Chief Executive Officer Andrey Galayev.

The project may break even as soon as this spring rather than in 2013 or 2014, as initially planned, Galayev told the Moscow-based newspaper.

OAO Gazprom has a 50 percent stake in Sakhalin Energy.

To contact the reporter on this story: Yuliya Fedorinova in Moscow at yfedorinova@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Viljoen at jviljoen@bloomberg.net

SOURCE ARTICLE

RELATED ARTICLES

LEAKED EMAILS LOST SHELL BILLIONS ON SAKHALIN-2

Shell $22 billion Sakhalin-2 Project devastated by insider leaks: 10 July 2007

Sakhalin Pep Talk From ‘Old Blood and Guts’: By Max Delany, Moscow Times 9/6/07

(Extract: Greer’s memo, which was leaked to an anti-Shell web site, Royaldutchshellplc.com, appears to show the pressure that he and his fellow managers have been under, as it talks of “the risk of becoming a team that doesn’t want to fight and lacks confidence in its own ability.”)

David Greer, Deputy CEO of Sakhalin Energy resigns in disgrace: 21 June 2007

Gazprom Expansion of Sakhalin-2 LNG Plant May Cost $7 Billion

January 30, 2012, 5:20 AM EST

By Jake Rudnitsky

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) — OAO Gazprom and its partners in the Sakhalin-2 project may decide on expanding their liquefied natural gas plant this year, to add supplies by 2018, said Andrey Galaev, the venture’s chief executive officer.

An expansion may cost $5 billion to $7 billion based on preliminary estimates, Galaev told reporters today in Moscow. Depending on changes in oil and gas prices, the construction cost may drop as low as $3 billion or climb as high as $8 billion, he said.

A decision should be made this year to reach a window for supplies in 2016 to 2018, before global LNG production capacity rises, according to Galaev.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc holds 27.5 percent of the project after agreeing to cede control of Russia’s first LNG plant to Gazprom in 2006. Mitsui & Co. has 12.5 percent and Mitsubishi Corp. owns 10 percent.

–Editors: Torrey Clark, Stephen Cunningham

To contact the reporter on this story: Jake Rudnitsky in Moscow at jrudnitsky@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

SOURCE ARTICLE

Putin call to ‘cut Gazprom stake’

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called for the government to reduce its stake in state-owned companies, including gas monopoly Gazprom, according to a report.

Steve Marshall and newswires 30 January 2012 13:41 GMT

Meanwhile, Russian Energy Minister Sergey Shmatko said all outstanding issues with production sharing contracts signed with companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell on Sakhalin projects in the country’s far east have now been resolved.

The PSAs were signed in the 1990s but Russia subsequently backpedalled as it felt the terms were too favourable to foreign players and sought to renationalize its oil and gas sector.

Shell was forced to relinquish control of the Sakhalin 2 project to state-owned Gazprom in 2007, while Russian officials have threatened to revoke ExxonMobil’s operator status on Sakhalin 1 over the past two years.

FULL ARTICLE

Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser (left) and Gazprom Chairman, Alexey Miller

Sunday, 22 Jan 2012

The Gazprom headquarters hosted a working meeting between Mr Alexey Miller Chairman of the Company Management Committee and Mr Peter Voser Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell.

The parties discussed the issues of bilateral cooperation as part of the Sakhalin II project.

They also addressed the joint efforts of Gazprom and Shell within the Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation and highlighted the companies’ success in the global energy market.

SOURCE STEELGURU ARTICLE

By John Donovan: 12 January 2012

The front page lead story published by the Financial Times newspaper today reports that European refiners have begun to sever links with Iran ahead of an EU meeting, which could impose a full oil embargo on the Iranian regime.

(A version of the article is also published on ft.com)

Iran is the world’s third-largest oil exporter.

Tensions and oil prices are heightened by the regimes threat to close the Strait of Hormuz.

The article reports that according to Argus Media, Royal Dutch Shell is the biggest supplier of Iranian crude.

As could be expected, Shell has been extremely sensitive about purchasing oil from the fanatical Iranian regime supplying road side bombs, which have maimed and killed many US and British soldiers, but has continued to do so. With Shell, money wins out over mere moral considerations.

