Posts from ‘September, 2009’

From our archives 2 February 2006…

FROM A SHELL INSIDER

Hello Alfred

Below is the crap we receive from our ‘leader’. It continues to baffle me that these politicians keep finding hollow words for their messages that never change. This cowboy from Wyoming expects a few things to be different this year (see bullet points at the bottom). This means in his eyes:

– We are NOT honest to each other.

– We do NOT learn quickly from mistakes

– There are gaps in the Operating Model (actually his personal invention) read more

CALGARY, Alberta, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Greenpeace activists who occupied mining equipment at Royal Dutch Shell Plc's (RDSa.L) Canadian oil sands project ended their protest on Wednesday after 1-1/2 days and were escorted away without facing charges, the environmental group said.

Visitors to this website, which is self-evidently focused on the activities of Royal Dutch Shell, may wonder why we are drawing attention to current news involving BAE Systems and the UK  Serious Fraud Squad (and the parallel corruption investigation by the US Justice Department).

All will be revealed very shortly…

FINANCIAL TIMES

By Michael Peel and Jeremy Lemer

Published: September 30 2009 14:33 | Last updated: September 30 2009 14:33

EXTRACTS

Corruption investigators were on Wednesday poised to press criminal charges over BAE Systems’ arms deals as the long-running probe into one of the country’s most-politically charged cases finally comes to a head, the Financial Times has learned. read more

Bloomberg has published a revised version of its article “Shell Output Set to Pass BP With $40 Billion Spent on Projects“.

The arms giant BAE tonight appeared to be ready to defy an ultimatum from the Serious Fraud Office to accept a plea deal over corruption allegations, or face prosecution. (ROYAL DUTCH SHELL INVOLVEMENT IN BAE SYSTEMS AL-YAMAMAH OIL FOR ARMS - SAUDI CORRUPTION SCANDAL)

BLOOMBERG.COM

By Paul Burkhardt and Kaipin Yee

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc will employ about 1,100 contractors at its Deer Park, Texas, plant, as it begins a planned shutdown of an olefins unit at its chemical plant.

“The number of contract workers at Shell will peak at approximately 1,100 workers in late September and will decline as the projects are completed in mid-November,” the company said in a statement, explaining that the activity at Deer Park will snarl local traffic.

Shell announced the shutdown of a light/heavy olefins unit in a filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. read more

Tuesday 29 Sept: Important Shell internal telecast today…?

Monday 28 Sept: Whisper from a worried engineer:

We hear that the 3 musketeers Marvin, Matthias and Malcolm are unable to reach agreement on whether everyone in jobgroup 2 and above has to re-apply for a job in Shell.

Matthias as a good Swiss with a Teutonic streak wants to go for the ‘Endlösung’ and have it all over with soon by forcing a date for re-application to all jobs by end October.

But now for once the big brain of Malcolm, the mother of all micro managers, starts to feel nervous since he realises that HR cannot cope with the enormous load. Even HR can do overpromise-underdelivery!!! read more

Voser, meanwhile, who took over the CEO post at Shell in July, is orchestrating a major revamp at the Anglo-Dutch oil giant that includes job and cost cuts.

It is notable that although Bloomberg routinely make their articles permanently accessible on the Bloomberg website, the article that was the subject of postings by our contributors below – “Outsider” and “Insider” – has been deleted by Bloomberg without explanation or apology. It is of course impossible to do the same with newspaper articles which were published based on the Bloomberg article.

REVISED POSTING ON SHELL BLOG BY “Outsider”

How much did Shell pay Bloomberg to misquote their production forecasts? read more

In future, Shell will present its financial results in three segments: Upstream, Downstream and Corporate & Minority Interest, the company said.

BAGHDAD — Iraq risks missing a one-year deadline to strike a deal with energy giant Royal Dutch Shell for a four-billion-dollar gas production deal in southern Iraq, a government spokesman told AFP on Tuesday.

Alarmingly, despite the growing belligerence of Iran’s government, Europe seems more anxious than ever to make new energy investments in Iran. European energy firms such as Shell and Spain’s state-owned Repsol recently confirmed a $10 billion investment in Iran.

Whisper from a worried engineer:

We hear that the 3 musketeers Marvin, Matthias and Malcolm are unable to reach agreement on whether everyone in jobgroup 2 and above has to re-apply for a job in Shell.

Matthias as a good Swiss with a Teutonic streak wants to go for the ‘Endlösung’ and have it all over with soon by forcing a date for re-application to all jobs by end October.

But now for once the big brain of Malcolm, the mother of all micro managers, starts to feel nervous since he realises that HR cannot cope with the enormous load. Even HR can do overpromise-underdelivery!!! read more

From the Shell to Sea Campaign front line…

Opposition to the Corrib Gas Project in Ireland continues…

The 2006 policy of “no arrest” has been replaced with a policy of arrest, charge and get campaigners in jail out of the way. The abuse of the court system has been rampant with local retired teacher Maura Harrington jailed 4 times this year for alleged incidents during protest against the project. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/94011

Niall Harnett has also been targeted and jailed for alleged obstruction and assault on a Garda – despite video evidence shown in court which suggests otherwise. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/93525 read more

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WITHDRAWAL FROM GREECE

From a royaldutchshellplc.com contributor…

Responding to the comment that RDS is withdrawing from downstream, as evidenced by the withdrawal from Greece.

The Greece assets were acquired in 2000 in a swap with parts of the UK portfolio such as a terminal and unwanted (‘tail’) stations, the real driver for the deal was a local management desire for increased scale and to get a ‘seat at the table’ in the then SEOP organisation. the internal justification process – 501/502 as it was then known – was flawed in that the economics of the deal were questionable and the proposals put forward did not add up properly. There was a significant mistake in the analysis which omitted the actual opportunity cost of losing the UK assets. read more