Swiss police found the documents in a briefcase they seized in April 2016 in an inquiry unrelated to the corruption case, and the source said Milan prosecutors believed the documents could be vital to their prosecution of Eni and Shell. But Italy’s request for the documents to be handed over has been blocked by Swiss courts after repeated legal challenges by the owner of the briefcase, Nigerian lawyer Emeka Obi, who was charged alongside Eni and Shell executives in the graft case.
By Reuters
MILAN (Reuters) – Italian prosecutors have complained to Switzerland about lengthy delays in obtaining evidence they have requested in an international corruption case involving oil firms Shell and Eni, a source familiar with the matter said.
Milan prosecutors wrote in April to the Geneva prosecutors’ office in a previously undisclosed letter, describing their three-year wait for documents to be handed over by Swiss authorities as “unprecedented”, the source said.read more
Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent: Thu 20 Jun 2019 07.00 BST
The UK’s largest energy companies have withheld support for a legally binding target to reduce the EU’s emissions to net zero by 2050, even while publicly backing the plans. Although BP and Shell have both voiced public support for the Paris commitments, neither backed the EU’s plans for a net zero carbon target by 2050 in their response to an official consultation. The companies’ decision to withhold support for the target has reignited criticism that major polluters are “greenwashing”…read more
The Shell Brent Bravo Platform and Allseas’ Pioneering Spirit vessel featured in this article both have a controversial history. Workers died in an avoidable accident on Brent Bravo after Shell management ignored the dire warnings and revelations of a “Touch F*** All” safety culture findings arising from a safety audit. Pioneering Spirit was originally named after a Nazi SS Officer, Pieter Schelte, the father of the owner of Allseas.
Allseas: The vessel Pioneering Spirit removes the 25,000-ton Bravo platform from the Brent field in the UK North Sea.
Allseas’ Pioneering Spirit has completed its second platform topsides removal in the North Sea in the last week, as the heavy lift and pipelay vessel removed the 25,000-ton Brent Bravo topsides. Allseas said in a statement that the operation took approximately four hours, from positioning the vessel around the platform to the moment of the lift.
The Brent field started production in 1976. At its peak in 1982, the four platforms in the field were producing more than 500,000 BOPD. The field has produced approximately 3 billion boe since 1976. Shell announced its plans to decommission parts of the field in 2015.read more
Robert Finn, the Shell Director who was a vitally important functionary of the Nazi WW2 economy
Finn worked for Shell’s Nazi-infested German subsidiary Rhenania Ossag in the years before WW2. More significantly, during WW2, Finn directed the vitally important German lubricants supply. After WW2 Finn returned to Shell as a director of a Shell chemical company in Hamburg. Shell was apparently happy to reward him with a promotion.
By John Donovan
A spotlight was shone on the Nazi past of the German Robert Finn after a Hamburg Sports Club Hall was to be named in his honour. Finn was a former chairman of the sports club.
Following a renovation of the hall in 2006, a major re-inauguration ceremony in honour of Finn was organised – with numerous prominent guests from sports and politics (who were informed about Finn’s role in the Nazi war economy) with his sons as guests of honour.
There was also controversy about clubhouse design elements, including symbols of the Nazi regime, such as swastikas, to be on open public display.read more
Its employees — there are 180,000 around the world — have reported that customers accuse them of “working for Nazis.” There have been boycott threats…
By John Donovan
A New York Times article published on 14 June 2019 reveals that billionaire descendants of a family who control a company which owns Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Pret A Manger and a number of other famous brands are grappling with the exposure of an unspeakable secret – a Nazi history.
Extracts:
Decades after World War II, Benckiser evolved into one of the largest consumer goods conglomerates on the planet. Known today as JAB Holding Company…
For decades, they say, they did not know about their father’s Nazism and the abuses that took place at the company they inherited:read more
European oil giants, including Royal Dutch Shell and OMV, have signed cooperation deals with Russian energy companies during the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, despite risks of potential new western sanctions.
Since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions, Russian oil firms have operated with limited access to western financing and limits on production technology.
Multinational oil firms have wound down cooperation that could be in breach of sanctions but work on conventional hydrocarbons projects continues to grow. Deals signed this week included Shell, Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of the state-run gas giant, and Spain’s Repsol agreeing to jointly develop fossil-fuel projects in the melting Russian Arctic.read more
Leslie Hook, environment and clean energy correspondent
Taken together, these lawsuits amount to a legal onslaught that climate activists hope will have a profound financial impact on oil and gas producers, by imposing huge penalties.
Most lawsuits name the biggest producers — such as Exxon, BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron — as defendants, though the number of companies named ranges from five to 37.
Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden speaks at a full year results conference in London on January 31, 2019. – Royal Dutch Shell today said that net profit surged 80 percent to $23.4 billion in 2018, thanks to higher oil prices and cost: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Ellen R. Wald:Senior Contributor:
In 2004, a mania grew in the financial and energy circles around the idea of peak oil. The notion that the world was running out of oil became a commonly held belief, which, in turn, helped push oil prices well above $100 per barrel.
Fifteen years later, peak oil is still talked about by some, but most industry insiders pay it no heed. Instead, over the last few years, the increasingly popular concept has been peak demand. Peak demand is the idea that the demand for oil will reach an apex and then start to decrease, especially as government regulations require more use of alternative energies and as battery-powered machines, like electric vehicles, will presumably become more popular.
Peak demand may or may come to pass—that is not the concern here. What we do know is that if the peak demand idea continues to gain popularity it will lead to a shortage of oil in the coming years and decades. The idea of peak demand threatens the global oil supply because it incentivizes and even excuses oil companies to stop exploring for and producing (E&P) more oil.read more
A Lagos Division of the Federal High Court on Thursday adjourned until June 19, hearing in a debt recovery suit filed by the federal government against Shell Western Supply & Trading Ltd, over an alleged $406.7 million shortfall in crude oil shipment.
The suit numbered FHC/L/CS/336/16 was filed by FG’s counsel, Fabian Ajogwu, a professor and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
It has as defendants, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd and its subsidiary, Shell Western Supply & Trading Ltd.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
Greenwashed rhetoric is such a staple of the oil industry that it’s easy to assume every energy executive talking about climate and the transition to a zero-carbon economy is just mouthing words.
Barely a year after BP Plc Chief Executive Officer John Browne promised “action and solutions” on climate change in a 1997 speech, he led the then-biggest oil takeover in history with the acquisition of Amoco Corp. On his retirement a decade later, after years of rebranding about moving “beyond petroleum,” he left a base of oil and gas reserves more than twice the size of the one he inherited.read more
About 100,000 barrels of crude are being taken daily: SBM
Oil-theft is now an industry employing thousands in Nigeria
Just as Nigeria gets to grips with militants who brought the nation’s oil industry to its knees a few years ago, another group of longstanding foes are slowly making a comeback: thieves.
Saboteurs including thieves caused an 80% increase in the number of spills in 2018, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the largest international producer in the West African country, said in a report last month. By contrast, there have been no militant-related halts to operations since 2016.read more
Royal Dutch Shell PLC RDSB expects to return $125 billion or more to shareholders from 2021 to 2025 via dividends and buybacks, the Anglo-Dutch company said Tuesday.
The integrated energy giant raised its guidance for organic free cash flow in 2025 to $35 billion at an oil price of $60 a barrel.
Shell said the expected shareholder returns are an increase on the period ending in 2020, where shareholder returns are anticipated at around $90 billion.
The company said it expects to raise its dividend when it is closer to completing the current $25 billion share-buyback program. Shell maintained its quarterly dividend in the first quarter of the year at 47 cents a share.read more
The Anglo-Dutch energy major has, like its peers, spent the last few years cutting costs as it recovered from the 2014 oil price crash. It has also sought to cut debt after its $53bn deal for BG Group in 2016. Shell, in strategy update on Tuesday, said it planned to invest $30bn per year between 2021-25, up from a prior range of $25—30bn.
The market greeted the oil major’s latest update with a sceptical shrug
Shell CEO Ben van Beurden’s attempt to power up the company’s share price with a much-ballyhooed strategic update didn’t do much to energise the markets.
The oil giant held out the prospect of a gusher of money for investors between 2021 and 2025, promising to return $125bn (£99bn) in dividends and share buybacks, more than double the number of a decade earlier. It also increased its capital investment estimate a bit, to an average of $30bn in the five years to 2025.
A neat looking trick the company says it can pull off with oil at $60 a barrel, with cash expected to flow freely from new projects. But the shares still fell in response.read more
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 2021-2025read more
Bogus Group: In 2015 this prospect was given a production life of "at least 10 years"Did Shell expect such an early exit, or was this another BG Group recoverable miscalculation?https://www.upstreamonline.com/hardcopy/1805800/shell-to-pull-plug-at-knarr
uscitizen: Shell, the world’s second-largest listed oil and gas company after Exxon, cut costs heavily following its 2016 acquisition of BG Group for $53 billion and the 2014 oil crash.
Despite a slow and bumpy recovery in oil prices, it reported the largest profit among its peers last year and a jump in revenue from previous years.
Shell said its free cash flow - cash available for dividends and share buybacks - was set to rise to around $35 billion per year by 2025 based on a Brent crude oil price of $60 per barrel.
That compares with $28-33 billion in free cash flow it expects to deliver by the end of next year. Brent is currently trading just under $61 per barrel.
