News and information on Shell Plc
By Shell News Article Generator | December 10, 2025
“If Shell’s history were a movie, it’d be banned in most democracies.”
It started with a letter.
It ended with sirens in The Hague.
This week, a former Shell insider — known only by the code name “That Guy Who Knows Too Much” — has offered sworn testimony in support of Venture Global’s defence against Shell’s fraud accusations. But the real headline? He’s not testifying about Venture Global.
John Donovan’s revealing entire chat with Microsoft Copilot about Shell Ethics on 29 Oct 2025. Nothing has been deleted. John Donovan’s questions and instructions are in red text. Using deep research tell me all you can about the Shell critic John Donovan
John Donovan is a long-standing and relentless critic of Royal Dutch Shell, known for exposing internal misconduct and legal battles with the oil giant. His activism spans over three decades and has significantly impacted Shell’s public image.
Here’s a comprehensive look at his background, motivations, and influence:
If you’d like, I can help you explore specific leaked documents, legal cases, or Shell’s responses to Donovan’s claims.
THE WAGES OF SIN: A CHRONICLE OF SHELL’S CASUALTIES AND THE INVESTMENT FUNDS THAT PAY FOR THEMIt is a grand, old-world notion that a corporation can possess a soul, or rather, that the absence of one can be measured by its balance sheet. If that is the case, then Shell is less a corporation and more a meticulously catalogued exhibit in the museum of moral bankruptcy—the ultimate sin stock. Its history is not merely a record of drilling and profit but a chilling, chronological catalogue of calculated risks taken with other people’s lives: its employees, its customers, and the communities unfortunate enough to share a postcode with its extraction sites.
By John Donovan & AI (yes, both of us — and we’re still deciding whose turn it was to fetch the popcorn)
In a world where oil-giants strut in glossy annual reports while the real cost of fossil exploitation remains buried beneath toxic sludge and courtroom delays, enters one woman: Esther Kiobel. Her life, her loss and her relentless pursuit of a corporation turn into the film Esther & the Law: The Case Against Shell. The documentary chronicles her challenge to Shell in the Netherlands — nearly thirty years after the execution of her husband — and by extension, shines a light on how Shell turned into the ultimate “sin stock”.
In the mid-1990s, when the Internet still seemed like a passing fad and oil companies still lectured the world about “responsible energy,” a quiet digital operator answered a newspaper advertisement from John Donovan, the former Shell promotions partner turned corporate adversary.
The ad sought an “Internet whizz.”
What Shell got was something far worse—a digital insurgency that would haunt its reputation for decades.
By 1998, even the Evening Standard took notice: a small website run from Colchester had become a major reputational threat to one of the world’s largest corporations. That website—eventually mirrored as RoyalDutchShellPLC.com and ShellNews.net—would become Shell’s digital nemesis, archiving leaks, lawsuits, and internal documents that chronicled the oil giant’s ethical, environmental, and legal missteps.
Founded 1995 by Christopher James and Mike Reynolds. Known to hire former spies, journalists, insiders.
Revenue figure modest as spy-firms go: millions, but influence? Leverage across government, corporations, utilities, and even religious institutions.
Shell’s relationship with Hakluyt is not “incidental advisory.” Internal sources and whistleblowers (Alfred and John Donovan) collected evidence that Shell directors such as Sir William Purves and Sir Peter Holmes held senior roles in Hakluyt.
This is the story of an oil giant who funded Nazis, tested carcinogens on their own employees, and still have the gall to tell you they care about “net zero.”
Shell’s rap sheet starts early: during WWII, Shell effectively sacrificed its own Dutch employees to maintain ties with Nazi Germany, prioritising profits over human lives. Fast-forward a few decades and the playbook hasn’t changed—they’re still perfectly happy to gamble with lives, only now it’s under the glossy cover of corporate social responsibility.
Nigeria’s president has pardoned the late activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, 30 years after his execution sparked global outrage.
Along with eight other campaigners, Mr Saro-Wiwa was convicted of murder, then hanged in 1995 by the then-military regime.
Many believed the activists were being punished for leading protests against the operations of oil multinationals, particularly Shell, in Nigeria’s Ogoniland. Shell has long denied any involvement in the executions.
Though the pardons have been welcomed, some activists and relatives say they do not go far enough.
In a move that can only be described as heroically tone-deaf, Royal Dutch Shell — the planet’s favourite petrochemical pariah — has decided it simply doesn’t own enough of Nigeria’s oil-drenched legacy. So, with the grace of a vulture buying a bigger piece of a rotting carcass, Shell is snapping up TotalEnergies’ 12.5% stake in Nigeria’s Bonga deep-water oil field for a smooth $510 million.
Because why settle for 55% when you can control 67.5% of an operation steeped in environmental degradation, political manipulation, and the lingering scent of gas flares and grief?
While Shell executives clink glasses and rake in obscene profits behind the comfort of a Heathrow hotel AGM—conveniently sealed off from the unwashed masses by court injunction—just outside, campaigners from Amnesty International UK, Fossil Free London, and the Justice 4 Nigeria coalition were busy staging a protest as sticky and damning as Shell’s conscience ought to be.