On 28 October 2010, Shell CFO Simon Henry came clean after press reports on the subject and admitted that Shell has continued to trade with Iran:

“Simon Henry, Shell’s top financial official, said his company was still taking delivery of Iranian crude oil under the terms of its existing contracts with the Islamic republic.” (extract from UPI article)

The following month, November 2010, Reuters published an article which stated:

“Companies are still finding ways to buy Iranian oil. Royal Dutch Shell and some Italian and Spanish refiners buy Iranian barrels with finance coming from Chinese and Italian banks…”

Shell has in fact continued to buy oil from the Iranian regime for many years and and because of the obvious sensitivity, has on occasion used subterfuge to disguise shipping movements.

I discovered just how sensitive the issue is after sending an email in March 2007 to Bill O’Reilly at Fox News, under the innocuous subject heading “Shell’s treachery in Iran“.

As a result of making an application to Shell under the Data Protection Act, we discovered from Shell internal communications the company was compelled to supply, that my email had sent Shell into a panic on both sides of the Atlantic. This was out of concern that if the story was taken up by Fox News, it could result in a US boycott of Shell gasoline.

The internal emails also revealed anxiety over information being leaked to us:

“They are a continued source of leaks from inside Shell – if you read their on line blog you will see a lot of insider material”.

A media statement was drafted on a contingency basis.

As can be seen from the covering message, it contained the usual spin and was founded on deception:

“Greetings all – The lawyers are happy with the following response statement no changes from the draft I sent you yesterday). As discussed with xxxxxxx, we have phrased this as coming from Shell in the US, and have aimed to distance you as much as possible from what is essentially a dispute originating in the UK. Let’s hope there is no follow up and we don’t have to use anything.”

The Shell internal emails focused on our Iran initiative with Fox News, but also mentioned a surge in our activities relating to Sakhalin 2 and Shell North Sea “TFA” safety culture, as exposed by Bill Campbell, the former Group HSE Auditor of Shell International.

That same month, Shell set up an aggressive team to combat our activities. This was followed by an attempt to close down this website and the setting up of a related global spying operation targeting my family and all Shell employees, in conjunction with a US cyber intelligence unit partly staffed and funded by the FBI.

All in response to an entirely non commercial website publishing the truth about the dark side of Royal Dutch Shell, including its relationship with the Iranian regime.

RELATED

Royal Dutch Shell Iranian treachery

By ALEXIS FLYNN

LONDON—BP PLC said it will end its 13-year alliance with Russian state-owned oil company OAO Rosneft to explore for oil and gas in Sakhalin, due in part to the economics of the Far East project.

The U.K.-based energy producer said that in recent meetings with the shareholders and board of ZAO Elvary Neftegaz it confirmed its intention to exit the joint venture. “There are many reasons for this decision, including the challenging economics of the discovered resource in the KV [Kaigansky-Vasuykansky] block,” BP said Friday.

The company first formed an exploration alliance with Rosneft in 1998, with an initial license to search for hydrocarbons in Kaigansky-Vasuykansky area granted in 2002. The following year, BP and Rosneft created the Elvary Neftegaz joint venture before commencing drilling operations in 2004.

Earlier this week, Rosneft Chief Executive Eduard Khudainatov was quoted by Interfax as saying BP had lost interest in Sakhalin.

The end of the joint venture marks a further Russian retreat for BP. In January, Rosneft agreed with BP to a $16-billion share swap and development of three Arctic offshore licenses, but that deal was blocked by BP’s partners in the TNK-BP Ltd. joint venture. Rosneft later announced a global partnership with Exxon Mobil Corp.

BP said Friday it will work with Rosneft to find the best way to accomplish its exit from Sakhalin. In his remarks to Interfax, Mr. Khudainatov said Rosneft remained “very interested” in the project but wouldn’t offer participation to anyone else following BP’s departure.

SOURCE ARTICLE

MOSCOW -(Dow Jones)- BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) is to exit the Sakhalin-5 gas project, and Russian state oil company OAO Rosneft (ROSN.RS) will continue working on it on its own, Interfax news agency reported Monday, citing Rosneft Chief Executive Eduard Khudainatov.

