Posts under ‘Shell’

By Richard Moniak

On Dec. 16, 2011 the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) gave Shell Oil conditional approval of their Chukchi Sea exploratory drilling plan. The agency directed Shell to shorten the proposed drilling season by 38 days to ensure that, if an accident occurs, they can cap a well blowout and clean up a spill before the sea ice returns. Alaska’s congressional delegation immediately blasted BOEM for being short-sighted. But are they really defending the merits of Shell’s plan or are putting their trust in the oil lobbyist talking points?

Sen. Mark Begich called BOEM’s decision a “last-minute monkey wrench into Arctic development,” and added, “Alaska has done off-shore exploration before, we’ve done it safely, and the technology is better now than it has ever been.” His statement implies BOEM should have rubber stamped Shell’s plan as if it had been rigorously analyzed and tested.

But Shell’s undersea well capping and containment system is still under design and their oil spill response plan requires approval by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. Even more to the point, Shell can’t possibly ensure that a spill won’t occur. And if one does, they can’t guarantee they’ll be able to contain it and prevent widespread environmental damage to the Arctic sea and coastal environments.

It’s the lack of such guarantees on environmental issues where our delegation’s position is inconsistent. Begich put that on display just one day earlier at a Senate hearing where he opposed the commercial production of genetically engineered (GE) salmon. “Looking at the available scientific information” he said, “it is clear that there is no guarantee that these GE fish won’t ever escape into the wild” and cause harm to our wild salmon and aquatic ecosystems.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young also oppose commercial farming of these fish. So shouldn’t they, and Begich, be insisting on similar assurances against damage to our Arctic waters, especially considering that last August a Shell oil spill off the coast of Scotland turned into the worst in Great Britain in a decade. And, just last week, the industry added two new blemishes to their record. A Russian oil rig sank in Arctic waters and a Shell subsidiary spilled 1.6 million gallons of oil off the Nigerian coast.

So why are Begich, Murkowski and Young so willing to trust that Shell can safely operate in the Arctic Ocean? It could have a lot to do with lobbying pressure. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, between 2000 and 2006 Shell spent less than $100,000 per year for paid lobbyists on Capitol Hill. But that increased dramatically after the Bush administration opened up 70 million acres under Arctic waters to offshore oil and gas development. For each of the past three years Shell has spent more than $10 million to influence government decisions. That puts them among the top 20 corporations lobbying in Congress.

If you believe Shell Alaska Vice President Pete Slaiby, there is solid science behind this effort. In a Senate hearing last July he told Begich and others that, “Shell would not be working in the Arctic had we believed there was something, an event we could not control.”

That hubristic pronouncement echoes the words of Tony Hayward shortly after BP’s Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Speaking as the corporation’s chief executive officer he old reporters that BP was mounting “the biggest response by anyone in the industry ever, and we’re able to do it because we planned for it.” We all know how that story turned out.

The Deepwater Horizon investigators believe there was a systemic failure at BP to place safety ahead of profit. Is Shell any different? In their published “General Business Principles” they list protecting shareholder interests first among its five corporate responsibilities. Down at the bottom is being “responsible corporate members of society, to comply with applicable laws and regulations” and, last of all, “to give proper regard to health, safety, security and the environment.”

When it comes to our environment we need a delegation that holds these values in reverse. It’s their job to lead us in building a healthy society and that can’t happen if they place their trust in paid lobbyists.

• Moniak is a Juneau resident.

SOURCE ARTICLE

His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei meeting Malcolm (TFA) Brinded, Shell’s Executive Director, Upstream International.

By John Donovan

On Sunday 1 January, the Borneo Bulletin published a gushing article under the headline “Oil & Gas continues to shower Brunei with benefits, opportunities“.

It described a claimed lovefest relationship between Royal Dutch Shell and the Brunei Royal family, which the Sultan of Brunei has summed up as: “the extraordinary symbiotic partnership between the Sultanate and the global oil giant… Royal Dutch Shell…“

The so called symbiotic relationship is between a scandal-tainted Brunei royal family and a scandal-tainted oil giant, which attracted international attention when it gave a $500,000 gift for a lavish Brunei royal wedding in September 2004. Many would view such a large sum as a bribe.

