By John Donovan
Shell, previously known as Forthdeal Limited, subsequently as Royal Dutch Shell plc, and now hiding in plain sight as Shell plc after ditching the disgraced Royal Dutch moniker, has left behind many revealing paper trails. Some are formal legal documents. Some are internal emails. Some are panicked corporate briefings. And some are almost comically revealing exchanges with third parties who wandered into the Donovan-Shell battlefield by accident.
One such document is a September–October 2010 email chain between someone at Shell and an unknown third party. The Donovans were not copied in. We were not consulted. We were not even aware the discussion was taking place.
Yet there we were, being discussed.
And in the middle of that private correspondence, Shell used a word of extraordinary seriousness.
Blackmail.
The unknown third party appears to have contacted Shell after stumbling across the Donovan-Shell dispute online. According to the email chain, the individual said they had “no connections” to either Shell or the Donovans, and had simply fallen into the saga during an insomnia-fuelled online search. The person remarked that the dispute had consumed significant resources and suggested that, if they were in Shell’s position, they would offer the Donovans £250,000 to “leave the world of Shell behind them.” The same email noted that www.royaldutchshellplc.com ranked sixth on Google. (shellnews.net)
That was not a demand from the Donovans. It was not a proposal made by us. It was not even a conversation we knew existed.
It was an unsolicited suggestion from a third party to Shell.
Shell’s response was nevertheless explosive. Rather than simply reject the suggestion, someone at Shell replied that the proposal amounted, inadvertently, to Shell being asked to “respond to blackmail.” The Shell email also referred to “ethical considerations” and asked what Shell would do if it happened again. (shellnews.net)
This is where the correspondence becomes far more serious than a throwaway email exchange.
Shell was not merely refusing a third party’s idea. It was characterising the Donovan position, to an outsider, as blackmail. That is a grave allegation. It implies criminality or at least deeply improper conduct. It suggests that publication of information about Shell — information Shell did not want publicly discussed — was being treated inside Shell not as journalism, commentary, shareholder activism, whistleblowing, litigation history, or public-interest publishing, but as a form of coercion.
The third party immediately pushed back. They said they could not see how the matter could be construed that way, pointing out that the Donovans had already published information and would continue to do so. The person clarified that what they had in mind was a legal agreement under which the Donovans would transfer ownership of their websites to Shell and agree not to publish further material in return for money. (shellnews.net)
In other words, even the unknown third party — who was not acting for us, not connected to us, and not apparently hostile to Shell — understood the obvious distinction Shell had blurred.
Blackmail is one thing.
A proposed settlement agreement is another.
Shell knew that distinction perfectly well. It had, after all, entered into legal settlements with us before. It had negotiated with us. It had litigated against us. It had used lawyers. It had signed documents. It knew the difference between a threat and a settlement. It knew that parties in bitter disputes sometimes agree terms, payments, undertakings, confidentiality provisions, or transfers of rights.
Yet in this secret exchange, the word “blackmail” appeared.
Shell’s later reply to the third party was also telling. The Shell correspondent said the conflict with the Donovans went back many years and added that they did not wish to explain why the suggested arrangement would not work “with these individuals.” (shellnews.net)
That phrase speaks volumes. “These individuals.” Not publishers. Not shareholders. Not former litigants. Not the owners of websites containing a vast archive of Shell-related material. Just “these individuals.”
The exchange is not merely interesting because of the insult. It is important because it fits a wider pattern.
Years earlier, Shell had already been accused by us of breaching the so-called peace settlement by making derogatory comments to another third party company. Alfred Donovan wrote to Shell legal director Richard Wiseman in November 2002 stating that Shell had acted “in breach of the terms of the peace settlement” by sending a letter to a third party company containing derogatory comments about John Donovan. (shellnews.net)
That earlier third party was Injini Limited.
The 2002 correspondence is highly relevant because it is the bridge between the peace treaty and the later 2010 “blackmail” email. In the earlier dispute, John Donovan stated that the third party company was not a party to the Deed of Compromise and that Shell’s comments to that outside company breached clause 4 of the Deed. He also stated that Shell’s conduct put it in repudiatory breach of the Deed of Compromise dated 5 July 1999 and that he therefore terminated the agreement. (shellnews.net)
The 2010 correspondence therefore did not arise in a vacuum. By then, from the Donovan perspective, Shell had already shattered the supposed peace treaty by giving damaging information to a third party. That earlier breach is what matters.
Had the peace treaty still been intact in 2010, Shell’s private description of the Donovans’ conduct as blackmail to an unknown third party would itself have raised an obvious question: was Shell again making derogatory allegations about us to outsiders, behind our backs, while sheltering behind a settlement agreement?
But the deeper point is this: Shell could only accuse the Donovans of breaching the peace if Shell itself had clean hands. The documents suggest otherwise.
The irony is spectacular. Shell’s own internal and external correspondence helped create the public record it apparently found so troublesome. Instead of resolving the underlying issues transparently, Shell generated more documents, more revelations, more paper trails, and more reasons for the Donovan archive to keep expanding.
The unknown third party seems to have grasped the absurdity. After Shell declined to go into the details, the outsider replied that if the matter were that simple, it would have been resolved many years earlier. (shellnews.net)
Exactly.
If this was really just a nuisance website, why had it not been resolved?
If this was really just fantasy, why did Shell spend years monitoring, discussing, briefing, and worrying about it?
If the Donovan archive was simply irrelevant, why was Shell privately exchanging emails about Google rankings, website ownership, and how to stop further publication?
And if Shell genuinely believed it was dealing with blackmail, why did it not report the alleged blackmail to the authorities?
The answer is obvious. The word was not a legal conclusion. It was corporate venting. It was Shell’s internal mentality leaking into writing: the belief that embarrassing publication about Shell was not accountability, but an attack; not evidence, but leverage; not a family website, but a threat.
That mentality has haunted Shell for decades.
This is the same broad dispute in which Shell’s conduct has produced litigation, settlements, domain-name battles, internal emails, shareholder embarrassment, press coverage, and a growing documentary archive that artificial intelligence systems can now read, summarise, compare, and preserve at scale.
The 2010 email chain is therefore not a minor curiosity. It is a small but revealing specimen from the Shell panic inbox.
An outsider suggested buying peace.
Shell heard blackmail.
The Donovans knew nothing about the exchange.
And years later, the document sits in the archive as yet another example of Shell saying one thing in public while privately treating a long-running reputational disaster as something to be contained, neutralised, or explained away.
The problem for Shell is that the archive did not disappear.
It grew.
Site wide disclaimer also applies.
*This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment, the Shell DPA Files, "Shell and the Spies", the Shell Leaks files, as well as books written and published by John Donovan - Kindle eBooks. Timeline of the Donovan Shell Feud. Toxic History of Royal Dutch Shell Group. Shell and the Donovans: The Full Media Record — 550+ Articles, 110 Books, 40 Years. *All created and supported by internet wizz, Nick Gill.
