News and information on Shell Plc
Profile of John Donovan extracted from Amazon where his Shell focussed books have been sold for many years despite threats from Shell lawyers.
In 1979, John Donovan was the co-founder of a sales promotion company, Don Marketing, which created promotional games for blue chip clients such as BP.
Introduction: A Troubling Cross-Era Review Shell Cannot IgnoreThe revised analysis obtained from Microsoft Copilot — now published in full below — brings into sharp relief a theme that should be deeply concerning to both the Shell board of directors and Shell shareholders: the persistence of governance and control weaknesses across decades, technologies, and regulatory systems.
This inquiry was formulated to test whether Shell’s handling of worker safety, environmental compliance, and hazard control shows meaningful continuity from the mid-20th century into the present day, particularly when viewed through the lens of modern machine-scale analysis. The response incorporates:
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.
In the corridors of global energy, Shell presents itself as a monolithic symbol of industrial prowess, dividend reliability and transition ambition. Investors like BlackRock, Inc. and The Vanguard Group, Inc. hold sizeable stakes. Yet behind the investor-slides and glossy sustainability pledges lies a series of historical shadows: offshore disasters, legacy pollution, human-rights litigation and repeated admissions of safety underperformance. This article takes a tour through select episodes—chronologically arranged—of how Shell has, in many instances, placed lives and safety on the back burner. While satire underpins the tone, the facts are stubbornly real.
Shell CEO Wael Sawan has finally shown his hand: the company’s main contribution to the energy industry for the next decade will be liquefied natural gas (LNG). Not wind. Not solar. Not storage. LNG. The same fossil fuel dressed up as a climate saviour.
At the Economic Club of New York, Sawan declared:
“We are absolutely committed to this sector.”
He argued LNG is “one of the most effective fuels” for lowering emissions because it can displace coal in Asia, citing India and China. (Reuters)
On July 12, the Shell-operated Shearwater platform, 140 miles off Aberdeen, sprang a leak of liquid nitrogen. The leak damaged the underside of the deck, sending debris crashing onto a walkway below. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) later confirmed the falling material had the potential to cause a “fatal injury.”
Shell was served an improvement notice on August 4, with the HSE citing six separate breaches of health and safety law, including failures to protect workers from risks tied to “loss of containment events.” The notice must be complied with by September 9.
Let’s talk about Shell’s Prelude FLNG, a.k.a. the biggest corporate midlife-crisis purchase ever parked on the ocean. Shell didn’t just build a platform; they launched a 488-meter-long, 74-meter-wide, 600,000-tonne floating factory that maritime media straight-faced called “the largest offshore structure ever built”—and, yes, “it displaces six times as much water as the largest aircraft carrier.”
Anchored some 475 km (295 miles) off Australia, Prelude was moored with 16 giant chains to a 93-meter turret—“secured to the seabed by mooring lines”—so the behemoth could spin with cyclones and still keep pumping. Very metal. Very expensive. And very on-brand for a company that thinks the solution to climate and cost risk is… more steel.
Shell, that noble torchbearer of fossil-fuelled “progress,” is once again in the headlines—not for saving the planet (don’t be silly), but for the hotly whispered prospect of gobbling up BP, its longtime frenemy in pollution, profit, and public-relations gymnastics.
Because when you’ve already left a wake of ecological destruction, human rights abuses, and accounting scandals, what’s one more body on the pile?
Let’s start with the obvious: Shell isn’t just an oil company. It’s a cautionary tale in human and corporate depravity. This is the firm that:
Let’s give a warm, fiery round of applause to Shell plc—the undisputed heavyweight champion of corporate facepalms. This week’s episode in the long-running series What the Actual Fuck, Shell? features the oil Goliath filing amended financial reports in the US, after its beloved auditor EY—yes, the Ernst & Young you know and regret—forgot the actual rules of auditing.
Apparently, the lead audit partner overstayed their welcome on Shell’s books, breaking SEC rotation rules two years in a row. But don’t worry! No financials were changed. Which is great, because if there’s one thing more reliable than Shell’s gas leaks, it’s their ability to break the rules without breaking a sweat.
When Shell CEO Wael Sawan responded to speculation about a mega-merger with BP, he said the bar for acquisitions was “very high.” Clearly, it’s not nearly as high as Shell’s tolerance for greenhouse gas emissions, human rights controversies, or sheer corporate arrogance.
Now, as rumours swirl about Shell swallowing up its once-proud British cousin, BP, we are once again reminded that in Big Oil, consolidation is just a polite word for “expanding your emissions footprint while doubling your marketing budget.”
Prelude FLNG itself has been a spectacularly unreliable disaster, shutting down multiple times due to safety and operational failures. Shell. The shining beacon of corporate responsibility. The ethical North Star of the energy sector. The company that never—ever—puts profit over people, the planet, or basic decency. And now, thanks to the ever-accommodating Australian government, this benevolent titan has been given the go-ahead to unleash yet another offshore gas project. Because if there’s one thing the world desperately needs in 2025, it’s more fossil fuel infrastructure!
Shell Australia—the local arm of the UK-based money-printing empire—has been handed the regulatory stamp of approval by none other than the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA). This means Shell can now plow ahead with its “Crux” development (oh, the irony), a massive offshore natural gas project in the northern Browse Basin, 190 kilometers off the northwest Australian coast. Given that Shell’s track record on environmental stewardship is as spotless as an oil-soaked pelican, what could possibly go wrong?
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.
Posted by John Donovan: 9 July 2024
In the latest chapter of “Shell’s Ever-Expanding Environmental Impact,” John Wood Group PLC has snagged a massive engineering contract for Shell’s Prelude Floating Liquified Natural Gas (FLNG) facility in Western Australia. Because clearly, the world’s largest floating offshore gas facility is exactly what we need right now.
Brownfield Engineering Extravaganza:
This shiny new contract has Wood providing brownfield engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCm) solutions for Prelude. In other words, they’ll be making sure this gigantic floating gas factory operates smoothly while Shell continues its legacy of prioritizing profits over the planet.
Posted by John Donovan 9 Sept 2023
The links below are to a series of articles stretching back a decade, some triggered by a well-placed whistleblower directly involved in the Prelude project. Includes articles by Mr Bill Campbell, the former distinguished HSE Group Auditor of Shell International (now sadly deceased). A good loyal friend, and regular long-term contributor to this website, who I never actually met.
ARTICLE: Royal Dutch Shell Prelude to disaster?: 10 Jan 2014
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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