“BP is not interested in this project and we have made no secret of that…” Khudainatov was quoted as saying. “We are very interested. And we will not offer this project to anyone else.”

Rosneft agreed in January with BP to a $16-billion share swap and development of three Arctic offshore licenses, but that deal was blocked by BP‘s partners in the TNK-BP Ltd. joint venture. Rosneft later announced a global partnership with Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM).

-By Nadia Popova, Dow Jones Newswires; +7 495 232-9198, nadia.popova@ dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires 12-26-111014ET Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

SOURCE ARTICLE

By NATALIYA VASILYEVA, AP Business Writer: 23 December 2011

Click on image to enlarge

MOSCOW (AP) — The sinking of a floating oil rig that left more than 50 crew dead or missing is intensifying fears that Russian companies searching for oil in remote areas are unprepared for emergencies — and could cause a disastrous spill in the pristine waters of the Arctic.

Only four months ago, Russian energy giant Gazprom sent Russia’s first oil platform to the environmentally sensitive region, and industry experts and environmentalists warned it is unfit for the harsh conditions and is too far from rescue crews to be reached quickly in case of an accident. They are demanding Russia put Arctic oil projects on hold.

Russia is the world’s largest oil producer, but it extracts most of its oil onshore, with no more than 2 percent of its production coming from mature offshore fields in the warm Black and Caspian seas and relatively new fields just off Sakhalin Island in the far east.

As Russia’s core oil fields in Eastern Siberia are depleted, companies are looking north. The government hopes that up to 80 million tons of oil will be produced annually in the Arctic by 2030.

Russia is trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the Earth’s undiscovered oil and gas. By speeding up the Arctic oil project, the government is strengthening its bid.

The Kolskaya floating oil rig that capsized and sank in the Sea of Okhotsk on Dec. 18 had done exploratory drilling for Gazprom Neft Shelf, a subsidiary of Gazprom. It was being towed back to an eastern Russian port in a fierce storm when a strong wave broke some of its equipment and portholes, and it capsized in the choppy water.

Gazprom is now pioneering the oil development of Russia’s sector of the Arctic and was the first Russian company to dispatch a drilling rig to the Pechora Sea in northwest Russia.

Russian oil companies have never operated in weather conditions as harsh as those found in the ice-bound Arctic, where ice ridges are meters (yards) deep and storms are frequent. The Kolskaya accident has reinforced fears that they are unprepared to meet the challenges.

“This tragedy has once again reminded us of how high the risks of offshore accidents are,” said Alexei Knizhnikov, an oil and gas policy officer with the World Wildlife Fund.

WWF, Greenpeace and five regional Russian environmental organizations signed a petition on Thursday calling for a parliamentary investigation and urging the government to suspend the oil projects for now.

The petition accuses government agencies of failing to enforce environmental and safety regulations and says that current laws are inadequate for dealing with the magnitude of risk in the Arctic.

Environmentalists first raised their concerns when Gazprom announced in August that it was sending its platform to the Arctic for exploratory drilling in the Pechora oil field, which holds some 6.6 million tons of oil.

The platform’s underwater section was built in Russia in the 1990s, while its upper part comes from a platform built in Scotland in 1982 and decommissioned from the North Sea in 2002.

Gazprom insists the Prirazlomnaya platform, billed as the first to be ice resistant, is safe and contains no old equipment except for its frame.

“We’ve done our best to implement the latest technology and regulations to prevent any accidents,” Vladimir Vovk, chief of Gazprom’s department for the management of equipment and technologies in developing marine fields, said at a news conference in September.

Environmentalists question both the state of the equipment and the platform’s design. Because the Prirazlomnaya is situated hundreds of kilometers (miles) offshore, it is designed to store huge quantities of oil until tankers can arrive to collect it. The platform’s storage tanks can hold up to 120,000 tons (840,000 barrels).

Unlike the Kolskaya, which was carrying no oil when it sank, the Arctic platform could potentially cause a disastrous spill if it capsized in icy, rough seas.

The distance from shore would also complicate any rescue or cleanup mission. The nearest port of any size is in Murmansk, some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away.

Even in warmer, more hospitable waters, accidents at oil platforms have been disastrous.

