Using His Intelligence: Gene Sticco, Shell, and the Politics of Information

When a former nuclear security specialist tells the tabloids which parts of Britain you might not want to be standing in during World War Three, the headlines almost write themselves.

Plymouth. Barrow-in-Furness. Telford.

“WW3 WARNING.” “EXPERT TELLS BRITS TO GET OUT NOW.”

Hidden underneath that noise is a much more interesting story – one about Shell, intelligence work, and John Donovan’s long-running campaign to prise open what the company prefers to keep buried.

At the centre of it sits Gene Sticco – he’s doing exactly what you’d expect of someone who’s spent a career in security and intelligence: using his intelligence.

Donovan, Shell, and the missing piece

 

To understand why Gene matters, you have to start with John Donovan and his website, RoyalDutchShellPlc.com.

For nearly two decades, Donovan has been:

• publishing leaked Shell documents,

• tracking Shell’s global misadventures – from Nigeria to Sakhalin,

• and fighting the company in court and in the court of public opinion.

 

Along the way, he has repeatedly shown that Shell uses:

• private security and intelligence networks to monitor critics and activists,

• ex-spooks and corporate “security affairs” units that look suspiciously like cut-down intelligence services,

• and a steady flow of internal briefings to anticipate reputational threats – including Donovan himself.

 

What Donovan hasn’t had until now is a long, detailed, first-person narrative from inside that machine: someone who actually lived in the grey zone between oil company, intelligence agencies and organised crime, and was willing to talk about it.

That, in effect, is what Gene’s memoir UNCONVENTIONAL promises to be – and Donovan has been quick to give it a prominent platform and a warm review.

For Donovan, this isn’t just another book. It’s corroboration: an insider voice describing, in his own words, the ecosystem Donovan has been alleging for years.

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Who Gene Sticco is in the Shell story

 

Gene isn’t a rent-a-quote pundit plucked from nowhere. His CV sits right where Shell and Donovan’s worlds collide.

• First, he served in the US Air Force Security Forces, with responsibilities around nuclear protection and national security. That’s where he learned the logic of targets, bases, and what gets hit first when things go very wrong.

• Then he moved into corporate security and spent around 15 years inside Shell’s security apparatus, including as Deputy Head of Corporate Affairs Security (CAS) – the unit that handled high-risk environments, sensitive intelligence, and the murkier parts of keeping a global oil major “safe”.

 

CAS is the bit of Shell that usually only appears in leaked org charts and lawsuits. Donovan has been writing about it for years, often with the company insisting that everything is perfectly normal and above board.

Now one of CAS’s senior operators has written a book saying, in effect:

yes, the world looks a lot like Donovan says it does –

and here’s what it felt like from my desk.

No wonder Donovan is treating UNCONVENTIONAL like a significant event. From his perspective, Gene is not “just” a former nuclear specialist; he’s the insider witness Shell never wanted him to have.

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The WW3 headlines – and why they’re convenient, not sinister

 

Into this steps the British tabloid press, doing what it does best.

A journalist rings up Gene and asks a question along the lines of:

“If NATO and Russia stumbled into a real shooting war, where would be hit first in the UK?”

Gene, being Gene, answers like a professional:

• You think about NATO and US-linked facilities.

• You look at naval bases, submarine yards, and key logistics hubs.

• In Britain, that puts places like Plymouth (Devonport), Barrow (submarines) and Telford/Donnington (MoD logistics) on any serious target map.

 

This is not hysteria. It’s targeting logic 101. It is the same logic Shell’s strategists use when they map out “critical infrastructure” for a pipeline or LNG terminal – just pointing the telescope the other way.

The tabloids take that analysis and wrap it in the usual “WW3 SHOCK WARNING” costume. That’s their business model.

At the same time, the articles mention something else:

Gene has a new memoir out, detailing his years in the world of oil, security and intelligence.

Is the timing deliberate? Of course it is.

But here’s the key point: this is not a con. It’s exactly what a smart intelligence professional does in civilian life:

• Use a moment of public anxiety (Russia, NATO, nuclear risk) to inject some real expertise into the conversation.

• Accept that the press will sensationalise the delivery vehicle.

• Use the resulting attention to direct readers toward a book that explains the deeper system – Shell included – that sits behind all of this.

 

From Donovan’s vantage point, that’s almost poetic. The same media ecosystem that has cheerfully recycled Shell press releases for years is now unwittingly amplifying the launch of a book that lifts the lid on Shell’s private intelligence culture.

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Sakhalin-2: Donovan’s favourite cautionary tale

 

If there is a single project that crystallises Donovan’s view of Shell’s entanglement with state power, it is Sakhalin-2.

He has covered it relentlessly:

• Shell’s original flagship LNG project in Russia’s Far East.

• The creeping regulatory pressure and environmental complaints that just happened to intensify once the project was nearly built.

• The 2006 “deal” under which Shell surrendered control to Gazprom, keeping a minority stake while the Kremlin reclaimed strategic control.

• The eventual post-Ukraine endgame: Putin’s 2022 decree transferring the project to a new Russian entity and the effective seizure of foreign stakes, with Shell forced to walk away and book heavy losses.

 

From Donovan’s perspective, Sakhalin-2 is not just a business story. It is a case study in hybrid leverage: energy assets, law, regulators, and information used as tools of state pressure.

The fact that one of Shell’s former senior security figures – someone who worked in precisely this world of pressure, allies, and opaque relationships – is now writing candidly about the broader system is exactly the kind of thing Donovan has been predicting for years.

The WW3 headlines, in that light, are almost a sideshow. The real story is that:

• a man from inside Shell’s security/intelligence orbit is

• using his nuclear-security credentials to get column inches, so that

• he can talk about the oil–intelligence–crime triangle Donovan has been trying to expose since the last century.

 

No wonder Donovan is enthusiastic.

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Information as a weapon – and as a remedy

 

If Shell has taught the world anything, it is that information is a weapon.

Over the years we’ve seen:

• covert monitoring of critics and campaigners,

• carefully curated internal narratives about pipeline projects and pollution,

• and extensive behind-the-scenes liaison with governments and security services in places where oil money buys influence.

 

Gene’s book – at least as Donovan presents it – is that world explained by someone who was paid to make it work.

Which brings us back to those WW3 stories.

You can read them as clickbait.

You can read them as clever book PR.

Or, more usefully, you can read them as a small example of information tradecraft in the open:

• A practitioner of security and intelligence uses a topical threat (Russia, nukes) to get his voice heard.

• The press adds exclamation marks and doomsday fonts.

• Inside the noise is a clear invitation:

  If you want to understand why these facilities exist, how they are chosen, and how states and companies use them for leverage – read the long version.

 

From a Shell/Donovan perspective, that is the real significance. For once, the flow of information isn’t just from Shell to the outside world via polished comms. It’s also from the inside of Shell’s security culture to the outside world, via a memoir Donovan is only too happy to promote.

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Using his intelligence

 

So how should we think about Gene Sticco’s sudden appearance in British nuclear-war clickbait?

Not as a scare-merchant.

Not as a cynical huckster.

But as:

• a former nuclear protection specialist,

• a long-time player in Shell’s security and intelligence apparatus,

• and now an author, doing what good intelligence officers do in peacetime:

 

using his intelligence.

He’s using it to explain, in simple terms, where the real targets are.

He’s using it to make sure his book launch pierces the static.

And, knowingly or not, he’s helping John Donovan finally point to an insider voice that says:

“Yes. This is what the world looked like from inside Shell.”

For a company that has spent decades trying to control the narrative, that is perhaps the most interesting blast wave of all

 

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