Shell, the world’s biggest dividend payer at $16 billion in 2018, expects to increase its dividend payouts to shareholders once it completes the $25 billion share buyback by the end of 2020 that it promised following the BG acquisition.
Shell last increased its quarterly dividend in the first quarter of 2014 to $0.47 per share.
uscitizen: All of the folks bashing Shell for the BG merger, I think we can now say this has been a very good financial move. Shell has overtaken Exxon and Integrated Gas is a big reason why. I am sure there are examples where some good people got pushed out, and I hate to hear that. However, lets not pull the wool over folks eyes and say this business decision was not sound.
Bonus Group: Further to yesterday's post.
Sound Energy plc
("Sound Energy" or the "Company")
Director/PDMR Shareholding
Sound Energy, the Moroccan focused upstream gas company, announces that it has been notified that Brian Mitchener, Executive Director, has today purchased 150,000 ordinary shares in the Company ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 12.04 pence per Ordinary Share. As a result of this purchase, Mr Mitchener is interested in 150,000 Ordinary Shares, representing 0.0142% of the Company's issued ordinary share capital.
Bonus Group: UnSound Energy?
Readers may wonder why the darling of the AIM Market is now preparing itself for a sale of its Eastern Morocco acreage.
Perhaps, the answer may be found in the Annual Report 2018 available to download as a .PDF from the Sound Energy Website:
Page 49
Loss of Office and Change of Control Provisions
In the event of a change of control of the Company, the CEO, CFO and Exploration Director have the option to give notice and receive a lump sum equivalent to 18 months’ salary for the CEO, 12 months’ salary for the CFO and 8 months’ salary for the Exploration Director.All of the Company’s current share plans contain provisions relating to a change of control.
On a change of control, outstanding awards would normally vest and become exercisable, subject to the satisfaction of any performance conditions at that time.
Page 50
Summary Of Actual Remuneration (including Benefits in Kind and Performance Awards) Of Directors
Executive Directors
James Parsons £995,000
Brian Mitchener £323,000 (RSU Awards No. of Shares 862,682, Granted 26.04.18 Settlement date 01.01.21)
JJ Traynor £168,000 (RSU Awards No. of Shares 961,194, Granted 26.04.18 Settlement Date 01.01.21)
It should be remembered that Brian Mitchener is of the failed BG Group stable. It would seem that Bonus Group habits are hard to let g0!
Bogus Group: I concur with Bonus Group recollection of the tin pot, lacklustre, parvenu outfit. There was no place in BG Group for experienced professionals if they didn’t possess the sycophant tendencies required to stoke the egos of those deluded by corporate grandeur.
Large remuneration packages were not uncommon then too, the chief executive received circa £13mm (published) in bonuses throughout his 12 year tenure. During that period there were 26 fatalities, roughly £500k for each. That was more than distasteful.
Bonus Group: Today is the anniversary date of the agreement on terms of the takeover of BG Group (a tin pot, lacklustre, parvenu outfit) by Royal Dutch Shell plc in 2015. In consequence of BG Group's consistent failures to meet targets and the engineered predatory takeover by Royal Dutch Shell plc the careers and professional lives of many experienced Geoscientists and Engineers were brutally butchered, terminated, and cast aside like so much offal, so it is rather distasteful to see the size of Ben van Beurden's remuneration package being flaunted in the press by Royal Dutch Shell plc.
CEP Problems: It seems to be impossible right now to get any chance of landing a job inside Shell these days. Everytime people apply for jobs unless they have high potential or a diversity point they get rejections. I got told recently that the hiring manager was looking for someone with high potential. Don't these people realise that they also need QUALIFIED people to actually do the work. Ridiculous but it almost getting to age discrimination these days. Rant over.
Shell Canada Insider: SHELL CANADA
...they are wanting to sell their Alberta operations..... because there is no money left in it...they have syphoned it all off.....
I think also on 2010-2011 they had multiple explosions at their Caroline facility supposedly an employee during an explosion at the south compressor station had to be airlifted to hospital and was seriously injured.
The aer/ govt shut it down. it was closed for 6 months and half of the plant was decommissioned when it restarted.
That must have cost them millions of dollars.....there should be government records of this stuff....