A giant oil slick was approaching the coast of Nigeria on Friday after what Royal Dutch Shell said was a spill during the transfer of oil from its floating platform in the offshore field to a waiting tanker. The spill came less than a week after Shell received approval from the U.S. government to drill exploratory wells off Alaska’s northwest coast, in the Chukchi Sea near Russian waters.

In the Gulf of Mexico, the 2010 explosion of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and led to more than 200 million gallons (4.8 million barrels) of oil spewing from a well deep beneath the sea.

Russia’s parliament gave preliminary approval in September to a bill intended to tighten regulations on oil companies working in the Arctic.

Yekaterina Khmelyova, an environment law officer at the WWF, said the bill does not do enough to hold the oil companies publicly accountable or to guarantee a full assessment of the environmental risks. She said environmentalists and the business community are working on a new draft that among other things would provide for the creation of clean-up funds.

Oil industry experts also have expressed doubts about Gazprom’s expertise in offshore drilling in the Arctic as well as the platform’s design.

They have questioned the economic justifications for the project. The oil in the Pechora field is of low quality and the project will be loss-making without tax breaks, said Valery Nesterov, a senior analyst with the Moscow-based investment bank Troika Dialog. For state-controlled Gazprom, the Arctic project appears to be more of strategic importance than about any immediate economic benefits, he said.

“This is clearly a strategic task that the company is executing,” Nesterov said. “It looks like Russia is not going to give up that strategy since the interests of ship yards, machinery producers and, possibly, the military are involved.”

Four years ago, Russia staked its claim to supremacy in the Arctic by planting a titanium flag on the ocean floor and arguing that an underwater ridge connected the country directly to the North Pole. The United States does not recognize the Russian assertion and has its own claims, along with Denmark, Norway and Canada.

Russia, Canada and Denmark are planning to their respective file claims to the ridge to the United Nations.

In past years, Russian ship yards and machinery producers have been able to stay afloat largely thanks to large orders coming from state-owned plants and government-sponsored projects. A large-scale oil and gas development of the Arctic is likely to give a welcome boost to both industries.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

SOURCE ARTICLE

By Pierre Bertrand | December 22, 2011 2:07 AM GMT

Alaskan environmentalists are sounding the alarm bells this week, responding to two major oil industry victories in a state that has been a recurring flash point between environmental groups, legislators and the giants of petroleum exploration.

On 12th October 2010, I published an article containing the warning: “…it is only a matter of time before the culture of subterfuge and deception at Wikipedia results in a scandal.” My prediction has come to pass…

By John Donovan

Jimmy Wales is to be congratulated on being the joint founder of Wikipedia and for the non-profit basis on which the organization is operated. He is obviously a man of integrity deserving of the highest praise.

Unfortunately, many contributors to Wikipedia do not share his high ethical standards and take full advantage of the fact that it is possible to edit Wikipedia corporate articles completely anonymously for financial reward, removing or suppressing negative information. Parties can completely hide any trace of their identity and motive, even their ISP addresses.

The cloaked editing is completely at odds with a claim attributed to Jimmy Wales in November 2009 that: “We have an ongoing trend towards openness – which is getting more open.”

Editors of non corporate articles are individuals attracted out of genuine interest, often with expertise in the particular subject. It is a completely different matter when corporate articles are surreptitiously modified by employees of a featured corporation, or by specialists supplying an online reputation clean-up service to the corporation. There are numerous firms offering this service.

Because of the huge popularity of Wikipedia, the content of a Wikipedia article about a business is important because it can have a positive or negative impact on the reputation of the business. This in turn can impact on its value.

Like countless millions of people, I use Wikipedia on a daily basis. It is a great free resource. It is however deeply flawed in relation to articles that have a commercial connotation. Money really is the root of all evil. The editing of such articles is mired in widespread deception, trickery and cowardly tactics.

There are Wikipedia articles about every major business.  Under Wikipedia rules, a company is not permitted to edit any Wikipedia articles about itself. Royal Dutch Shell for example is supposedly not allowed to edit Wikipedia articles about itself, but as will be seen, has engaged in all manner of skullduggery in relation to its online reputation.