The relationship between Shell and the Sultanate has not been as deliriously happy as the article suggests. It was for some time mired in acrimony regarding the controversial subject of Brunei hydrocarbon reserves, which featured prominently in a massive securities fraud surrounding Shell, that came to light early in 2004. The huge wedding gift may have been designed to placate the regime.

Confirmation of the lengthy acrimonious debate between Shell and the Brunei regime on the reserves issue and related accusations made by the regime against Shell, can be found on page 43 of a sworn 965 page video taped deposition by Royal Dutch Shell Group Reserves Auditor, Anton Barendregt.

The Brunei reserves manipulations, designed to defraud Shell shareholders, also featured prominently in an independent report prepared by Davis Polk & Wardell for the Shell Group Audit Committee, and in reports issued by (1) the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission which fined Shell $120 million for securities fraud and (2) the UK Financial Services Authority, which found Shell guilty of “Market Abuse” and issued a fine of £17 million pounds.

The news of the scandal made global headlines and resulted in the forced resignations of Royal Dutch Shell Group Chairman Sir Philip Watts, and his executive director colleagues, Walter van de Vijver and Judith Boyton. Shell also settled several major class action lawsuits.

In February 2010, news broke of a “series of massive fraud investigations against more than 10 senior oil company officials” of Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP). Some officials had already been dismissed and others suspended as a result of the fraud probe by the Brunei Anti Corruption Bureau.

Strange how none of these sordid events were mentioned in the love fest article published on 1 January 2012.

MORE ARTICLES ABOUT THE $5 MILLION BRUNEI ROYAL WEDDING

The $5m royal wedding: “…sponsored by local companies, including the oil and gas firms Brunei Shell…”: The Independent 10 September 2004

Shell Rewards Employees (*Bribes and scandal in Brunei?): Brudirect.com

Will the Prince Turn Pauper? (*$500,000 Shell bribe was given to this corrupt family): Wall Street Journal article published March 2008

Brunei Shell contributes $500,000 for royal wedding ceremonies: Brunei-online.com: August 2004

LETTER FROM MALCOLM BRINDED (RIGHT) PUBLISHED BY THE FINANCIAL TIMES

From Mr Malcolm Brinded.

Sir, Jürgen Grossman, RWE’s chief executive, makes some important points in articulating the scale of the challenge involved in reducing the carbon footprint of energy production (“Germany faces ‘Herculean’ task with move to renewables”, Special Reports, Energy, December 5). But reconciling economic growth and climate change is not a straight choice between nuclear and renewables. As a result of recent major increases in the global estimates of natural gas resources, energy policymakers should now be confident that they can count on abundant, affordable and acceptable natural gas today and for many decades to come. This is why Angela Merkel is right when she outlines a central role for gas in Germany’s new energy future.

Chancellor Merkel’s analysis should resonate across Europe and the rest of the world. Over the next 40 years, the world will need twice as much energy, but with half the carbon emissions. The simplest, fastest and cheapest way to achieve this will be for gas to displace coal in power generation in the next 20 years. Europe has the potential to lead the world here, because switching to gas-fired power generation would cut emissions now.

Modern gas-fired power plants emit approximately 50 per cent less carbon dioxide than coal plants. Europe is within economic distance of 70 per cent of the world’s gas reserves and has a well-established gas infrastructure. What’s more, a switch to gas wouldn’t come at the expense of renewable energy. Fear among non-governmental organisations and politicians that a stronger focus on natural gas will lock in another generation of fossil fuel plants – and drive out investment in renewables – misses the point. The flexibility of gas power is the natural complement to the intermittency of renewables.

And as for historic security of supply concerns, we now see many new countries exporting gas, plus much increased capacity to import liquefied natural gas into Europe – all of which creates a much more resilient supply situation.

Governments and regulators worldwide must acknowledge, welcome and encourage the role that gas can play in the future energy mix, through energy and power market policies that properly recognise the CO2 benefits, reliability and flexibility of gas power.

7 December 2011

Malcolm Brinded, Executive Director, Upstream International Royal Dutch Shell, London SE1, UK

SOURCE

Searching for replacement after Penske Racing fires Busch

The iconic corporate logo used by Shell and the Nazis

By John Donovan

In 1904, the scallop shell or pecten replaced Shell Transport’s first marketing logo. In various forms it has remained in use ever since, becoming one of the best known corporate symbols in the world.