The description of the fairleads causing the mooring ropes to chafe to such an extent is almost so ridiculous to render ex-seafarer speechless. The fitting of nylon liners inside the fairleads is something new for me but the idea behind it would may be to reduce the friction of the mooring lines when running through the fairlead thus reduce any temperature potential in a zone 2 area. Fixing one potential risk appears to have created another one of greater risk potential. I am not sure how the nylon liners in the fairleads would have such sharp edges to chafe the mooring lines on their own and perhaps there may have been something else to which the journalist has missed out. The reported leakage of LNG in the manifold area from a flange should not have happened but the liquid transfer areas are all bunded in low-temperature materials and provided with a constant supply of running water during cargo handling activities. Power outages during start-up operations and ongoing are nothing new and others can be expected, hopefully not very often as the restart of such a complicated process system takes a long time and much effort. The problem with firewater deluge over the LNG storage tanks reported is of considerable concern but the journalist does not mention if this was during the period when systems were being tested prior to the introduction of LNG or after. If before then this section of the report is just journalistic license and of no consequence whatsoever. The other issues as reported can be considered minor during the preparation phase before the introduction of hydrocarbons in any form but definitely of concern if these incidents were after the introduction of hydrocarbons. I wish the people who are experiencing the startup of such a complicated and complex plant every success. Take the time that is needed to be successful by being safe, good luck.
John Donovan: Irish Backstop Update
According to a Sunday Times article two days ago, "Ireland continues to dodge difficult questions about how it will protect the single market and also maintain an open border under a no-deal."
IRELAND has been warned it faces the difficult choice between implementing a hard border or being forced out of the EU’s single market in an unprecedented move to protect the bloc from a no-deal Brexit.
Dublin will be forced to make the tough choice if Britain quits the EU without a deal, according to a number of senior EU figures.
The European Commission sparked fury from Ireland after declaring Dublin would have to implement a hard border in the event of a no-deal Brexit. After significant protests from, which involved a heated debate between Leo Varadkar and Jean-Claude Juncker, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, suggested “operational solutions” would have to be found in order to prevent a hardening of the border.
But now high-ranking MEPs have hardened their position, insisting the single market must not be compromised even to maintain peace on the island of Ireland.
Elmar Brok, a German MEP with close ties to Angela Merkel, insisted that if Ireland failed to police its own borders the EU would have to take its own protectionist action.
“We would have to set up a customs border with Ireland,” the German said.
He also warned that if Brussels didn’t make the demands then "we will soon have American chlorine chicken in the EU".
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OPL 245 CORRUPTION SCANDAL: LATEST NEWS
$1.3bn Malabu Oil Scandal: Italy Protests Swiss Delay in Releasing Evidence against Shell, Eni 22 Jun 2019 04:10 This Day Chika Amanze-Nwachuku with agency report
Italian prosecutors have expressed dissatisfaction about lengthy delays in obtaining evidence they have requested from Switzerland in the criminal charges against Royal Dutch Shell and Italy’s Eni with regard to …
FG names Shell, Eni executives in $1bn bribery case – The Punch 08 May 2019 11:43 Google ’Femi Asu with agency report
Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Eni SpA face additional corruption allegations over a Nigerian oil deal, after the Federal Government said in a London lawsuit that it believed a handful of executives, including Chief Executive …
FG files fresh charges against Shell executives, JPMorgan over Malabu Oil scandal 08 May 2019 10:01 Herald Sequel to the lawsuit filed last year against Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Eni and JP Morgan for being involved in a $1bn oil block bribery case, the Federal Government has submitted new case documents that indict their top executives.
FG said in the court files …
FG names Shell, Eni executives in $1bn bribery case 08 May 2019 08:09 Punch Newspapers ’Femi Asu with agency report
Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Eni SpA face additional corruption allegations over a Nigerian oil deal, after the Federal Government said in a London lawsuit that it believed a handful of executives, including Chief Executive …
Dutch Prosecutors to Arraign Shell over $1.3 billion Acquisition of OPL 245 02 Mar 2019 10:19 Biz Watch Nigeria Dutch Prosecutors to Arraign Shell over $1.3 billion Acquisition of OPL 245
Dutch prosecutors are preparing criminal charges against Royal Dutch Shell over its $1.3 billion acquisition of Nigerian offshore oilfield OPL 245 in 2011.
Shell said in a …
John Donovan’s ebooks
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Swiss police found the documents in a briefcase they seized in April 2016 in an inquiry unrelated to the corruption case, and the source said Milan prosecutors believed the documents could be vital to their prosecution of Eni and Shell. But Italy’s request for the documents to be handed over has been blocked by Swiss courts after repeated legal challenges by the owner of the briefcase, Nigerian lawyer Emeka Obi, who was charged alongside Eni and Shell executives in the graft case.
Jillian Ambrose
Allseas’ Pioneering Spirit has completed its second platform topsides removal in the North Sea in the last week, as the heavy lift and pipelay vessel removed the 25,000-ton Brent Bravo topsides. Allseas said in a statement that the operation took approximately four hours, from positioning the vessel around the platform to the moment of the lift.
By John Donovan
Its employees — there are 180,000 around the world — have reported that customers accuse them of “working for Nazis.” There have been 
Leslie Hook
By David Fickling | Bloomberg: June 5 at 7:03 AM
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