Posts Tagged ‘Malcolm Brinded’

Ogoni: Less Hot Air and More Action – Gas Flaring Increases in the Niger Delta

Despite repeated commitments by oil companies and governments, gas flaring continues in Nigeria at an environmental cost.

Below is an article published by Think Africa Press:

Gas flaring in the Niger Delta region highlights the environmental problems posed by resource extraction, and the failure of successive governments to tackle these problems. Goodluck Jonathan, elected as president of Nigeria this April, has the opportunity to take action where his predecessors have failed.

Gas flaring is a routine practice with a number of extractive processes, including the flaring of associated gas following oil extraction. It is a wasteful process, as much of this gas could be used to provide fuel, either for the local market or for export. According to some estimates, $2.5 billion is wasted annually through gas flaring in Nigeria. Perhaps more importantly, the release of these gasses damages the health of the surrounding population, releases enormous amounts of greenhouse gases and contributes to acid rain. In fact, according to a World Bank  report released in 2002, gas flaring in Nigeria is the single greatest source of greenhouse gases in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria has the secondhighest gas flaring rates in the world, following Russia.

Companies in Nigeria are reluctant to reduce flaring and instead harvest the gas, as gas that is extracted alongside oil is more difficult and costly to separate and process than non-associated gas. So gas flaring is a simpler and cheaper alternative to obtaining the oil.

Shell, under the Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC) flares the  most gas out of all the corporations operating in Nigeria. The problem has long been recognized and highlighted by organizations, such as the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), who are sharply critical of Shell’s practices within the region. In addition to gas flaring, the multinational is responsible for polluting the delta, killing fish and therefore harming the livelihoods of the people who live there. Shell’s well-publicised Corporate Social Responsibility programmes issue repeated commitments to reducing flaring, but no action has been taken to significantly reduce this dangerous practice. Statements by Malcolm Brinded, the director for exploration and production at Shell, suggest that the company may not be taking gas flaring seriously, as he declared that there was little evidence of the damaging health risks that flaring poses.

Broken promises: Gas flaring is not a new issue, and there have been numerous domestic and international attempts to rein in the practice. Yet each time there has been a reluctance to follow through on government statements and legislation. This was first recognized as an issue in 1969 by the federal government under the leadership of General Yakubu Gowon, who ordered the introduction of gas collecting facilities by 1974. When the deadline wasn’t met, it was shifted forward twice until 1984. This year saw the culmination of the Associated Gas Reinjection Act, as well as General Gowon’s executive order to make excessive gas flaring an illegal practice in the country. However, what started off as an attempt to reduce flaring turned into another royalty payment for the federal government, as companies found it more profitable to pay the annual fine than reduce their flaring practices. The international community eventually took notice and the OECD placed its own deadline on western companies to  reduce flaring by 2008. The deadline has since passed without enforcement or the penalisation of Shell.

Umaru Yar’Adua’s plan: Yet since 2008, the federal government has once again started to prioritise the issue of flaring. There is a risk, however, that these new efforts may follow a similar fate as General Gowon’s initiative. Action was taken under ex-president Umaru Yar’Adua’s government through two new executive orders. The first was the Nigerian Gas Master Plan (NGMP) in 2008. Part of the NGMP  addressed the wasteful status quo by providing legislation to encourage the integration of gas fields within the local infrastructure, and to create a market driven industry out of the resource by 2015, reducing gas flaring in the process. The plan includes the Domestic gas Supply Obligation (DSO), which contains a substantial penalty of $3.5m on companies that fail to integrate gas supplies into the local market.

Promising legislation was passed by the Senate a year later in 2009. It placed another penalty on the industry, this time requiring firms to pay the international market price for the quantity of gas still being flared after January this year. It is disappointing that the federal government did not stand its ground on the legislation: the deadline was moved again to December next year.

Whilst the deadline for the NGMP looms on the horizon and the new deadline for the senate bill is just over a year away, Shell’s most recent Sustainability Report released in April, states that the corporation has recently increased its use of flaring in the Niger Delta, blaming militants and a lack of government funding for this failure. The report also stresses the additional cost of the exercise, stating that additional gas collectors in the region would be priced at another $2 billion. Given that Nigeria’s oil production has amounted to over $56 billion over the last four years alone, the cleanup costs proposed seem more than manageable.

