Royal Dutch Shell founders meetings with Hitler, strong antiSemitic views and financial support for the Nazis

Featured extracts from “A History of Royal Dutch Shell Volume 1” – all printed in italics

(From page 07/478)

Confirmation of Sir Henri Deterding’s claim that he met Hitler

Nazism and the New Order in Germany were congenial to Deterding’s authoritarian being and his fervent anti-communism; he does not appear to have understood its political or indeed social ramifications. Deterding now began to take a greater interest in the Group’s German affairs, normally Kessler’s remit. This brought him into contact with the new regime’s leaders. He cautiously welcomed Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in January 1933, but two months later he sought an audience with Hitler, presumably to present a proposal for sponsoring a series of radio lectures on the evils of communism, to celebrate the coming to power of such a vociferous anti-communist. He was rebuffed, but in November Deterding claimed to have met Hitler the other day. read more

“We know that Shell had its own surveillance operation and that these operatives had received training from Nigeria’s Internal Security Agency, which itself was directly responsible for a number of human rights violations, such as arbitrary killings, rape, destruction of property, burning of homes — not just crimes under international law or human rights violations, but also crimes under domestic law.”

kwbu 103.3FM Heart of Texas Public Radio: Living on Earth: July 05, 2019 · 11:00 AM EDT: Writer Adam Wernick: This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI’s Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.

Esther Kiobel (centre) and Victoria Bera (right) with their lawyer Channa Samkalden for the verdict at the court in The Hague. Photo: Bart Hoogveld for the FD (the Dutch Financial Times)

This May, Esther Kiobel came one step closer to justice in her battle against the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company. read more

The government decided to cut production after residents blamed hydraulic fracturing for damage to buildings in the area. It was decided earlier to schedule the field’s closing for 2030 while progressively reducing production, after a 3.4 magnitude earthquake occurred near the field last year. The field is operated by Nam, a joint venture established by oil supermajors Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil.

July 5, 2019

Dutch advisory body Council of State’s Administrative Jurisdiction Division (Adj) Wednesday requested from the government further explanation for the closing of a major onshore field, Kallanish Energy learns.

The Groningen field is the largest in Europe. The government decided to cut production after residents blamed hydraulic fracturing for damage to buildings in the area.

It was decided earlier to schedule the field’s closing for 2030 while progressively reducing production, after a 3.4 magnitude earthquake occurred near the field last year. read more

Jul 6th 2019

When Ben van Beurden was a boy in the Netherlands, one of his chores was to fill the coal scuttle. It was a hateful task—especially in the cold weather when he had to traipse out to a shed in the back garden. “I can still feel the wet, freezing cold creeping up my legs,” he told a Dutch audience last year. He hated the coal furnace because he had to wash himself next to it. He hated the washcloth because it did not stay hot for long enough. But it gave him a cold, hard lesson in the importance of energy. Mr van Beurden, boss of Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s second-biggest publicly traded oil company, is not the first well-paid executive to dwell on the hardships of his youth. But his story is poignant because of what came next. In the 1960s the vast Groningen field in the Netherlands brought natural gas to the country for the first time. The coal scuttle and cold washcloth gave way to a hot shower—and progress for his whole family. READ MORE read more

Eneco Group operates more than 2,000 MW of renewable energy and serves over two million customers in The Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.

According to insiders, Dutch-British Shell, in collaboration with Dutch pension investor PGGM (healthcare and welfare sector), offers a great opportunity to win the takeover battle. With its New Energies division, Shell has set aside billions to invest in green energy.

Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch FT, Financieele Dagblad.

Shell, Mitsubishi, Macquarie and KKR continue in Eneco auction

Gijs den Brinker

Four parties are in the battle for energy company Eneco. This is a consortium of oil and gas company Shell and pension investor PGGM, the Japanese company Mitsubishi, the Australian infrastructure investor Macquarie and the American investor KKR.

Multiple sources say that to the FD. KKR is a surprising name in the playing field. Never before was it known that the American investment company was making a shot at the energy company that advertised itself as green.

Eneco is currently owned by 44 municipalities, including Rotterdam and The Hague, but is for sale. Candidate buyers were able to express their interest until the end of May. The sale goes through a so-called controlled auction. At the end of last week, the company, together with representatives of the shareholders, decided which parties could continue to the next round. read more

JUNE 17, 2019 / 2:17 PM

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A Dutch court on Monday ordered Royal Dutch Shell to pay a 2.5 million euro ($2.8 million) fine for failing to prevent an explosion at its Moerdijk facility in 2014 and for breaching emissions limits at the plant.

The district court in Den Bosch said Shell had not done enough to prevent an incident on June 3, 2014 which resulted in a series of explosions and a large fire at the Moerdijk chemical plant.