There is no reason to think that Shell is alone in such activity and every reason to believe that such underhand practices are in fact epidemic. There is information freely available on the Internet providing a blueprint of how to infiltrate Wikipedia utilizing the policy which permits concealment of identity and background. It advises on a stratagem of deception to disguise true intent. This includes editing a wide range of articles to avoid being identified as a one topic contributor.  It discusses implications relating to IP addresses. The objective being for an organized group of infiltrators to edit target articles without detection.  I will not go into detail for obvious reasons.

Wikipedians who choose to openly disclose their identity and background as editors are at a huge disadvantage to the vast majority who hide behind a pseudonym. Such individuals can be very unpleasant. Because identities are concealed, it is not practical for anyone editing under their own name to take legal action in the event of defamatory comments being made against them on Wikipedia by an anonymous party.

Although Wikipedia etiquette requires editors/contributors to act in a civil way towards one another when discussing issues which inevitable arise, the fact that people can hide behind an alias means that they sometimes adopt a dictatorial aggressive and even bullying tone that they would never use under their real name.

On 12 October 2010, I published an article (extracts included herein) containing the warning: “…it is only a matter of time before the culture of subterfuge and deception at Wikipedia results in a scandal.”

This is the complete paragraph:

Commonsense suggests that anyone who wishes to edit a Wikipedia article in which monetary considerations are involved should be compelled to disclose their identity and background so that the information can be exposed to public scrutiny. Otherwise it is only a matter of time before the culture of subterfuge and deception at Wikipedia results in a scandal.

My prediction has come to pass in a recent blaze of publicity about the “dark arts’ practiced by PR firm Bell Pottinger, partly in relation to Wikipedia articles.

The following is an extract from a current article headlined: “PR Firm Rewrites Clients’ Wikipedia Entries“

So much for reliable Wikipedia content. A high-powered British PR firm routinely rewrites Wikipedia content relating to its clients, reports the Independent. Bell Pottinger made hundreds of changes in Wiki entries over the last year, either adding positive comments or deleting negative ones about clients. At least ten contributing writer accounts linked to the firm have been suspended by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who blasted the firm’s “ethical blindness,” reports the Financial Times. Undercover reporters for the British Bureau of Investigative Journalism posing as clients were told by representatives of the PR firms that “sorting” Wikipedia entries is part of the service the company offers, notes the newspaper.

Removal of negative information means that the public, including current and potential shareholders, are presented with incomplete, censored information, providing a distorted picture of a featured company.

Within hours of publishing my prediction, I was contacted by the founder of “MyWikiBiz“.

This is a quote from what he said:

As the founder of MyWikiBiz, I am someone who has, and continues to, manipulate information in Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients. Call it dirty work, but for the most part, I think the way the Wikimedia Foundation is scamming the public about how it is (not) governing the world’s “knowledge” is a far worse state of affairs.

My own comments are based on my experience over several years of originating and editing Wikipedia articles relating primarily to Royal Dutch Shell. It is obvious from moves made by Shell that the oil giant attaches great value to its online reputation:

• Shell appointed a specialist agency to carry out a makeover of Shell’s online reputation.
• Shell was obsessed by my editing of Wikipedia articles relating to the company and wanted to edit the articles itself, but was concerned about being caught.
• Shell employees were caught doing so from Shell premise.
• Shell secretly censored postings made on its own Internet forum set up on the basis of inviting “open and transparent dialogue”.
• Eight Royal Dutch Shell Group companies buried a Shell whistle blower in injunctions following postings of revelations and leaked Shell internal documents on our website, some relating to the reserves fraud.
  
• Shell has made attacks on a website I edit (see below), attempting to seize the domain name and close the website down.
  

Details are printed below under the heading: “ROYAL DUTCH SHELL & THE INTERNET”.

I always edit using my own name when contributing to any website, including Wikipedia, where I declared at the outset my long and sometimes acrimonious relationship with Shell. With my almost 95 year old father, Alfred Donovan, I operate a website - royaldutchshellplc.com – focused on Royal Dutch Shell. It has achieved some measure of success in holding the company to account.

