Posts under ‘President Trump’

Jul. 12, 2018 11:42 AM ET|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor

By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor: 12 July 2018

Dr. Barinem Kiobel was one of the “Ogoni Nine” executed by a despotic Nigerian regime after a rigged trial. His widow, Esther Kiobel, holds Shell responsible for his murder on trumped-up charges and has been seeking justice for the last 22 years.

By John Donovan

Since 1996, various Kiobel family members have been pursuing litigation in the USA relating to Shell’s conduct in Nigeria. This fact is confirmed from the screenshot of listed court cases filed in the USA and blocked by Shell. Only one related application is still open and it is on the way to being closed as a result of a decision by a U.S. Appeals Court yesterday. The remaining case is described by the three Appeal Court judges as “extraordinary, and possibly unique.” read more

By Elena Mazneva and Laurence Arnold: 11 July 2018

A planned natural-gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, is the latest point of friction between U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At a summit meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, Trump said the pipeline risks making Germany “a captive of Russia.” He’s not the first American leader to criticize the pipeline project, and the U.S. isn’t alone in its disapproval. FULL ARTICLE

By Jeremy Hodges, Lauren Leatherby and Kartikay Mehrotra
May 24, 2018

In the global fight against climate change, one tool is proving increasingly popular: litigation. From California to the Philippines, activists, governments and concerned citizens are suing the biggest polluters and national governments over the effects of climate change at a break-neck pace. “The courts are our last, best hope at this moment of irreversible harm to our planet and life on it,” said Julia Olson, an attorney for Our Children’s Trust, a legal challenge center in the U.S. that is involved in climate change litigation across 13 countries, including the U.S., Pakistan and Uganda. Cases by San Francisco and Oakland face a motion to dismiss the lawsuit today in a California federal court, where Chevron Corp., BP Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhilips and Royal Dutch Shell Plc will argue that remedies and penalties for climate change are a matter for lawmakers, not a single judge. read more

By John Donovan 

Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran, which has pushed up the price of oil, thus benefiting Shell and other oil companies, threatens to put billions of dollars worth of trade in jeopardy.

Shell has a record of treacherous conduct involving the Iranian regime, including using subterfuge to disguise shipping movements.

How will Shell react this time in an even more complex situation?

Below are extracts from articles published in the last 24 hours.

Sky News: How business could be hit by Iran deal pull-out read more

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS: MARCH 21, 2018

HOUSTON — In a setback to Trump administration efforts to increase offshore oil production, the industry responded with only modest interest on Wednesday in a federal auction covering a record 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. Companies bid on only 1 percent of the acreage, and the winning bids yielded a mere $125 million for the government. The results reflected broad uncertainty among oil executives that global oil prices can remain at current levels over $60 a barrel, as well as a general preference for drilling in onshore shale fields that require smaller investments and are less risky. FULL ARTICLE read more

Hakluyt & Company and the Clinton/Trump scandals

By John Donovan

Regular visitors to this website will be aware of my frequent references to the sinister London based spy firm Hakluyt & Co and its close connection with its ethically challenged client of more than two decades, Royal Dutch Shell.

Our own dealings with Hakluyt in relation to Shell undercover activity against us was so extraordinary that nothing about Hakluyt and its connections and activities would surprise us any more. read more

FILE PHOTO – Wael Sawan, Executive Vice President for Shell’s deepwater division, poses for a picture before an interview for Reuters during an oil conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Bruno Kelly

Ron Bousso: 7 MARCH 2018

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A potential tariff on U.S. steel imports could affect Royal Dutch Shell’s (RDSa.L) plans to go ahead with a major oil field development in the Gulf of Mexico, a company executive said on Wednesday. Wael Sawan, who heads Shell’s deepwater operations, said President Donald Trump’s intention to slap up to 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminium could materially impact the value of the Vito development off the Louisiana coast, one of a handful of projects Shell is planning to greenlight this year. FULL ARTICLE read more

Profits at Royal Dutch Shell more than doubled in the fourth quarter of last year, despite the group taking a $2bn charge related to President Donald Trump’s US tax reforms. The recovery in oil prices coupled with steep cost cuts after a three-year downturn are fuelling a resurgence in cash flow and profitability at Shell and the world’s other largest oil and gas groups. FULL FT ARTICLE

Ron Bousso: JAN 11, 2018

LONDON (Reuters) – It may prove to be Royal Dutch Shell’s hardest sell. The Anglo-Dutch group is struggling to find a buyer for its gas field off the Gaza Strip, even among energy companies long used to dealing with projects fraught with political and security risks. FULL ARTICLE

…these are also the same waters unsuccessfully explored by Royal Dutch Shell in 2015, after which the company halted Arctic operations for the foreseeable future.

Sam Ori , Contributor: JAN 8, 2018 @ 09:58 AM

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke released the Trump Administration’s long-awaited offshore drilling proposal last week. Once enacted, the plan will replace the existing leasing schedule, which was designed by the previous administration and had been set to run through 2022. New administrations are free to scrap the hold-over plans of prior administrations, and anyone who followed the 2016 presidential campaign knew that President Trump had a dramatically different view of offshore energy development than his predecessor. FULL ARTICLE read more

For Big Oil, the U.S. tax overhaul is turning out to be a mixed bag, especially for companies that drill overseas. Two weeks after President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans passed a sweeping rewrite of the tax code that cuts corporate rates, drillers are finding other changes that are less of a boon. BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc offered a preview recently, saying they may write off as much as $4 billion in tax assets as a result.

Caps on debt-interest payments and cuts to deductions from previous years’ losses may hurt companies building capital-intensive projects with borrowed money. And other provisions, including time limits on expensing exploration, could hem in drillers with long-term projects, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. That may also give an edge to domestic shale production. FULL ARTICLE read more

Ernest Sheyder and Valerie Volcovici

HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed opening up nearly all of America’s offshore waters to oil and gas drilling, but the industry says it is mainly interested in one part of it, now cordoned off by the Pentagon: the eastern Gulf of Mexico. “The eastern Gulf of Mexico could be very attractive to industry because of the proximity to existing infrastructure in the central and western Gulf of Mexico,” the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents the offshore oil and gas industry, said in a statement. FULL ARTICLE read more

Oil exploration in U.S. Arctic waters got underway this week with the spudding of a new oil well from the man-made Spy Island in the Beaufort Sea. Eni began drilling the new well off the north coast of Alaska, becoming the first company to do so since 2015.The well is expected to be over six miles (10 kilometers) long, and the project could result in oil production levels of 20,000 barrels a day. Eni is working with Royal Dutch Shell and plans to drill two exploration wells plus two potential sidetrack wells over the next two years. FULL ARTICLE read more