Posts Tagged ‘Shell Oil’

Tue Feb 7, 2012 6:27pm GMT

HOUSTON Feb 7 (Reuters) – Motiva Enterprises’ 285,000 barrel per day (bpd) Port Arthur, Texas, refinery was hit by a brief power interruption on Tuesday morning, according to sources familiar with refinery operations.

JANUARY 12, 2012

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)–Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA, RDSA.LN) is confident it will be able to drill for oil and natural gas in Alaska’s arctic region this summer as it hopes to overcome its remaining legal challenges.

“We still have a few not insignificant hurdles to get past, but it looks that we will be drilling,” Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co., the U.S. unit of the Anglo-Dutch giant, said in prepared remarks delivered at a conference in Houston.

Shell recently received various federal environmental permits to drill in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, but environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging those approvals.

-By Isabel Ordonez, Dow Jones Newswires; 713-547-9207; isabel.ordonez@dowjones.com

SOURCE ARTICLE

Royal Dutch Shell evasion of royalties: Plaintiffs win $66 million from Shell Oil after making the mistake of relying on Shell’s “honesty and integrity”:

“Shell told us [in 1995] that if we didn’t want to accept a nuisance value settlement, they would drag the case out and my clients would be dead before they ever got the money,” said Calvert. “They ended up being partly right.”

Sat May 17, 2008

NEWSOK.COM: Shell weighs appeal in royalty case

By Jack Money

Shell Oil Co. is weighing an appeal of a $66 million verdict this month by a Stephens County jury in a royalties payment case, company officials said Friday.

The verdict stems from a case where five women claimed they were owed royalties that had not been paid since the early 1970s.

Background to case

The royalties involved a well on a 20-acre lease in a 640-acre unit between Ardmore and Duncan. The area is one of old production, in which more than 100 wells have been drilled.

The original agreement, executed in 1927, gave W.F. Daiber and P.C. Dings 25 percent interest in the well, with the remainder going to the original operating interest owner, Wilt Franklin Petroleum.

What were the results?

The verdict awards the plaintiffs about $13 million for owed interest payments of about $1 million, plus interest, and $53 million in punitive damages. Calvert said his clients were relying on Shell, then Maynard’s, honesty and integrity.

“When someone gets a statement from an oil company, it is very difficult to discover if something has been concealed or hidden,” he said. “So, there is a certain amount of trust required by the system, and Shell breached that trust.”

Calvert said it appears from case documents that royalty owners in at least one other, nearby lease were shorted royalties as well.

A Shell spokesman said Friday the company disagreed with the jury’s verdict.

“We have solid grounds for an appeal,” said Kelly Coone op de Weegh, a senior communications adviser for Shell Exploration and Production.

ENDS

RELATED ARTICLES

Shell Oil weighs appeal of $66M verdict: 17 May 2008

Duncan Banner Daily Newspaper: Foreman explains $66 million verdict: 30 May 2008

Verdicts & Settlements January 13, 2009: Shell Oil to pay $66M to royalty owners: 13 January 2009

Extract

It took nearly four decades, but an Oklahoma jury ordered Shell Oil Co. to pay $66 million to five royalty owners (several of them deceased) for their share of a lucrative oil well dug in the early-1970s. The payments will go to two families who owned the land where Shell drilled for oil but were never informed when the company struck a huge reserve and built a well on the land in 1973.

Time was not an ally for plaintiffs’ attorney Randy Calvert, given that it took 20 years for his clients to even realize there was a well. Once they finally filed a complaint in 1995, Shell and then-lease owner Maynard Oil Co. switched counsel and dragged their feet on the case.

“Shell told us [in 1995] that if we didn’t want to accept a nuisance value settlement, they would drag the case out and my clients would be dead before they ever got the money,” said Calvert. “They ended up being partly right.”

Maynard Oil Co. settled prior to trial for a confidential amount, leaving Shell Oil as the sole defendant at trial.

“It would indeed be ironic if the resources of one investigative arm of the U.S. government has been used by Shell in an attempt to impede the Shell/Gale Norton corruption investigation being carried out by another investigative arm of the U.S. government.”

By John Donovan

In December 2009, following an analysis of Shell internal communications and documents supplied to us by Shell in response to a SAR application under the Data Protection Act, it became clear that Shell had once again resorted to cloak and dagger activity directed against us.

Reuters revealed that Royal Dutch Shell had asked an anti-fraud agency “NCFTA”, to target our website – royaldutchshellplc.com – on the basis  that “There will be no attempt to do anything visible to Donovan”.  The article said that NCFTA, the US National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance in Pittsburgh, did not respond to emails or telephone calls from Reuters on the subject.

In subsequent Shell communications supplied in response to a further SAR application, NCFTA was identified by Shell as being the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance, a high tech investigation organization funded and staffed partly by the FBI.

There is nothing new in Shell having a close connection with cloak and dagger organizations.  Some 90 years ago, Shell recruited the then newly retired head of British Military Intelligence, Major General Sir George MacDonogh.   Shell “Corporate Affairs Security” (CAS), the current Shell in-house spook organisation, exposed as a key player in the current undercover operation against us, is headed by Ian McCredie OBE, another former MI6 senior officer. He is Royal Dutch Shell plc Vice-President for Security.

What prompted such attention and activity, mobilizing CAS and a specialist resource of the FBI? The latter move obviously suggested a US connection. Was it because Tom Purves, the unloved Shell Motiva VP had been the subject of leaks to the Donovans? Or was the reason more sinister?

During the same period, another investigative arm of the U.S. federal government was already moving forward with an investigation of alleged corruption relating to Shell Oil General Counsel Gale Norton, the former Secretary of the Interior, whose department awarded Shell three potentially lucrative oil shale prospecting licenses.  This was prior to her joining Shell.  Norton was appointed as Interior Secretary by President George W. Bush whose father, President George Bush, another oil man, had enjoyed a business relationship with Shell through his company, Zapata Offshore.

Our reputation as the worlds leading source of Shell insider information has spread far and wide.  Hence it is perhaps no surprise that we were approached by the federal investigators carrying out the corruption probe (and a Los Angeles Times reporter who broke the story about the corruption investigation). With the help of our network of Shell insiders, we supplied confidential Shell documents to assist the investigation.

Had Shell Oil also recognized our potential as an intermediary and source of  Shell inside information – and the threat this posed? Was this the real reason for Shell’s mobilization of internal and external spying resources?

It would indeed be ironic if the resources of one investigative arm of the U.S. government has been used by Shell in an attempt to impede the Shell/Gale Norton corruption investigation being carried out by another investigative arm of the U.S. government.

June 15 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Supreme Court will use a case involving Shell Oil Co. to determine how much leverage oil companies have to change their leases with tens of thousands of independent service station owners.

Motiva, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Shell, in March announced the project’s completion would be delayed by two years to 2012, leading to speculation it would be canceled altogether as the recession continues to crush U.S. demand for motor fuels.

Voting 8-1, the justices overturned a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that Shell and the railroads could be held liable for almost the full cost of the cleanup even though their roles in the soil and groundwater contamination had been relatively minor.

Shell Oil Co. has agreed to pay millions of dollars to resolve a lawsuit by two environmental groups over pollution at its Deer Park refinery.

“This agreement positions Suncor well to continue to provide quality fuels to our marketers and consumers under the Shell brand, the No. 1-selling gasoline brand in America.”

This morning at Shell stations across the U.S., consumers received a free fill-up with Shell Nitrogen Enriched Gasolines, a new fuel containing a unique, patented cleaning system designed to seek and destroy engine “gunk” (carbon deposits) in all three grades of gasoline.