Goodluck Jonathan: the “Gas Revolution Agenda”: Rather than follow through with his predecessors commitment, Goodluck Jonathan launched the “Gas Revolution Agenda” in March this year. Despite the name, there is nothing revolutionary about the agenda. It mostly re-states what has been said since 1969 and there is little that distinguishes it from Umaru Yar Adua’s NGMP. So far, the agenda seems to be little more than a collection of words and intentions. It remains to be pushed into concrete legislation.

But Nigeria does not need another grand plan or agenda, nor does it need new legislation: the laws have been in place since 1984. What needs to take place is the enforcement of the laws and penalties that already exist and for the judiciary to take action for the persistent negligence of the oil industry within Nigeria in living up to its commitments. What is needed is less hot air and more action.

SOURCE

Published: June 30, 2011 at 9:44 AM

LONDON, June 30 (UPI) — A so-called revolution in gas supplies driven in part by shale-gas reserves will allay global energy security concerns, a Shell official said in London.

Malcolm Brinded, executive director of global upstream activity at Royal Dutch Shell, told delegates at an energy summit in London natural gas is one of the best ways to cut greenhouse gases and develop a secure and sustainable energy supply.

He points to analysis from the International Energy Agency that predicts a rise in global gas demand of around 60 percent, fueled by booming economies in China and India, by 2035.

“This demand growth is being supported by the boom in the production of tight gas, shale gas and coal bed methane,” Brinded said.

North American unconventional gas reserves are large enough to meet domestic demand for the next century. Concerns about hydraulic fracturing, the method used to get natural gas out of shale rock, has resulted in bans on the method in several countries, however.

Brinded said this means energy companies must provide assurances to its customers while at the same time adhering to the highest operational standards.

“Otherwise, a public good in the form of abundant supplies of cleaner energy is at risk of being obscured by a deluge of misinformation,” he said in his prepared remarks.

Brinded noted that when unconventional natural gas operations are done correctly, there is little cause for concern.

SOURCE

Energy Minister Al-Attiyah and Malcolm Brinded of Shell, sign the Pearl GTl Project DPSA

From “Outspoken”, a former employee of Shell Oil USA

John,

I don’t have time to prepare a full blow article for you, so I decided to drop you a note about Shell and its gas investments that will give you an idea as to why Shell is moving toward natural gas as the anchor for its business.

Attached is the link to an article on the Pearl GTL project in Qatar. Shell has an enormous investment in this project and Qatar has some of the greatest natural gas reserves in the world.

Pearl Gas-to-Liquids Project, Ras Laffan – Hydrocarbons Technology

Qatar’s Golden Age

In any event, this will be a huge money maker for Shell in the coming years. So, will other similar projects. Qatar has about 900 tcf of gas reserves. This is about 900 billion bbl of liquids if completely converted. That is a HUGE reserve number. The UAE also has vast gas reserves, as does Iran and Russia.

This makes Qatar a very important long term profit center for Shell. For this reason alone it does not surprise me that Shell is playing the ‘seconding’ game in Qatar and the UAE as they have done in Nigeria.

CANBERRA, Australia, June 7 (UPI) — Australia’s liquefied natural gas industry is on course for a “golden age,” with the sector posed to boost the country’s economy by $38.5 billion by 2020, the International Energy Agency said.

IEA’s “Are We Entering a Golden Age of Gas?” report unveiled Monday forecasts global use of gas to increase by more than 50 percent from 2010-35.

“We think Australia will play a crucial role in the golden age of gas. It could be a golden age for Australia’s LNG industry,” IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol, the lead author of the report, told The Australian newspaper.

By around 2020, Birol said, Australian LNG production could increase threefold.

The latest figures indicate that Australia exported $7.71 billion worth of natural gas in 2009. In 2010, it was the fourth largest LNG exporter after Qatar, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The push to develop long-term supplies of LNG in Australia has sparked more than $214 billion worth of LNG projects.