The above information is taken from the: “The beginnings“, which forms part of a shell.com online feature – “Our history” – covering Shell from its inception to the new millennium. A whole page is devoted to “The History of the Shell logo“ and there is more information on a downloadable document: “The History behind the Shell emblem,” in which this slogan appears:

“The Shell emblem – or Pecten – remains one of the greatest brand symbols of the 20th Century”

The authors of this judiciously selected online history have unsurprisingly neglected to mention the Nazi association with the pecten.

It was used by the German subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, Rhenania-Ossage, in the years before and during World War 2, when the company was in partnership with the notorious IG Farben, the German chemical company which produced synthetic gasoline by hydrogenation. IG Farben had championed the hydrogenation process since the 1920′s.

By 1939, synthetic gasoline covered nearly a third of oil consumption in Germany. Shell had a one-third stake in the Politz hydrogenation works.

Hermann Goering, a close friend of the Nazi leader of Royal Dutch Shell, Sir Henri Deterding, was commander of the German air force and in charge of the four-year plan to raise synthetic gasoline output to fuel Nazi military ambitions.

Following Hitler’s annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, Shell Group managing directors sanctioned Rhenania-Ossag taking over the Shell companies in those countries.

The Nazis continued to use the Shell pecten logo in Germany after the appointment of a Verwalter (administrator) for Rhenania-Ossag in January 1940. The Verwalter appointed a Shell Dutch Nazi general manager, J. H. W. Rost van Tonningen to a new pro-German board. He had previously held the post of Shell Group technical inspector visiting installations in Italy, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Rost had developed a keen interest in fascism, joining the Dutch Nazi party. He was on one occasion suspended from work because of his political allegiance, before being reinstated, probably due to the influence of his brother, a prominent leader of the Dutch Nazi movement. Many employees of Royal Dutch Shell in Germany and the Netherlands were Nazis.

Hauptmann Eichardt von Klass, the former research director of Rhenania-Ossag, was appointed in January 1940 as Verwalter to manage Royal Dutch and had full powers to act on behalf of the concern in occupied Europe.

After the end of World War 2, Royal Dutch Shell regained control of Rhenania-Ossag and retained some of the same management who had helped to fuel the Nazi war machine.

Shell rehired former Shell employees who had been involved as Nazi party members in forced labor programs. Robert Finn, a senior employee of Rhenania-Ossag involved in the forced labor programme as a member of the Nazi party, became a director of a Shell Chemical company in Germany after the war.

Directors of IG Farben, which had used slave labor and supplied Zyklon-B gas to the Nazi death camps, were found guilty of war crimes.

The Shell pecten was used by the German Shell operating company Rhenania-Ossag, before, during, and after World War 2. No other global brand logo is as closely associated with the Nazis.

For more information see:

I.G. Farben, Royal Dutch Shell and Nazi slave labor

A History of Royal Dutch Shell Volume 2 (29 pages). From which some of the above information is taken.

By Kadhim Ajrash and Khalid Al-Ansary – Nov 27, 2011 2:08 PM GMT

Iraq, seeking to boost power output after years of conflict and sanctions, signed the final accord for a $17 billion project with Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) to capture natural gas at oil fields.

Shell Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser and Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Al-Luaibi signed the agreement to produce gas that is currently flared off at fields in southern Iraq, in a ceremony today in Baghdad.

Under the 25-year agreement, the government will hold a 51 percent stake in a venture called South Gas Co., while Shell will have 44 percent. Mitsubishi Corp. (8058) is also a partner in the project and will hold the rest. South Gas will help collect more than 2 billion cubic feet (57 million cubic meters) of fuel a day at the Rumailah, Zubair and West Qurna fields in southern Iraq, Deputy Oil Minister Ahmad al-Shamaa said Nov. 16.

Iraq holds the fifth-biggest gas reserves in the Middle East and wants to produce more as fuel for power stations, which have been unable to meet domestic demand since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein. The country hopes eventually to produce enough gas to export.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nayla Razzouk in Dubai at nrazzouk2@bloomberg.net

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

From AFRICA ENERGY INTELLIGENCE 24 AUGUST 2011

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