“The factory, employees, the surroundings and the environment were subject to great danger that day”, the court said. “This justifies a significant punishment.” read more

Printed below is a translation of an article published this weekend by the Dutch broadcaster NRC. It is about the Shell internal communications and documents relating to the OPL 245 Nigerian oil deal corruption case seized during a raid carried out by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) at Shell HQ in the Hague in 2016. In a controversial move, Shell lawyers are resorting to legal machinations to frustrate the progress of the Dutch proceedings. On this occasion by claiming legal privilege and secrecy over the seized evidence. Criminal proceedings relating to the same massively corrupt oil deal are moving forward quickly in Italy (but at a snail’s pace in the Netherlands, Shell’s home country). A related tapped telephone conversation involving Shell CEO Ben van Beurden when he ordered that no documents should be volunteered to the investigators carrying out the raid can be heard here. Undisputably, another Shell cover-up tactic. So much for Shell’s claimed business principles from a company that seems to employ more MI6 people than MI6. Listen to the taped call. 

Dutch corruption case against Shell is, according to lawyers, inevitably delayed

Professional secrecy

Call for OM to simplify procedures related to non-disclosure law encounters astonishment among lawyers and scientists

By our editors Carola Houtekamer and Merijn Rengers: Amsterdam.

Shell and the Public Prosecution Service were honest about it on Thursday. Yes, they clash over the internal Shell documents that were seized by the FIOD investigation service at the head office in The Hague during the beginning of 2016. They deal with the corruption case involving OPL245, a mega-oil field off the coast of Nigeria. read more

It appears, according to court documents, at the request of ‘Royal Dutch Shell plc’ and four suspected former Shell employees who are mentioned by name and by name in the Italian summons. These are two former British secret agents, hired by Shell as oil men whose main task was to make the inscrutable Nigerian policy more transparent. And two senior Shell managers: former board member Malcolm Brinded and former Africa director Peter Robinson. The foursome is said to have been closely involved in preparing the bribes payments…: “He is a former head of the British secret service MI6, but really no more than a junior employee at Shell in Nigeria.

…in the Netherlands, the FIOD invaded the head office in 2016 and a criminal case for corruption seems imminent. 

Translation of an article published today by the Dutch broadcaster NRC Handelsblad.

“By Nigerian standards, this was a great oil deal”

Shell lawsuit: After months of waiting, Shell took the floor on Tuesday in the court case about possible bribery at the unexplored Nigerian oil field OPL245.

By Merijn Rengers, Carola Wood Room, June 4, 2019

Room 7, where the largest corruption case in Dutch company history is fought, is bursting at the seams. It is warm and noisy and the available seats are already set aside early in the morning for at least 25 Italian lawyers, their crowd of assistants and prosecutors. The other listeners – Shell representatives, activists, interested parties – are forced to sit and sit in the back, or cage in two paying cells on either side of the courtroom where normally detained suspects await their verdict. read more

Management Day 2019: Shell, Strongly Positioned for the Future of Energy, Provides Strategy Update and Financial Outlook to 2025

SHELL CEO BEN VAN BEURDEN

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Royal Dutch Shell plc

Jun 04, 2019, 02:12 ET

Shell refreshes strategy for the energy future as it builds on strong foundation

The company is on track to deliver on its 2020 commitments; now increases organic free cash flow outlook to around $35 billion for 2025 at $60 per barrel (real terms, 2016)

Shell’s expected cash delivery creates the potential to distribute $125 billion or more to shareholders (dividends and share buybacks) over the five-year period of 2021-2025 read more

May 29, 2019, 7:59 PM

Senior executives from Netherlands-based Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Koninklijke Philips NV have admitted the tax regimes that allowed them to pay no, or very little, tax are no longer publicly palatable—but they want to work with lawmakers to improve investment appeal.

“If people in this country are unwilling to accept that the outcome of the laws that you have made is that companies like mine don’t pay taxes, then I think you have an obligation” to think about what… read more

“I understand that for many people… being seen to make profits here in the Netherlands and not having any profit to pay tax on can be odd.”

29 MAY 2019: AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC will disclose how much tax it pays in every country in which it operates, an executive told a Dutch parliamentary panel on Wednesday, in a report to be published later this year.

Shell’s vice president for taxation Alan McLean made the promise at a hearing on taxation of multinationals called by parliament after reports emerged last year that Shell does not pay any corporate tax in the Netherlands, despite being headquartered in The Hague.

Ahead of Wednesday’s panel, Shell disclosed that it does not pay Dutch corporate taxes apart from at its NAM gas subsidiary, a joint venture with Exxon.

