Posts under ‘BBC News’

Shell to cut up to 9,000 jobs as oil demand slumps

30 Sept 2020

Royal Dutch Shell has said it plans to cut 7,000 to 9,000 jobs as it responds to challenges including the slump in oil demand amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The oil giant said the cuts would be implemented by 2022 and included 1,500 people who were taking voluntary redundancy.

It gave no indication of where the job losses would happen.

The move comes five months after it cut its dividend for the first time since World War Two.

Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said the job cuts were “the right thing to do for the future of the company” as it strives to become a net-zero emissions energy business. read more

Radio 1 DJ Greg James was paid £100,000 by oil giant Shell to front an online campaign which plugged the company’s ‘green’ credentials.

The Breakfast Show presenter, who is paid £229,999 a year by the BBC, is the latest star to be accused of cashing in on their public profiles by moonlighting for corporate firms.

The 34-year-old, who broadcasts to around 5.6 million listeners each Monday to Thursday, fronted a five-part series for Shell called The Great Travel Hack.

The Top Gear-style programme followed two teams of competitors racing from London to Istanbul while using environmentally friendly vehicles. read more

“Governments and corporations like Shell all agree that my children are facing a catastrophic climate and ecological collapse yet are doing next to nothing to prevent this.”

16 Jan 2020

Extinction Rebellion protesters have ended a blockade at the entrances to Shell’s Aberdeen headquarters.

Activists arrived at the Altens base at about 06:30 and remained at the site until 19:30 in a bid to “hold Shell to account”.

The group said the protest was part of its two-week long campaign targeting the fossil fuel industry.

Shell said it was addressing its emissions and helping customers to reduce theirs.

And industry body Oil and Gas UK (OGUK) said climate change would not be solved by “stunts”. read more

16 Jan 2020

Extinction Rebellion protesters have blocked the entrances to Shell’s Aberdeen headquarters.

Activists arrived at the Altens base at about 06:30 and plan to remain at the site all day “to hold Shell to account”.

The group says the protest is part of its two-week long campaign targeting the fossil fuel industry.

Shell said it was addressing its emissions and helping customers to reduce theirs.

The protesters plan to walk through Aberdeen city centre, starting at the railway station at 13:00 then going via Union St and the harbour.

The group also has its purple boat at the site. read more

By Lora Jones BBC News: 10 Jan 2020

When Clare Crisp received an email from her energy provider, Shell Energy last November, she was shocked and confused.

Her direct debit had been nearly doubled from £72 to £130 per month, despite her account previously being £148 in credit.

“I looked at my bills and thought: what on earth has gone on?” she says.

Eventually, she worked out what the energy firm had done. It had gone back five-and-a-half years, cancelled her previous electricity bills and re-billed her with higher amounts, adding up to an extra cost of £512. read more

06 Jan 2020

Seven people have been arrested after environmental activists took part in an “extended occupation” of a drilling rig in Dundee harbour.

Three female protesters from Extinction Rebellion Scotland climbed onto Valaris’s Ensco 122 from the River Tay.

They climbed halfway up one of the legs of the rig to try to prevent it leaving.

The women came down about five hours later due to deteriorating weather conditions.

Police said seven people had been arrested in total. read more

The UK and US considered a navy-backed oil embargo against Nigeria, following the 1995 execution of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, a document released by the UK government reveals.

Saro-Wiwa and eight other campaigners from the Ogoni ethnic group were hanged on 10 November 1995.

They had been found guilty by a secret military tribunal of the murder of four Ogoni chiefs by a mob.

The nine denied the charge and said they had been framed.

Saro-Wiwa led mass protests against oil pollution in Nigeria’s Ogoniland.

The protests were seen as a major threat to Nigeria’s military ruler at the time, Gen Sani Abacha, and Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell.

• Fishermen at risk amidst the oil

• Militants cripple Nigeria’s oil sector

The executions led to Nigeria suspension from the Commonwealth. read more

Energy giant Shell has won a court order preventing environmentalists from boarding unmanned North Sea installations.

Lawyers acting for the company went to the Court of Session in Edinburgh seeking an interim interdict against Greenpeace.

It comes after protesters boarded platforms in the Brent field off Shetland in October.

Lady Carmichael ruled the activists had no right to enter the installations.

• Shell launches Greenpeace North Sea legal action
• Greenpeace ends occupation of oil platform

Greenpeace had claimed an order would breach its right to protest, and described the ruling as a “setback” – but said a possible appeal would be considered. read more

9 Nov 2019

A raft of measures have been put in place to reduce the amount of ethane Shell is being forced to flare while the Mossmorran plant in Fife is shut.