IEA says Australia’s key customers would be Asian countries, with China leading the pack, followed by India.

In its high-gas scenario, IEA predicts China’s natural gas demand alone to rise from about the level of Germany’s in 2010 to that of the entire European Union in 2035.

“Australian gas would be directed to meet new energy demand and, especially in the coastal part of China, to replace the coal currently transported over long distances from the interior of China,” Birol said.

Projects such as Western Australia’s Gorgon represent the backbone of Australian LNG supply, IEA says. A joint venture between Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell in Australia, Gorgon has supply contracts from China and India totaling $64 billion in advance of production slated for 2014.

Chevron, Japan’s Inpex and Perth’s Woodside Petroleum are also close to signing multibillion-dollar LNG development deals in Australia.

Shell upstream international Executive Director Malcolm Brinded said government studies indicate there are 140 trillion cubic feet of stranded gas in Australian water yet to be developed, The Australian reports.

Over the next 10 years, Shell plans to spend $32 billion-$54 billion on Australian LNG projects, he said.

Last month, Shell announced final approval for Prelude, a colossal floating LNG plant to be built 124 miles off the northern coast of Western Australia. The first shipment of gas from the 1,601-foot-long Prelude is slated for 2017.

While Shell didn’t disclose figures, the project is costing an estimated $12.6 billion.

Commenting on Shell’s Prelude, Frank Harris, head of global LNG consulting at Wood Mackenzie told the Financial Times: “This is another final investment decision in Australia and adds to the debate as to whether the country will ultimately overtake Qatar as the world’s biggest producer of LNG.”

© 2011 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Gas giant eschews Arctic oil rush to moor 500-metre, 600,000-tonne construction off Australian coast

Fiona Harvey: Friday 20 May 2011 16.29 BST

Shell unveils its plans for a vast offshore gas facility

The world’s first floating natural gas platform is to be built by Royal Dutch Shell, opening up vast new areas of the deep seabed for gas exploration.

The massive platform, nearly half a kilometre long, will be the biggest floating offshore drilling structure in the world, weighing in at about 600,000 tonnes – equivalent to six aircraft carriers – and staffed by 110 people at a time. Five times more steel will be used in its construction than went into the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Shell would not say how much it is expected to cost, but the total cost of exploiting the company’s Australian off-shore oil fields, where it will be used, is likely to exceed $30bn.

It will take about five years to build, and is not expected to be fully operational before 2017.

Floating offshore gas platforms could be used to explore areas of the globe previously too remote for drilling. Companies are racing to discover offshore resources in deep water, as the world’s readily available stores of onshore and close-to-shore oil and gas have already been snapped up. Advances in technology and melting sea ice are also helping to allow oil and gas exploration in sensitive parts of the globe, such as the Arctic, where a scramble to claim the undersea resources is now under way.

Shell has no such plans yet, and will moor its new platform 200km out to sea off the coast of Australia at the Prelude gas field. The size of the Shell platform means it can only be used on large gas fields, as it would not be economically viable on smaller fields.

“Our innovative FLNG technology will allow us to develop offshore gasfields that otherwise would be too costly to develop,” said Malcolm Brinded, executive director, of Shell’s upstream international business. “Our decision to go ahead with this project is a true breakthrough for the LNG industry, giving it a significant boost to help meet the world’s growing demand for the cleanest-burning fossil fuel [and] help accelerate the development of gas resources.”

He said the company was seeking to develop more floating platform projects.

Ann Pickard, country chair of Shell in Australia, said the technology would be “a game-changer for the energy industry”.

Liquefied natural gas is a growing market as it is easier to transport. It is shrunk by about 600 times in the cooling process and can be transported before being turned back into a gas and used for power generation or heating, though it can also be used as a road fuel in specially adapted vehicles.

The floating platform, which Shell has now started to design in detail, will be built in South Korea. It will take gas from the Prelude field and liquefy it to -162C (-260F) on board, from where it will be removed by tankers and shipped to the rapidly growing LNG markets in Asia. Previously, gas had to be piped to onshore facilities to be liquefied.

