News and information on Royal Dutch Shell Plc
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Impossible to move home with them: I recently moved from a home where I was a Shell Energy customer, to a home that is also supplied by Shell Energy. After 5+ calls and emails promising me my account and most importantly, my tariff, would be carried over, they have failed to do so and they are now ignoring my emails. Their customer service is absolutely diabolical.
Truly awful cancellation experience: Firstly i have no problem with the broadband quality and general customer service but i have just had a horrendous experience trying to cancel my contract in favour of virgin. i made it very very very clear i just wanted to cancel but the bloke insisted endlessly on try to persuade me otherwise to the point where i was getting proper stressed out. i won't ever go back to Shell
Rubbish Company: Where do I start ... AGAIN! Just received ANOTHER message from you regarding my account! Advising me to contact debt management company!. I am, as I keep TRYING to tell you, I'm on Universal Credit but, at the moment I've been sanctioned until the end of July, and also have a hardship fund payment of £*** which I have to pay back until next February! I have no money for all my usual bills off-line this one, so maybe YOU can tell me how I'm supposed to pay this bill with no money! I can't even afford to buy food to last me a month. I have NO MONEY! If Green Star Energy I ad sorted out this problem in the 1st place, I wouldn't be in this mess! Unfortunately I don't have a money tree in my garden, not do I have a money making machine. I'm as poor as a church mouse! I haven't had enough money for 3 years now! Is anyone else having problems with this company? I'll say no more!
Sylvia Holmes: Was with the Post Office broadband until Shell took over. Was emailed to activate my account which I did , WiFi went off. Called several times was kept waiting for someone to answer, must now total 4 hours +. Eventually Ayisha answered must be a fault on the line from the exchange. Then router not recognised! Engineer appointment was made for 31/5/22 — 8am till 1 pm No show. Rang again why no show..Naeem says I’ll transfw you to the technical team ..was cut off. Emailed customer help, reply line is ok , reset your router with a pin, check your wires are fully in the plug. Pat, said she will contact outreach either Tuesday or Wednesday. Meanwhile I’m without WiFi? What’s occurring Shell?
Bogus Group: The Offshore Alliance and the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) have both served Shell with formal notice that industrial action will commence on the Prelude FLNG facility on 10 June.
Awful company who don't listen or care about customers!:
I've had an utter nightmare with Shell. After I inherited my fathers house in Jan they have been nothing but trouble.
I called them within a week of the house being put in my name and told them I do not live near the house and to put the account in my name and send any bills to my address. I made it very clear that I would be paying any bills, was happy to do so, and where to send them. Fast forward to early April, we visit the house to find bill after bill addressed "to the occupier".
Again I got in touch right away and told them the NEED to put the account in my name as I won't be visiting the house again as it was set to sell at the end of April. I spoke to a representative who said "No worries, just call us when the house sells and we will settle the account". I did just that and paid them. However I've checked my credit score and have multiple negatives which are now preventing me getting a mortgage. As if dealing with the death of a parent isn't difficult enough Shell have now prevented me getting a mortgage for the next 7 years!!
Awful customer service: Awful customer service that won't talk about your complaint. I have never come across such an evasive company before. Can't wait to change provider!
Nothing Positive about Shell Energy: Smart meter fitted which fail to register and Shell just estimate bills which overcharge me and in this time of crisis I can do without the grief. The app is useless and keeps failing and you have to log in through the website. Good you may think but no, get regular massages advising data like account information is unavailable. Ofgen transfered me to this company last year when the company I was with went south, maybe they need to look at the suppliers and see if they can indeed look after customers or if they are just profiteering from the energy crisis. I would never recommend them to anybody and cant wait for the day that I can transfer to another supplier.
App is rubbish: App is rubbish. Never loads the actual usage. Fails to upload details from my smart meter - gas and electricity. Never shows statements. Deleted and reinstalled the app. No joy. Very poor. My smart meter mini display is fab - app rubbish
Shell mucked up everything:
Worst Company EverI used to be with Post Office broadband, had the unfortunate situation to be sold to Shell, mucked up everything about swapping over, meant to have caller Id for personal reasons did not happen, another muck up cannot get through to customer lack of service had to cancel DD to hopefully get resolution but will impact my credit rating, do not use this company awful.
