FROM OUR SHELL NEWS ARCHIVE SEPT 2004
The Times: Oil’s not well for Shell directors
“The debacle over the reserves lifted the lid on an organisation that appears to have knowingly deceived investors.”: “It was when Sir Mark Moody-Stuart was in charge in 1998 that a paper was produced under the title: Creating Value through Entrepreneurial Management of Hydrocarbon Resource Values. Inflating the reserve figures certainly did that.”
By Patience Wheatcroft
Business Editor’s Commentary
Posted 24 Sept 04
SHELL directors are looking into an abyss when they would prefer to be gazing down an oil well. For years the company has been using its reserves faster than it has been replenishing them and it does not take a highly qualified petroleum engineer to tell that continuation of that strategy does not make for a happy future.
So although Jeroen van der Veer and his colleagues must have known that, in the wake of the devastating reserves scandal, a more cautious approach to business might be appropriate, they have decided this was an option they could not afford. So Shell is taking a deep breath and hoping the oil price is going to remain high while it goes off in search of new wells whose contents are likely to be rather more expensive to retrieve than it would wish.