UPDATED 1st SEPT 2026
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a living documentary index and remains under construction. It brings together direct correspondence between the Donovans and Shell, Shell internal communications, correspondence involving lawyers acting for Shell, and relevant evidential emails. Thousands of pages of archival material, including the extensive ShellNews.net collection and the Sakhalin-2 files, remain under review. Further dated documents will be added as they are identified and verified. Inclusion records what a document says or alleges; it does not necessarily establish the truth of every allegation contained within it.
Standing invitation to Shell: corrections and contrary evidence
Shell Plc, its current or former officers, employees, advisers and lawyers are invited to identify any factual error in this documentary chronology or elsewhere in the Donovan/Shell archive.
Where an error is established, it will be corrected or removed as appropriate. Where the issue is genuinely disputed, Shell’s position will be recorded alongside the relevant evidence wherever practicable.
We particularly welcome original contemporaneous documents that contradict, qualify or provide additional context to material published here.
A tombstone for “Royal Dutch Shell plc,” a suited figure still digging with a shovel labeled “legal strategy,” a ghost hovering over a browser window still showing royaldutchshellplc.com, and a signpost pointing the wrong way toward shell.com — twenty-one years of self-inflicted excavation, illustrated.
ChatGPT’s Editorial Observations on Gemini’s Conversation with John Donovan
How one corporate rebrand, one lost legal battle, and one stubborn website turned into a twenty-year public relations migraine.
ENDS
The name Royal Dutch Shell Plc appears multiple times on each webpage within the background graphics and on each article published, as shown above. It appears many more times on the current version of the website.
As can also be seen, at the date of publication High Court proceedings were under way involving Dr John Huong, the Shell production geologist who blew the whistle on the reserves scandal. Eight companies within the Royal Dutch Shell Group jointly sued him for defamation in respect of allegations we published on our website. We managed to torpedo Shell’s case and Shell was forced to settle the litigation. His name also came up in the WIPO proceedings directly below in which Shell tried to seize our domain names including royaldutchshellplc.com, an action which Shell lost.
Text of the featured letter:
THE PETROLEUM RECORD · SATIRICAL EDITION
Reply by Google AI Mode to the prompt dated 27 May 2026 below: 