It is a completely non commercial website with no advertising. Unlike Wikipedia, we do not solicit or accept donations, declining for example to accept funding from a Russian source at the time of our intervention in the Sakhalin Energy project that cost Shell its majority stake in the venture. (See Nikkei BP article sub-heading: “The fate of Sakhalin 2 was changed by two British men“)

I am aware of the difference between writing a blog on my own website and making edits on Wikipedia. I have always strived to operate within Wikipedia guidelines. This includes ensuring that information added is neutral, accurate, and can be verified by reference to cited independent reputable sources. In other words accurate verifiable information written without bias on the part of the editor.

Wikipedia articles are supposedly written by open and transparent consensus. In reality, as I have indicated, Wikipedia is built on a platform of secrecy and concealment which leaves articles wide open to censorship and manipulation by anonymous parties, with commercially driven motives.

Unpaid volunteers who act as administrators and editors are supposedly the bedrock on which Wikipedia has been built. It is a mostly-secretive community in which the vast majority of volunteers edit using aliases and are free to edit any articles, without anyone having a clue about who they are and what their background is. Thus it is impossible to determine if they have a potential conflict of interest.

Editors using aliases are able to comment on the editing work of other contributors (including those editing on a full disclosure basis) and vote on the deletion of Wikipedia articles.

Consequently this cloaked army has power and influence, but no realistic accountability. If, due to some transgression, a Wikipedian is banned from editing (as I am for threatening libel proceedings) they can return under a new alias using a new IP address, with no bad odor attached. In other words, a completely fresh start.

The strange “Wikipedian” culture has some similarity to the Ku Klux Klan (fortunately without the racist element) but is actually more secretive.  The privacy of those choosing to keep secret all information about who they are is maintained within the Wikipedia community, which is even developing its own unique language, partly in response to skulduggery by some editors.

NO ADEQUATE DISCLAIMER

Since Wikipedia corporate articles are wide-open to whitewashing and many have been surreptitiously whitewashed, all should carry a prominent disclaimer stating that they should not be replied upon in making financial decisions. The current notice of disclaimer is the last but one word in the small print at the foot of each article. It is a link to a general disclaimer with a headline:

“WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY”.

The explanation for the disclaimer states:

“The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields.”

There is however no reference to the surreptitious removal of negative information from corporate articles by corporations or their paid agents, which is the subject of my comments.

Despite knowledge of the systematic laundering of corporate articles, Wikipedia has not placed a prominent warning on each corporate article, nor has it taken adequate measures to properly protect the integrity of the published information.

I am not a lawyer, but under the circumstances, if I was working for Wikipedia, I would be concerned at the possibility of class action law suits against Wikipedia by parties who have purchased shares based on such misleading/incomplete information published by Wikipedia.

As a result of the strenuous efforts by dedicated people, information about Royal Dutch Shell on Wikipedia has been transformed. Negative accurate information supported by newspaper articles, government agency publications, court documents etc has vanished. Instead there is just a collection of sanitized propaganda about Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Most of which looks like it could have originated from Shell’s PR/Media Department.

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL AND THE INTERNET

I first raised suspicions of such underhand editing and manipulation in an article I published in October 2007.  The article contained reference to a section I had inserted in a Royal Dutch Shell article Wikipedia article – “Wiki-face lift for Shell” – revealing the secret editing by Shell employees.

We publish our own carefully researched articles about Shell e.g. “How Royal Dutch Shell saved Hitler and the Nazi Party”. Our activities have attracted media attention. Prospect Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian, have all published major articles about us: “Rise of the Gripe Site”;“Two men and a website mount vendetta against Shell’ and “92-year-old’s website leaves oil giant Shell-shocked”.

Shell management has for many years taken a great interest in our activities, particular in relation to the Internet.

The was obvious from a Press Release about my father and I issued by Shell Media Relations in March 1995.  Shell was concerned about its online reputation even at that early stage.

In 2005, Shell issued proceedings attempting to seize a number of Shell related gripe site domain names from us, including royaldutchshellplc.com, but lost the case.

A more recent indication of Shell’s concern came in June 2006, when Shell appointed a digital agency with experience in turning around corporate reputations. The headline is self-explanatory: “Shell seeks agency for online makeover“. The brief issued by Shell web communications division in The Hague, included content strategy, website editorial and online branding.