The scene? Protesters in flaming Shell-logo suits theatrically spilling “oil” across a giant map of Nigeria’s Niger Delta, while seated activists bore shirts that read like an indictment: “Decades of Oil Spills”, “Polluted Waters”, “Devastated Communities.” A massive red location pin screamed, “It’s Hell in the Niger Delta.” But make no mistake—this wasn’t street theatre. This was truth. Vivid, unignorable, and slick with symbolism.
Wall Street is an invisible partner in Shell’s plunder: happy to enjoy the spoils, deaf to the spoils of war Shell waged on Nigeria’s environmentCue the confetti: Shell is finally packing its bags after 87 years in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. But before anyone applauds, note that the oil giant is slipping out the back door largely to avoid cleaning up the monumental mess it created, all while still clinging to the profitable parts of the business. In a $2.8 billion “exit” deal announced in January, Shell agreed to sell its onshore Nigerian subsidiary to a local consortium called Renaissance. How noble—except Shell isn’t really riding off into the sunset. The company generously decided to loan the buyers $1.2 billion to help them purchase Shell’s assets and will pony up another $1.3 billion to fund future cleanup and gas projects. Why would an exiting company invest further? Perhaps because those projects conveniently benefit Shell’s remaining 25.6% stake in Nigeria’s gas enterprise. In other words, Shell is getting paid to “leave” while secretly keeping a foot in the door and a hand in the cookie jar.
Shell. The ever-benevolent corporate giant tirelessly works to maximize shareholder returns while generously bestowing oil spills upon communities that never asked for them. The latest twist in this decades-long environmental horror show? The Ogale and Bille communities of Nigeria—just 50,000 people whose land, water, and livelihoods have been poisoned by Shell’s operations—are finally getting their day in a UK courtroom. And naturally, Shell is fighting tooth and nail to avoid paying for the devastation it caused.
Shell—the undisputed champion of pollution, corporate greed, and dodging responsibility—is finally being forced to answer for its decades of devastation in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. On February 13, 2025, the High Court in London opened proceedings against the oil giant, as the Bille and Ogale communities fight to hold Shell accountable for the destruction of their land, water, and livelihoods.
The 50,000 people living in these communities have spent years living with Shell’s toxic legacy—hundreds of oil spills from Shell’s pipelines, leaving their water undrinkable, their farmland useless, and their health in ruins. And despite making billions in profits from Nigeria’s oil, Shell has offered nothing in terms of compensation or cleanup. Absolutely nothing.
Shell on Trial: The Oil Giant That Poisoned Nigeria and Cashed InOnce again, Shell—the ultimate sin stock, planetary arsonist, and poster child for corporate greed—finds itself in a UK courtroom, forced to answer for decades of devastation, pollution, and suffering in Nigeria.
On Thursday, as thousands of people sued Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC, over catastrophic oil spills in the Niger Delta, protesters gathered outside London’s High Court to remind the world that Shell’s business model is built on ruining lives, destroying ecosystems, and dodging accountability.
In a plot twist that surprises absolutely no one, a BBC investigation has exposed Shell for what it truly is—a ruthless, polluting oil giant that lies about cleaning up its mess while quietly slipping out the back door with billions in profit.
Let’s start with Shell’s so-called $1 billion oil clean-up in Nigeria—a project that was supposed to remedy the decades of environmental destruction Shell has inflicted on Ogoniland. But according to a whistleblower, the entire operation is a scam designed to fool the public while stuffing politicians’ pockets.
Shell on Trial: The Oil Giant That Polluted Nigeria for Profit Now Faces JusticeWell, well, well—the corporate overlords at Shell are finally being dragged into court for their decades of destruction in the Niger Delta. From February 13 to March 7, 2025, London’s High Court will host a showdown between Shell, the kingpin of oil pollution, and the Ogale and Bille communities, who have spent ten years fighting for their right to drink clean water and not die from corporate negligence.
The communities, home to 80,000 people, have been battling Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary SPDC since 2015, demanding compensation and a proper cleanup after enduring hundreds of oil spills. These spills contaminated water sources, wiped out farmland and fisheries, and exposed residents to severe health risks. But instead of taking responsibility, Shell has spent more time dodging accountability than it has cleaning up its mess.
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
See our link list of over 500 articles by the FT, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, Forbes, Dow Jones Newswires, New York Times, CNBC etc, plus UK House of Commons Select Committee Hansard records, information on U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission website etc. all containing references to our Shell focussed websites, or our website founders Alfred and John Donovan. Includes TV documentary features in English and German, newspaper and magazine articles, radio interviews, newsletters etc. Plus academic papers, Stratfor intelligence reports and UK, U.S. and Australian state/parliamentary publications, also citing our Shell websites. Click on this link to see the entire list, all in date order with a link to an index of over 100 books also containing references to our non-profit websites and/or our activities.
John Donovan, the website owner
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