Thank you for your reply but I am not prepared to wait the usual 50 minutes to try to get through to your customer line, sure it helps your profits.
I have to work to pay my bills and calling during work hours is not appropriate, to prove your excellent customer service, tongue in cheek sort my caller Id within 24 hours lol, also guarantee no interruption in service and my credit rating won’t be impacted I might change my mind
Absolutely shocking service: Even more bad service
After leaving a previous negative review about how bad shell energy is Shell replied asking for my account number so that they could investigate..so l did provide it however l haven't heard a thing from them. This was a number of months ago and yet again another example of how poor Shell is. Absolutely shocking service.
Bereavement rip off: Bereavement rip off
Shell Broadband charged me £108 to cancel when my mum died because the account was in my name. Then they kept adding more charges even though their email said no extra fees would be added. 1hr 32mins to cancel the service & passed to 4 different departments - it was as if no one had ever been bereaved before. Then no reply to my email via their online help, followed by over 1 hr on their online chat. I would avoid Shell Broadband.
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When completed, the facility will be fed by pipelines stretching hundreds of miles across Appalachia. It will have its own rail system with 3,300 freight cars. And it will produce annually more than 1 million tons of something that many people argue the world needs less of: plastic.
As concern grows about plastic debris in the oceans and recycling continues to falter in the US, the production of new plastic is booming. The plant that Royal Dutch Shell is building about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh will create tiny pellets that can be turned into items like phone cases, auto parts and food packaging, all of which will be around long after they have served their purpose.
The plant is one of more than a dozen that are being built or have been proposed around the world by petrochemical companies like Exxon Mobiland Dow, including several in nearby Ohio and West Virginia and on the Gulf Coast. And after decades of American industrial jobs heading overseas, the rise of the petrochemical sector is creating excitement. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump is scheduled to tour the Shell plant.
Plastic popularity
“Where we are coming from is that plastic, in most of its forms, is good and it serves to be good for humanity,” said Hilary Mercer, who is overseeing the construction project for Shell. The boom is driven partly by plastic’s popularity as a versatile and inexpensive material that keeps potato chips fresh and makes cars lighter. But in parts of the Appalachian region, the increase is also being fuelled by an overabundance of natural gas.
It has been about 15 years since hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, took hold in Pennsylvania, which sits atop the huge gas reserve of the Marcellus Shale. But natural gas prices have collapsed and profit must be found elsewhere, namely the natural gas byproduct ethane, which is unleashed during fracking and can be made into polyethylene, a common form of plastic.
This is a place where, right now, plastic makes sense to many people. To the labour union gaining new members. To the world’s third-largest company struggling with low oil prices. And to the former government officials who, in seeking to create jobs, offered Shell one of the largest tax breaks in state history.
Short-term gains
But any short-term good could have long-term costs. Shell says much of the plastic from the plant can be used to create fuel-efficient cars and medical devices. But the industry acknowledges that some of the world’s waste management systems are unable to keep up with other forms of plastic like water bottles, grocery bags and food containers being discarded by consumers on the move.
Studies have detected plastic fibres everywhere ? in the stomachs of sperm whales, in tap water and in table salt. A researcher in Britain says plastic may help define the most recent layer of the earth’s crust because it takes so long to break down and there is so much of it.
“Plastic really doesn’t go away,” said Roland Geyer, a professor of industrial ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It just accumulates and ends up in the wrong places. And we just don’t know the long-term implications of having all this plastic everywhere in the natural environment. It is like this giant global experiment and we can’t just pull the plug if it goes wrong.”
’Part of a Journey’
The roots of Shell’s sleek, ultramodern plant date back hundreds of millions of years, when the area was occupied by a wide inland sea. Over time, the earth shifted and the sea was covered by rock, which compressed the dead organisms and sediment that had settled on its watery bottom into rich layers of hydrocarbons, including those that make up natural gas. Mercer has spent 32 years travelling the world for Shell – in southern Iraq and in eastern Russia – helping turn those hydrocarbons deep within the Earth into energy. These days, Mercer, an English-born, Oxford-educated engineer, works out of a red brick building in Beaver, Pennsylvania.
The plant Mercer has come here to build is “as big as you get,” she said. When finished, Shell’s cracker plant – named for the chemical reaction of “cracking” gas molecules into the building blocks of plastic – will consume vast quantities of ethane pumped from wells across Pennsylvania into an enormous furnace. The superheated gas is then cooled, forming solid pellets about the size of grains of Arborio rice. The process takes about 20 hours.