Our related article: “The Internet battleground for Shell’s reputation” is also relevant. In the article, we made plain our suspicions about underhand activity by Shell, in reaction to a critical posting about Shell on our website originating from a Shell whistleblower, Dr John Huong. Shell lawyers buried him in multiple injunctions collectively obtained by eight different Royal Dutch Shell companies from the UK, the Netherlands and Asia. Shell even sought his imprisonment.

The degree of Shell interest in my editing of Wikipedia articles became shockingly apparent after we made a series of subject access requests to Shell under the UK Data Protection Act. It is fair to say given the content of the numerous internal communications on the subject, that Shell was obsessed by my editing of Wikipedia articles about Royal Dutch Shell.

Links to relevant Shell internal communications and documents are printed at the foot of this article. As can be seen in the documents, Shell was trying to figure out how it could edit my contributions to the articles without being caught. Concern was expressed about this prospect.

WikiScanner

In April 2008, I published a discussion from our Live Chat facility revealing that WikiScanner had detected that Wikipedia articles relating to Royal Dutch Shell had been anonymously edited from Shell premises. According to a posted comment “Information critical of Shell was systematically removed”.

An allegation was also made about an alleged “Shell dirty tricks unit” busy trying to smother our website. That allegation proved to be true. Shell had set up a counter-measures team and did surreptitiously, briefly close it down. Shell internal documents I also revealed that Shell had mounted a global spying operation as part of the counter-measures.

DON’T TELL SHELL

Shell was even caught secretly censoring postings on “Tell Shell”, its own innovative online forum inviting “open and transparent dialogue” and “lively debate” allowing Shell to “respond to public concerns and criticism in an open and transparent way.” In August 2005, Shell was caught secretly censoring the forum.  In October 2005, we drew public attention to the “slow death” of the forum. In November 2005, Shell suspended the forum but promised that it would return “shortly” and previous debates would still be available to view. Despite the pledges, “Tell Shell” and the related archive vanished from the internet. In an email dated 11 November 2005, Shell General Counsel Richard Wiseman confirmed that Shell had indeed censored the forum. He sent copies of his email to Royal Dutch Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer and his executive director colleague, Malcolm Brinded.

LINKS TO SHELL INTERNAL EMAILS & DOCS IN WHICH ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES ARE MENTIONED IN RELATION TO JOHN DONOVAN

1 March 2007
2 March 2007 16:13 & 18.56 Plus 3 March 18:01
2 March 2007 16:51
19 March 2007 18.43 20 March 2007 8:10
23 March 2007
6 June 2007 12:51
SUNDAY 29 July 2007 11:31 & 30 July 2007 8:19 AM
30 July 2007 22:38 & 7 August 2007 14.24
31 August 2007 16:17
12 October 2007 15:21 & 15:58
16 October 2007
26 December 2007
19 February 2008 4 Pages
4 April 2008
9 March 2009
8 April 2009
8 July 2009
18 December 2009 11.34:
18 December 2009 12.07
Shell Focal Point document “Donovan Campaign Against Shell”

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By Stephen Bierman – Dec 7, 2011 12:15 PM GMT

Royal Dutch Shell Plc. (RDSA) said its Sakhalin venture with OAO Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas export monopoly needs to expand fast to sell liquefied natural gas to Asia at maximum profit.

There’s a window of opportunity in the Asia Pacific from 2015 to 2020, Harry Brekelmans, the head of the energy company’s Russian unit, told reporters today in Moscow. The market will tighten after that with additional LNG volumes coming from Australia, Shell spokesman Maxim Shoob said today.

Shell, Gazprom and Japanese partners Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. are considering investing in a third processing train to the Sakhalin-2 LNG plant to add capacity. Demand for LNG has soared in Japan, South Korea and other Asian markets after an earthquake and tsunami led to the Fukushima nuclear disaster and boosted Japan’s need for other fuels.

The Sakhalin project is in a position to capture this demand window, Brekelmans said.

The group will have to resolve how to supply natural gas for any additional train it seeks to build. Gazprom may seek an asset swap with a foreign partner in the project before committing further reserves off the Pacific coast of Sakhalin Island for the expansion of the LNG plant, Gazprom’s Deputy Chief Executive officer Alexander Medvedev said on Sept. 27.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Bierman in Moscow at sbierman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Torrey Clark at tclark8@bloomberg.net

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