Posts Tagged ‘Malcolm Brinded’

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.

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

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.

EXTRACT ENDS

RELATED ARTICLES

Shell wrote letter Tony Blair used in £325m Libyan oil deal (Daily Mail)

THE COMPLETE 73 PAGE REPORT (with reference sources)

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)

SOURCE

COMMENTS FROM A ROYAL DUTCH SHELL RETIREE ON CURRENT NEWS STORIES

Interested in the report on this leak they are trying to stop in Athabasca…

Oilsands leak turned mine to pond

Few people probably realise this is a nightmare and very likely unstoppable until the whole aquifer runs out of energy. Compare it with a blow-out.  I think it is a major mishap but have no other info then what I read in the article.

And the oilwells in Sakhalin going to sand is a disaster of great magnitude.

6 Oil Wells On Sakhalin Go Offline

With winter starting they presumably cannot re-enter the wells and try to fix it. It also shows the original design was flawed. I bet that even those atheist Russians (and the secular Shell folk as well)  are praying the same will not happen on the gaswells because then they really are f*cked!

Finally, will Malcolm Brinded be attending the funeral of his friend Gaddafi, or is Shell’s focus solely on its slick switch of allegiance to the new government?

Shell execs in Tripoli discuss Libya return

Published: Sept. 23, 2011 at 8:22 AM

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei, Sept. 23 (UPI) — Natural gas resources will help fuel economic growth in Asia, where advances are vastly outpacing the rest of the world, a Shell executive said.

Malcolm Brinded, executive director for upstream developments at Shell, spoke to delegates at an energy conference in Brunei.

He said advancing economies in Asia, coupled with the energy deficit brought on by Japan’s nuclear power disaster, means the region needs to “invest heavily” in all resources, including solar and wind.

Beijing is moving to include more renewable energy on the national grid. The country set a goal of increasing its solar power capacity significantly in the next five years.

Brinded noted, however, that conventional resources like oil and natural gas will continue to dominate the global energy mix.

“Natural gas will not just be a reliable and abundant fuel for Asia’s remarkable economic growth,” he said. “As the cleanest burning fossil fuel, it can also make an immediate impact in cushioning the environmental impact of the region’s rising energy consumption.”

This week, Howard Gruenspecht, acting administrator at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, said top energy consumer China is expected to use 68 percent more energy than the United States within the next quarter century.

The EIA said the expected increase in world energy consumption by 53 percent by 2035 to be driven largely by economic growth in China and India.

EMAIL RECEIVED

John,

No wonder bits are falling off the Brents.

I’m an ex Shell employee with no axe to grind but I’m also fat and wouldn’t trust those gratings to hold me.

Thanks

(name and email address supplied)

Gratings_-_Destructive_Testing(1)

Related comment by a retired Shell North Sea Platform manager:

John,

This short video demonstrates severe corrosion of a stair tread. They are in a horrendous condition and a disgrace not only to the scheduled maintenance programme but to the respective OIM’s, Safety reps and the HSE Inspectors.    Pay particular attention near the end of the clip where the leading edge of the stair tread is fitted with an anti skid strip to assist in the prevention of workers slipping in the stair treads.  Notice how badly worn it is, should have been replaced a long time ago!

No idea if this is a Shell installation but if it is then a definite legacy from the TFA era of Brinded.  When will action be taken to put an end to this continuing saga of repetitive reactive safety issues and compliance with the safety cases which outline proactivity.  The days of self regulation are rapidly coming to an end, whose to blame?, nobody but the Operators management.  With mega profits being made from Oil Company Global activities then the investment needed to be made to correct these issues would not even be noticed in the bigger picture.  Shell and others are perhaps waking up to the fact that continuing media exposure to the numerous non-compliance with its own Business Principles throughout its Global activities may impact on or influence how Regulators scrutinise applications for future licences.

Society needs Oil & Gas to power our economies but the Companies who provide our Industrial power houses with Energy need to be more responsible and have an Audit department that have respect when audit finding are embarrassing.   Wake up you CEO’s out there, if your not careful worldwide Public opinion will create havoc for you.

Regards

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

By John Donovan

EXTRACT FROM EMAIL WE RECEIVED ON 14 August 2011

In light of US demands on the international community that the EU and others break their ties with Syria, you may wish to investigate why Shell is still present and operating as usual in Syria. Unlike most foreign investors and operators that pulled out of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and other countries at the first signs of government repression, Shell and its expatriate staff have remained in Syria to this day.

Why?

And, strangely, why has the international media not picked up on this news. There are no other international companies of note still in Syria.

ENDS

What is stated in the email is true, except that there has been one article published: Shell accused of supporting Syrian regime

Basically, Shell is demonstrating once again that it is willing to deal with the devil incarnate, whether in the guise of Hitler, the corrupt Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abachato, “Mad Dog” Gaddafi, the Iranian Mad Mullahs, Saddam Hussein, or the current Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, killing peaceful protestors on a daily basis.

Shell Executive Director Malcolm Brinded and friend.

The plain truth is that despite claims of ethical trading, Shell is willing to do business with any despot regime, irrespective of moral considerations.

It typically does so on an underhand basis, trying to keep a low profile, for example disguising oil shipments from Iran or in 2000, shipping Iraqi oil in violation of an international embargo.

It is therefore unsurprising that Syria can no longer be found on the Global locator on shell.com although Shell is indeed still present in Syria, as this screenshot taken on 16 August 2011 from the Shell Syria website confirms.

We have provided some screenshot extracts below from the “Greetings from Syria” campaign against Shell.

LINK TO WEBSITE

Extracts from an “email to Peter Voser” campaign being conducted on an associated website:

The Syrian government is waging war against its citizens. Shell is a major investor in Syria. It is a key associate of the state oil company which controls the internal market.

Shell believes that companies should play an active role in supporting human rights and that it needs a “licence to operate” from society. But it has no such license now in Syria and it is doing business with an elite that commits gross and systematic human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary killing, and collective punishment.

Please, join us in calling upon Shell to publicly condemn the human rights violations and to suspend all activities in Syria until the violent repression of protest has ceased and the rule of law prevails. Help Shell to defend human rights and send this e-mail to Shell’s CEO Peter Voser.

Syrian army tanks are shelling civilians. An estimated 1400 Syrians have already paid with their lives while exercising the fundamental right to express their opinions. Many thousands have been wounded, arrested or have disappeared. Nonetheless the protests continue. The opposition says unanimously: No dialogue with tanks; the violence against civilians must cease immediately. The business community cannot pretend to be neutral and must also act. Please sign the message to Shell’s CEO Peter Voser and spread the word on Facebook and Twitter!

THE MESSAGE

Dear Mr Voser,

The Syrian government is waging war against its own citizens. Europe has sanctioned the Syrian regime because of human rights abuses and brutal violence against civilians. No one who cares about human rights should ignore the massive torture and arbitrary killings taking place. Shell no longer has a broad social support basis in Syria.

I am asking Shell to publicly condemn all human rights violations and to suspend its activities in Syria until all violence against demonstrators has ended and the right to life and freedom and human dignity has been guaranteed.

Yours sincerely,

LINK TO THE WEBSITE