The facility would be designed to withstand even the most severe cyclones, Shell said.

SOURCE ARTICLE

May 20 (Bloomberg) — Malcolm Brinded, executive director of production at Royal Dutch Shell Plc, talks about the company’s planned Prelude natural-gas processing platform off northwest Australia. He speaks from Perth with Mark Barton on Bloomberg Television’s “On The Move.” (Bloomberg)

May 20, 2011

By ROSS KELLY

SYDNEY—Royal Dutch Shell PLC on Friday approved construction of a giant vessel designed to chill natural gas for export at sea, allowing it to unlock gas deposits stranded hundreds of miles from land.

Similar vessels are being considered for several projects in deep water around the world where piping gas back to land to be liquefied would be too costly. Shell’s final investment approval for its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas development marks the first time that construction of such a vessel has been approved anywhere.

Demand for gas is soaring as nations seek to burn less coal and oil to cut emissions blamed for causing global warming. Interest is particularly strong among nations in Asia such as Japan, whose domestic gas supplies are low, and China and India, where rapidly developing economies are creating a growing need for fuel.

“Our decision to go ahead with this project is a true breakthrough for the LNG industry, giving it a significant boost to help meet the world’s growing demand for the cleanest-burning fossil fuel,” said Malcolm Brinded, executive director of Upstream International at Shell.

Bigger than an aircraft carrier, Prelude will float in waters off the northwestern coast of Australia. Conventional tankers would carry the LNG from the vessel to customers starting in 2016. Shell has already agreed to sell LNG from Prelude to Japan’s Osaka Gas Co.

Write to Ross Kelly at ross.kelly@dowjones.com

Source Article

By Alfred & John Donovan

We knew that Shell took seriously the leaks of information and Shell internal documents which have been supplied to us over several years by Shell employees. This was plain from Shell internal documents the company has been legally obliged to disclose to us.

We did not know just how seriously, until information reached us recently from a Shell Corporate Security source.

Leaked Shell Corporate intelligence documents now in our possession cover Shell’s security plans until 2014.

This is evidence that Shell’s counter-measures have not been entirely successful.

The email below was sent yesterday evening to the Company Secretary & General Counsel Corporate of Royal Dutch Shell Plc.  We also sent copies to Peter Voser and Malcolm Brinded. The draft article contains revelations about Shell’s cloak and dagger activities, including infiltrating Shell spies into host governments.

The “CAS” mentioned in the email is an abbreviation for Shell Corporate Affairs Security.

We will publish the article at midnight UK time tonight unless we receive a response from Shell before then, or receive notification of a High Court Injunction blocking publication.

THE EMAIL

Dear Mr Brandjes

Printed below is a self-explanatory draft article.

I have supplied as an attachment the sample CAS Intel Summary document mentioned in the article, which we plan to make accessible online.

Please advise if Shell has any objections to publication of this document, and if so, on what grounds? Obviously we do not want to put anyone at risk, though we cannot see that this would be the case, as the intel information is not current.

As usual, Shell is invited to supply for publication on an unedited basis, any comments you wish to make on this matter. You are also invited to point out any factual inaccuracies, so that appropriate action can be taken before publication.

John Donovan

RELATED ARTICLE

Shell embedded spies in host governments of Nigeria, Dubai and Iraq

At the heart of the shale gas ‘sell’ is the industry’s analysis of a European Climate Foundation report – an analysis ECF rejects

Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent: Wednesday 20 April 2011 20.49 BST

A natural gas wellhead near Montrose, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Getty

By John Donovan

We have published below our recent correspondence with senior officials of Royal Dutch Shell on allegations of corruption involving Shell and the Health and Safety Executive. The allegations arose from the aftermath of the deadly Brent Bravo explosion, which itself resulted from Shell’s notorious “Touch F*** All safety culture on North Sea Rigs.