Worldwide, Shell reported it paid $10 billion (7.92 billion pounds) in corporate tax in 2018 and that it had an effective tax rate of 33 percent.

However, in the relatively small Dutch market it was able to use deductions on loss-making operations elsewhere to reduce its corporate tax bill to zero.

“When there’s a loss there’s no profit tax to be paid, so the arithmetic is simple,” Alan McLean told sceptical lawmakers. read more

May 28, 2019, 10:27 AM ET|About: Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A)| By Carl Surran, SA News Editor

Production at the Groningen natural gas field in the Netherlands needs to be cut faster than planned, Dutch gas sector regulator SodM says after a 3.4 magnitude earthquake hit the region last week.

“From a safety perspective, SodM recommends that not more than 12B cm be extracted from the Groningen gas field in the following gas year in the event of an average winter,” the regulator says. read more

Earlier this month, a Dutch court ruled that it had the jurisdiction and would hear a damages lawsuit against Shell brought by the widows of activists executed by Nigeria’s government after the protests in Ogoniland in the 1990s.

By Tsvetana Paraskova – May 27, 2019, 4:00 PM CDT

The Nigerian unit of Royal Dutch Shell doesn’t have any plans to return to exploring or producing oil in Ogoniland in Nigeria’s Rivers state after it ceased operations there in the 1990s, Igo Weli, General Manager, External Relations, at the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) said this weekend at the release of Shell Nigeria’s 2019 Briefing Notes.

SPDC, as operator of the SPDC Joint Venture, carried out exploration and production operations in Ogoniland from the 1950s until the early 1990s. Production ceased in 1993 following a rise in violence, threats to staff, and attacks on facilities, Shell said. read more

English translation of a Dutch article by…

Shell confirms: no income tax paid in the Netherlands

Shell does not pay income tax in the Netherlands. Earlier reports about this in the media are correct, say Dutch Marjan van Loon and executive vice-president taxation Alan McLean this week in Elsevier Weekblad.

Although Shell Nederland makes an annual profit – in 2016 and 2017 respectively 1 and 1.3 billion euros – the company is on balance loss-making “as a natural consequence of the Dutch tax system,” says McLean in Elsevier Weekblad. He and Van Loon say that Shell “fairly pays taxes in the Netherlands, both in the letter and in the spirit of the law”. read more

NAM is the Shell/Exxon Joint Venture company responsible for the earthquake blighted Groningen Gas Field and consequential potential bill for untold billions to deal with damaged residences.

English translation of an article published 22 May 2019 by De Telegraaf

Major earthquake in Groningen: “Bed quivered, everyone awake”

Updated Yesterday, 9:26 AM
Yesterday, 6:38 AM in the UK

GRONINGEN – The province of Groningen was shocked early on Wednesday morning by an earthquake. This had a power of 3.4, according to the KNMI. According to the meteorological service, the epicentre of the quake was in the village of Westerwijtwerd. That lies as the crow flies about 18 kilometres northeast of the capital Groningen.

The worst earthquake in Groningen so far was in 2012 in Huizinge (in the municipality of Loppersum). It had a power of 3.6. In January an earthquake occurred in the Groningen village of Zeerijp. It also had a power of 3.4. The day after that quake, about a thousand reports of damage arrived. According to the KNMI, this new quake will most likely again cause many damage reports. read more

Questions were raised at the Shell AGM on Tuesday about the earthquakes that occurred last weekend in the Groningen region and about the delays in NAM compensation payments arising from past earthquake damage to Groningen residences. Ben van Beurden apologised for the delays. The following day, a “major” earthquake occurred. See the FD article below. NAM is the Shell/Exxon Joint Venture company responsible for the earthquake blighted Groningen Gas Field and consequential potential bill for untold billions to deal with damaged residences.

Printed below is an English translation of an article published 22 May 2019 by the Dutch FT, Financieele Dagblad.

Wiebes finds one word important in Groningen earthquakes: pace

From our editor: Last update: 10 pm: May 22, 2019

Minister Wiebes of Economic Affairs and Climate sympathizes with the people of Groningen, who are ‘affected again by new damage and are concerned about their safety.’ That is what the VVD minister said on Wednesday during a – previously planned – general consultation on Groningen gas extraction.

“One thing is now important on all fronts: more speed, more pace,” says Wiebes. The minister emphasized in a statement before the start of the debate that the reduction of gas extraction, which reduces the quakes, is ahead of schedule. “But we are looking for more ways to get the extraction down faster.” Opposition politicians are critical. Henk Nijboer (PvdA) states that Wiebes has said ‘nothing new’ and Sandra Beckerman (SP) wants a debate with Prime Minister Rutte to be held. read more