Shell has been left with a surplus of ethane since its customer Exxonmobil temporarily closed the plant in August.

Now Shell said it had switched from powering its furnaces with propane to using ethane and reduced the amount of North Sea gas it receives.

Residents said they had not noticed much change in flaring.

However, Shell said it had managed to reduce flaring of ethane “significantly” as a result of the new measures, which also include adding ethane into household’s supply of methane. read more

The Archbishop of York has called for urgent action to stop the oil spills that are devastating communities in Nigeria’s Bayelsa state.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC ahead of the interim report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission, which he chairs, the archbishop said that a slow environmental genocide is taking place.

Bayelsa is the region where oil was first discovered in the country in the 1950s. There are hundreds of oil spills each year in Nigeria, some caused by equipment failure – others by sabotage. read more

Article from Tempo newspaper Nigeria above, published 2 Jan 1996, page 2, under the headline:

“Ken Saro-Wiwa: A Playwright And Revolutionary, But A Man With Trading Instinct “.

Originally published by The Daily Telegraph: 13 November 1995. A valuable first-hand account by a BBC producer and correspondent, Janet Anderson.

Ken Saro-Wiwa: A Playwright And Revolutionary, But A Man With Trading Instinct

I first met Ken Saro-Wiwa in London, when he was producing plays and arts programmes about Africa for BBC World Service. Ken was an occasional visitor to the office, a short man, often curled up-on a chair with a big smile, his ever-present pipe and his twinkling eyes. I got a good sense of the steel beneath the chat when I hired him to judge a short story competition. He was a tough bargainer, a seasoned negotiator, particularly when it came to money. The original Nigerian trader showed through.  read more

The National Theatre is to end funding from oil giant Shell after declaring a climate emergency.

4 Oct 2019

Shell was one of 19 companies holding a corporate gold membership, meaning it contributed between £15,000-£30,000 per year to the London theatre.

“The scale of the change required means we are already scrutinising every part of the way we operate,” the venue said.

The move comes days after the Royal Shakespeare Company ended its partnership with BP.

Shell’s current contribution to the National is on a smaller scale than the BP deal, which subsidised £5 tickets for young people to visit the RSC. read more

Shell has been forced to burn off “significant” volumes of ethane it cannot sell to a firm temporarily shut down over flaring issues in Fife.

Residents living near the Mossmorran site thought flaring would be reduced after Exxonmobil was closed in August.

However, ground flares have continued to burn because Shell’s only ethane customer is Exxonmobil, which shares the site.

Shell said it was “actively exploring alternative ethane outlets”.

Shell’s Fife Natural Gas Liquids plant separates natural gas liquids into ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline for storage and onward distribution. read more

Almost 1,400 complaints over chemical plant’s flaring

A Fife chemical plant must be shut down if its operators cannot come up with a plan to make it as low carbon as possible, a Green MSP has said.

Mark Ruskell said he could not see how the Mossmorran site was “compatible with the climate change emergency”.

Operator Shell said the plant was vital to the UK’s energy supply.

ExxonMobil, which also operates a plant at the site, said it had spent £10bn on developing lower-emission energy solutions since 2000.

Mr Ruskell, the Scottish Greens environment and climate spokesman, said Mossmorran needed to be either shut down or a clear investment plan to make it as low carbon as possible published. read more

27 April 2019

Two senior employees of the oil company Shell have been kidnapped and their police escorts killed in Nigeria’s restive Delta region, police said.

The attack took place as the workers were returning from a business trip on Thursday on a road in Rivers state.

Gunmen killed the guards, one of whom was driving the vehicle, and seized the two workers, officials said.

A police spokesman said efforts were under way to rescue the Shell employees.

Their names and nationalities have not been released. read more

Former Shell CEO Peter Voser is an unlucky man. He had the incredible misfortune to be in charge of the bad guys at both corporate giants, Shell and UBS Bank simultaneously, while presumably being personally innocent of any criminal acts? What are the chances of that happening? The question of managerial negligence, twice-over, must surely be another matter?

By John Donovan

Printed below is an article published yesterday by BBC News reporting that the “Swiss banking giant UBS has been fined €3.7bn (£3.2bn; $4.2bn) in a French tax fraud case.”

The article goes on to say that “Following similar cases in the US in 2009 and Germany in 2014, the bank accepted large fines.”

During the period of criminal activity the then Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell Plc – Peter Voser – was paid millions of Swiss francs in his role as a director of UBS AG. He was also a member of the governance and nominating committee and of the strategy committee. read more