EMAIL FROM JOHN DONOVAN TO MR MICHIEL BRANDJES, COMPANY SECRETARY & GENERAL COUNSEL CORPORATE, ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC

From: John Donovan [mailto:john@shellnews.net]
Sent: donderdag 10 maart 2011 11:31
To: Brandjes, Michiel CM RDS-LSC
Cc: Cambell1944@aol.com; Voser, Peter SI-GLOBAL; Ollila, Jorma RDS-RDS/CH; Brinded, Malcolm A RDS-ECMB
Subject: Letter from Bill Campbell to UK and Scottish MP’s – March 2011

Dear Mr Brandjes

Printed below is a letter we will be distributing from this weekend to UK and Scottish MP’s on behalf of Mr. Bill Campbell.

It will also be published on royaldutchshellplc.com.

Shell is invited to correct any factual inaccuracies and supply any comments the company would like included for circulation and publication on an unedited basis.

If I receive no response by tomorrow evening, I will assume Shell accepts as factually accurate the account of events as stated by Mr. Campbell.

If you need more time to consider the matter before replying, just let me know before tomorrow evening when we can expect a response.

If Shell does dispute any stated facts, please be specific, as this would be more informative and credible than providing a standard blanket denial, which seems to be Shell’s favourite option to try to create doubt about the veracity of stated facts, without actually providing any specific plausible basis for doing so.

Best Regards
John Donovan

Letter from Bill Campbell to UK and Scottish MP’s – March 2011

A Subject which Transcends Constituency Boundaries: The Safety of Royal Dutch Shell Offshore Employees

Criminal Investigation uncovers lies and deceit

My name is Bill Campbell.  I am a former Senior Operations and Maintenance Engineer who also acted as a Group Auditor for Shell International. I previously wrote to UK MP’s, and to the Lords, in July 2007.  This letter is an update on what has happened since and also what happened to the concerns raise by a number of MP’s at the time.  The key findings from the current investigation listed below are based on an update given to me by the Procurator Fiscal(s) on 18th February past.

Background

Some time ago the police in Aberdeen passed a report to the Procurator Fiscal.  Subsequently a criminal investigation commenced led by Anne Currie, Area Procurator Fiscal for Grampian Region assisted by Andrew Grant, Area Procurator Fiscal for Central Region.  The investigation has focussed to date on the role of HSE officials at the Offshore Safety Division of the HSE based in Aberdeen. The allegations against these officials were that they were unduly influenced by Shell, potential bribery and corruption, to cover up the full circumstances of a multiple fatality on the offshore installation Brent Bravo in September 2003, and the subsequent Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) held in Aberdeen.

What has the investigation established, the 7 key findings

1. HSE failed to pass vital evidence to the Procurator Fiscal in Aberdeen prior to the Fatal Accident Inquiry.  HSE had obtained this evidence directly from Shell only days after the fatalities and by November 2003. Shell informed HSE that the Brent Bravo fatalities were not just an unfortunate, but isolated incident, but there was a general malaise offshore with chronic weakness in essential management controls evident across the oilfield. The Fiscal was made aware of this evidence by me at the commencement of the FAI.  This was the time when I first became aware that HSE had not provided this evidence to the Fiscal. He then attempted to introduce this evidence belatedly, but the Sheriff desisted, due to the restrictions placed on him by the 1976 FAI Scotland Act.

2. If the Procurator Fiscal(s) had been in possession of the evidence given by Shell to HSE in 2003, as they should have been, this would most likely have led the Lord Advocate to sanction a more General Inquiry into how Shell had operated across the oilfield in the prolonged period from 1999 till the deaths.  And to how HSE had failed to reverse the degradation of facilities over this period despite issuing many Enforcement Notices and raising their ongoing concerns with Shell Directors.

3. Although Shell pled guilty to a number of serious breaches of legislation related to the deaths on Brent Bravo, their employees, and Society as a whole, were never made aware that similar breaches were apparent on 16 other offshore installations. The appalling conditions present on these installations raised risks to unacceptable levels but the workforce remained blissfully unaware of the risks they were taking, simply by being on these installations. Despite the conditions on these installations and in contravention of the HSC Enforcement Policy no formal enforcement actions were taken by HSE at the time and no attempt was made by Shell or HSE to assess the risks of continued operation.  It is estimated that some 40 prohibition and/or improvement notices would have been required to cover some 80 serious breaches apparent at the time.  Since 2003, Shell are on public record of expending to date some £800 million to return these facilities to the risk levels as stated in the offshore installation specific Safety Cases.