In Mercer’s view, this is a positive development for the environment. Creating more plastic, she says, helps reduce carbon emissions by creating lighter and more efficient cars and aeroplanes. “You have plastic in wind turbines. You have plastic in solar panels.”
She added: “The ability to do those renewable things relies to some extent on the plastics we produce and the chemicals that we produce. I don’t see a contradiction. I see it as part of a journey.”
Shell is involved in a broad industry effort to clean up the world’s largest sources of plastic waste. And in Beaver County, Shell recently donated money to extend the hours of the local recycling centre and it supports other initiatives that the company believes will contribute to a “circular economy.”
But a circular economy has not yet taken hold in Beaver. Like many areas around the country, the county has had to limit the type of plastic packaging it can accept for recycling because relatively few buyers want to repurpose it. “We are looking for long-term solutions right now,” a spokeswoman for the recycling centre said.
’Where You Want to Be’
It was a golden autumn afternoon in Pittsburgh, sunny and mild. The Steelers American football team were in town playing at Heinz Field and Gov. Tom Corbett got two box-seat tickets to the game. The governor’s guest at the game in October 2012 was a Shell executive, who was helping to decide where the company would locate its giant cracker plant. Corbett took the executive down to the field to meet some of the players. Then the governor walked him out to midfield to stand on the Steelers’ yellow and black logo.
“I told him, ‘This is where you want to be,’” Corbett recalled. Shell agreed, and was offered a tax break that was projected to save the company an estimated $1.6 billion. Corbett, a Republican, said the plastics plant would bolster communities in an area devastated by the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s, when the unemployment rate hit 28 per cent. “Did you know there is a Steelers bar in Rome?” Corbett asked in a phone interview. “The reason the Steelers travel so well is because when steel died many people moved away.” Corbett said he believed the Shell plant was only the beginning of the state’s plastics boom. He envisions manufacturers coming to Beaver County to be closer to the source of the raw plastic. His successor, Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has been courting more petrochemical development.
“We are rebuilding the economy,” said Corbett, who left office in 2015 after one term.
The cracker plant itself is allowed by the state to emit 2.2 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, which is the equivalent of about 480,000 cars. Shell says the plant is likely to emit less than that. “Will you eventually see everything renewable? Probably in 100 years,” Corbett said. “But right now natural gas is giving a future to your grandchildren.”
’What Is Life Going to Be Like’
Around Beaver County, the cracker plant is creating opportunities for some and deep concerns for others. At the local union hall of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Larry Nelson oversees about 380 electricians working on the plant, including many who have relocated from 28 states. After decades of decline, union membership is growing again.
“The guys are tickled pink to be working on this thing,” Nelson said. But there will be only about 600 permanent jobs at the plant, about 12 per cent of the construction workers at the site now. A company spokesman said the plant was expected to open “in the early 2020s.” Some residents say their worries about the cracker plant and fracking over the long term are already coming to bear. The effect of climate change, for example, can be seen around Beaver County, and at the plastics plant in particular. This spring, the huge furnace that will heat the ethane was being shipped on the MississippiRiver, but had difficulty fitting under some bridges because the water was so high from flooding. At the construction site, Shell has installed giant tarps to keep the workers dry in the frequent rain, which hit a record last year in Pittsburgh.
Some residents see other signs of trouble.
Amanda Miller never paid much attention to the cracker plant rising 16 miles from her home in Franklin Park, an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. What made her speak out at a municipal meeting in January was a proposal by a fracking company to drill under a local park with hiking trails and playing fields.
“That was going too far,” said Miller, an occupational therapist at a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh. The company’s proposal was rebuffed. But it has leases on private land in the area that is rich in ethane. The morning after the meeting, Miller woke up early to feed her 14-month-old daughter. Her other three children were still asleep. They had just celebrated her husband’s grandmother’s 99th birthday. In that quiet moment, alone with her daughter, Miller thought of the plastics plant and the fracking that was increasing around her. “That’s when it hit me,” she said. “I looked at her and wondered what is life going to be like when she is 99. And for the first time I wasn’t hopeful. I actually started to cry.”
– The New York Times News Service
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