No let-up for Royal Dutch Shell and BP amid oil price crash

exshellman: After the Shell BG merger completed in 2016 , a lot of really good people lost their jobs , it was handled terribly by the HR dept and the so called 'General Managers' culled some of the best experts they had ...in less than a year of the redundancies Shell were struggling and now with the lack of expertise...they have had to take in contractors to fill staff positions ..within a year of the redundancies ... they could be liable if people took this issue up.. Also Shell were looking at hiring back some old boy network ...who are now pensioners to come back in as managers to help out with the problems ..LOL . they have so much dead wood staff on their books and the company is ran like a club. I'm glad to be away from the farce that Shell became , the malaise started around about 2004 when they began to lose the plot. The BG merger for many was a final nail in the coffin, some of the hand picked people for the new club don't know their arse from their elbows. The only way Shell actually make profits is when the oil price goes high... when Brent is low they can't compete within their quartile or peer groups. I'll keep abreast here on the blog

Contributor to this blog: I’ve just come across an article "Tips & Insights: A World-class Combination" about the proposed combination of Royal Dutch Shell, one of the largest companies in the world and 'best known for its gasoline stations' and BG Group, a natural gas specialist.

The article centres on Sarah Franklin, (BG chief counsel, with a list of responsibilities, including health and safety after her name), who would be BG’s legal lead for integration planning.

In the article she explains that emotional intelligence was pivotal to success. I find this strange, as emotional intelligence wasn’t an attribute in BG Group. Could this be integration jargon?

Franklin has apparently added other governance matters, including human rights and whistleblowing investigations to her legal skill set. She set up BG’s first whistleblowing program.

She has inherited a new team that focuses on complex safety and environmental issues. As noted in the article, in Shell Legal, many lawyers advise on safety and environmental matters but it didn’t have a global core of experts.

If you are a Shell employee, be extremely cautious about the content of the two preceding paragraphs. If you have concerns, especially those with a safety connotation and you wish to engage with her……….beware.

I’m sure other revelations will eventually surface.

Bogus Group: I listened to the then BG Group chief executive drool over the Petrobras ‘partnership’ at his award speech for GB Personality of the Year by the Brazilian Chamber of Commerce in 2013 (https://youtu.be/pfknsxjT2Rw). He described many extraordinary moments during this partnership, a relationship that had flourished with ‘mutual trust and respect and super giant discoveries’, which was going from strength to strength. He was looking to a very long future with many more Eureka moments for BG and its partners in the years and decades to come. So why would they want to put such ‘jewel’ in the Shell crown and who was responsible for this? At that time did anyone envisage the fall from grace in the coming months and years? Since then there has been turmoil in both companies, what could possibly have gone wrong. Insiders will know the answer.

Bonus Group: Andrew Gould, Chairman of the disgraced BG Group, who allegedly was seeking a knighthood by joining the company has gone to ground. Given his contractor mind set coupled with his training as an accountant does not bode well for the industry. His LinkedIn profile shows that he is still Chairman of BG Group, as well as being a Board Member (Non Executive!) of Saudi Aramco. Given that Saudi Aramco are going to drop their IPO, this could well leave 'Mr Corridor' twiddling his thumbs and wondering how he can manoeuvre back into a position where he can achieve his ambition of being knighted.

Prelude FLNG: It looks like Prelude has 19 helicopter fights per week. All of them are routed to the "Posh Arcaida" which is an accommodation vessel with up to 750 beds on board.

An article I read dated 17th March indicated that more than 17,500 people had been moved by helicopter since arrival.

Currently CHC Helicopters are scheduling up to 19 flights a week. That may equate to about 360 each way or a total of around 750 people. I think this may indicate the potential panic at the "slow startup". I wonder what the contractual LNG delivery dates were to be and if any cargos have had to have been bought by Shell on the open market. Link to the helicopter operators web site

Don't Leave a Steen Unturned: Andrey Golubel. It's an oil painting, what would you expect?

Sniper: There's a bit of pattern here. Corruption seems to be running through the veins of Shell. We see in all these recent tax articles how they seem to be snuggled up in bed with the Dutch Government. Will anything come of this? Of course not silly. It has been going on for years. There is even a department called Government Relations which is staffed by - yes you guessed it - former government employees. Where was Van Beurden a few days ago, for three whole days? The very secretive Bilderberg meeting in Turin (Guardian article by Charlie Skelton can be found on this website), along with many of the worlds elite businessmen and politicians, AND the Dutch king. The outcomes of the meeting were not something I saw on any of the Shell internal or external communication messaging. Funny that, seeing how they always share even the most mundane van Beurden news. So will Shell be brought to account for its actions in OPL? I somehow doubt it. But there is some hope. Will the real Slim Robinson please stand up.

Andrey Golubel: For centuries “The Mocking of Samson” was thought to be a copy of a famous Dutch painting. Then a Shell microscope made a remarkable discovery.

Bogus Group: This gets interesting....Enron links to Dynegi, links to accounting scandal, custodial sentences, links to BG Group, links to Non Exec Directors in BG Group, more links to Dynegi 'strays' on the BG Exec committee!!! Interested parties may want to dig deeper.

Bonus Group: Biggest Fraud in History. I object! BG Group was clearly the biggest fraud in recent oil and gas industry history after Enron. The company had over-inflated its reserves on little substance and fact, and the auditors were either gullible or complicit. BG had been lucky with production, but the Geoscience supporting the production was usually fabricated. What they didn't understand they speculated about or made-up. The Board bid the shareholders up the cobblers, Project Berkshire in the Brasil Asset was a classic example of this deceit - the Emperor's new clothes. Their undoing was not that they had lied to the shareholders, but that they actually believed their own lies and flawed integrity. Their assurance process was corrupt and their cappucino and pepper plant culture led to them failing to meet targets. Ultimately, they managed to get away with it by selling-out to Shell after a protracted period of alignment, who turned around the toxic purchase by spewing-out most of BG's worthless assets, Caveat Emptor!

Biggest Fraud in History: Lawyers for the many parties involved will be reading these series of postings with great interest as will the Italian Prosecutors.

John Donovan: UPDATE 6 JUNE 2018: Overnight developments:

After putting "A Mole" in direct contact with one of the key investigative organisations in relation to the OPL 245 corruption scandal, this anonymous source has now supplied them with more information relating to the OML 30 Nigerian oil deal involving Shell/Heritage Oil and Guy Colegate.

I am also in contact with a person who appears to be a key player in the OPL 245 scandal. I await promised documents from this insider source to whom I have also guaranteed anonymity.

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