4. At the time the FAI results were made public the BBC in Scotland aired a TV programme on 14th June 2006 highly critical of Shell and HSE in relation to the deaths on Brent Bravo and this was picked up by Newspapers across the UK including the Times and the Guardian.  In total contradiction with the facts Shell denied wrongdoing stating that in the period 1999 to the deaths in 2003 ‘significant progress had been made on both asset integrity and management systems. This contributed to the continuous improvement in Shell’s safety performance over that period ‘.

5. HSE were aware that the Press Releases by Shell were false.  I wrote to the HSE CEO complaining about this at the time, how could HSE stay mute when they were aware that the Shell statement was a pack of lies? He did not reply.   The feedback from the ongoing investigation has confirmed that Geoffrey Podger, the CEO of the HSE, was aware that the statements made by Shell in their Press Releases of 2006 were false and misleading.  His defence is that the Shell statement put HSE in a difficult position as their Policy does not allow them to comment on the health and safety performance of individual organisations.

6. With respect to the allegations of bribery of HSE officials by Shell over the period 1999 till 2003 the Procurator Fiscal(s) can find no physical evidence of this.  They trawled through what records were currently still available looking at the degree and spread of hospitality given to HSE officials by Shell in this period.  However the records for this period are no longer available being routinely destroyed after a 5-year lapsed period and were thus simply not available to examine.

7. The Procurator Fiscal(s) have reviewed the results of an internal investigation carried out to ascertain if HSE could, or should have been able to foresee and prevent the Brent Bravo fatalities with the information available to them between 1999 and 2003.  The HSE internal investigation found essential weaknesses in their enforcement process resulting in 18 recommendations for improvement which have subsequently been implemented.

What happened to the concerns raised by MP’s in 2007

In August 2007 around 12 MP’s including the then Secretary of State for Scotland got involved and wrote to Bill McKenzie at that time a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Work and Pensions.  In a process that apparently by-passed Geoffrey Podger and his Head of the Offshore Safety Division, the HSE officials, against whom the allegations were made, were allowed to draft a reply directly to McKenzie.  The Procurator Fiscal(s) carrying out the current investigation have viewed the correspondence between HSE and Work and Pensions in 2007 and it is not contentious that the information provide to McKenzie by HSE officials was false and misleading.  The MP’s who had raised the mater were thus hoodwinked by a false account of events.

Bill McKenzie, who was provided with the same evidence in 2009 as currently held by the public investigators, wrote to me at that time, stating his satisfaction with the advice given to him by HSE officials in 2007.  He did this despite being aware that a criminal investigation into the conduct of those officials had commenced in March that year.  In the same letter he made clear that Geoffrey Podger did not authorise the advice given to him in 2007 and that there was no need for him to do so.  I find that statement by the Under Secretary truly remarkable.  The allegations raised by me and taken seriously by the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service in Scotland were that HSE officials had in 2003 purposefully covered up the criminal neglect of Shell, either for personal gain, or to mask from public scrutiny their failures to protect workers offshore from unacceptable risk.  Could there be a more damming allegation.  Yet the reply to the Secretary of State for Scotland and the other MP’s in 2007 was not, it appears, worthy of the involvement of the HSE CEO.

Finally both Shell an HSE have been given write off reply to what is written here and have raised no legal, or other objections to it issue.  For some time I have been pressing Anne Currie to make her investigation public.  It is clearly in the public interest. Neither the Scottish or UK Government, finds argument with the proposal, that in all matters related to the health and safety of persons at work, there must be openness and transparency.  I would hope that on receipt of this letter the appropriate oversight committees at Westminster and Holyrood  would consider the implications of this letter and give the concerns raised in the letter the public exposure they merit.

Yours sincerely

Bill Campbell
March 9th 2011

REPLY FROM KEITH RUDDOCK, GENERAL COUNSEL, UPSTREAM INTERNATIONAL

On 15 Mar 2011, at 09:01, keith.ruddock@shell.com wrote:

Dear Mr Campbell and Mr Donovan,

I refer to Mr Donovan’s email of 10th March, 2011, to my colleague Mr Brandjes.  Shell has now been advised by the Procurator Fiscal that, having conducted a full investigation into the allegations of bribery and corruption on the part of the HSE and Shell made by Mr Campbell, and having considered all the facts, Crown Counsel has decided that no prosecution or further investigation is justified.

Accordingly, we view this matter as now closed.

Yours sincerely,

Keith Ruddock

Keith Ruddock
General Counsel Upstream International
Shell International B.V.
The Hague, The Netherlands – Trade Register no. 27002688
Address: Carel van Bylandtlaan 5, P.O. Box 162, 2501 AN,
The Hague, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 70 377 4579 Email: Keith.Ruddock@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com

REPLY BY JOHN DONOVAN

Dear Mr Ruddock

Thank you for your reply, the content of which I have noted.

If you had advised me that more time was needed to respond, I would not have commenced sending the Bill Campbell letter to some MSP’s on Monday 14 March.

The only change to the main content on the letters already sent was the sub-heading:

“What has the investigation established, the 7 key findings thus far (the investigation is still in progress)”

I added the text shown in red based on my then understanding of the situation.This will not be included in subsequent letters.

Mr Campbell has kindly supplied me from time to time with copies of his email correspondence with the Scottish authorities.

In view of his recent comments, it is difficult to see how the claims of a “meticulous” and “full investigation” by the Procurator Fiscal can possibly be justified.

Shell is to be congratulated in extracting what appears to be a definitive decision from the Procurator Fiscal brought into these matters by Grampian Police in December 2008. They have not been as forthright with Mr Campbell and apparently still have not advised him of the decisions mentioned in your email. He appears to have been  strung along for over two years believing that a “meticulous” investigation was being undertaken. We now know that relevant officials and employees were not even interviewed.

Mr Campbell has set out his areas of concern and is entitled to make his analysis and expert opinion known to legislators, bearing in mind the support he was given previously from some concerned MP’s after his first letter to them. The circulation process will take some days as each letter has to be sent separately. The letter will also be published. The decisions bizarrely notified to him by Shell, the company being investigated at his instigation, do not change his views. The improper way this investigation appears to have been handled and concluded will only add to unease in many quarters about the way the Scottish authorities have dealt with the Brent Bravo debacle.

Shell is free to inform us if anything stated by Mr Campbell in his letter is untrue. Shell is free to sue for defamation if anything stated as fact is untrue.

Although prior convictions could obviously not be taken into account in the Scottish investigation, it is a fact that Shell was found guilty after an official investigation of a sex, drugs, and corruption scandal involving employees of the US Minerals Management Service, the department providing a comparable oversight function in the United States. In other words Shell has form in bribing oversight officials.

In this case, potential evidence had apparently already been routinely destroyed.

It should not be forgotten that Shell was successfully prosecuted in relation to the deaths of Sean McCue and Keith Moncrieff on the Brent Bravo oil platform on 11 September 2003 and paid a record breaking £900,000 fine in addition to settling for undisclosed sums, litigation brought by the relatives of those who lost their lives. This all occurred as a result of Shell’s “Touch F*** All” safety culture on North Sea Platforms, which included falsification of safety records.

We are of course aware of the sensitivity attached by Shell to these matters and our related contact with Mr Campbell. If my memory serves me correctly, you personally wrote to Mr Campbell’s solicitors trying to poison our relationship with him. This was followed by Shell setting up an aggressive counter-measures team to combat our joint campaign for justice and integrity, after being put on the back foot.

Shell views this matter as closed. We do not.

I will add a link on the letter to this correspondence.

Further circulation will be delayed until Friday, so that any recipient of this email can advise me of any inaccuracy.

Yours sincerely
John Donovan

CORRESPONDENCE ENDS