Posts under ‘RoyalDutchShellPlc.com’

EXTRACT FROM SCOTTISH SUN ARTICLE PUBLISHED 15 SEPT 2020

ALMOST 700,000 people have lost their jobs since the start of the pandemic, official figures reveal.

There are now 2.7million Brits claiming unemployment benefits — a leap of 120 per cent since March, when lockdown began.

The latest jobless total, announced yesterday by the Office for National Statistics, means the unemployment rate is at 4.1 per cent, up from 3.9 per cent previously.

And with five million workers still on furlough, experts are warning of more devastating losses when the scheme comes to an end next month. read more

Nigeria: ENI Kicks As Govt Demands U.S.$1.1 Billion Advance From Shell, Italian Giant in OPL 245 Case

By Ejiofor Alike

The Nigerian government yesterday asked a court in Milan, Italy, to order Royal Dutch Shell and Eni to pay the sum of $1.092 billion as an immediate advance payment for damages in the Malabu oil scandal, one of the oil industry’s biggest-ever corruption scandals.During the hearing of the corruption allegation linked to the acquisition of the Oil Prospecting Lease (OPL) 245 offshore field, lawyer to the federal government, asked for advance payment ahead of a more comprehensive damages package to be decided by the court at a later date. read more

BP to sell London HQ amid office shake-up

Oil giant to leave historic home as work patterns shift

BP is planning to quit its historic international headquarters in central London as the energy giant cuts 10,000 jobs and scales back its office space.

The FTSE 100 group, which employs 6,500 office staff in the UK — in the capital and in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey — plans to rent back the building from the new owner for up to two years before leaving for good.

BP is the latest big employer to signal a permanent change in the way its staff work. Chief executive Bernard Looney has said it will move to a more “hybrid work style”, including a mixture of home and office working. read more

Featured below are extracts from negative customer reviews about Shell Energy posted during the last several days on Trustpilot.  Visit the Shell Energy page on Trustpilot to view all reviews in their entirety, positive and negative (and Shell Energy responses). Watch out for any fake reviews. Note the reoccurring themes in the negative reviews, including difficulty in communicating with the company. This article posted on 22 August 2020.

Utterly diabolical customer service

Utterly diabolical customer service. Please avoid at all costs – they are cheap for a reason.

I’ve repeatedly spent hours on the phone to customer service trying to resolve poor internet speed and non-existent customer support. I’ve been charged for engineer call outs when the issue was not fixed and remained open on their systems for a further 3 weeks. I’ve been promised call backs which don’t occur. No accountability on their behalf, no authorisation in customer service to make any decisions or provide any help. read more

 by Allister Thomas: 30/07/2020, 7:55 am Updated: 30/07/2020, 8:26 am

Shell has posted losses of $18.1billion (£14bn) for the second quarter of 2020 as oil, LNG and gas prices remain depressed.

The energy major took an impairment charge of $16.8billion (£12.9bn) – $22.3bn pre-tax (£17.2bn) -as it wrote down the valuation of assets due to the downturn and Covid-19.

Shell’s second quarter results compare to a profit of $3.1bn (£2.39bn) in the same period last year,  while revenues have dropped to $32.5bn, compared to $60bn in Q1 2020 and $90.5bn Q2 2019. read more

Translation of an article published overnight by the Dutch media organisation nrc.nl

High prison sentences demanded against former Shell employees

Lawsuit In a criminal case for alleged corruption by Shell and Eni when purchasing a Nigerian oil field, the Public Prosecution Service demands high penalties.

Merijn Rengers and Carola Houtekamer: July 21, 2020 at 22:22

The Italian Public Prosecution Service demanded unprecedented high prison sentences in Milan on Tuesday against four former Shell directors and employees for large-scale corruption. The prosecution charges it to a former member of the board of directors, a director and two advisers who participated in bribery in Nigeria. The amount of the kickback, more than $ 1 billion, makes this one of the largest corruption affairs a Dutch company has ever been involved in. read more

Translation of an article published overnight by the Dutch news media organisation, nrc.nl

Of course, Shell knew about the corruption risk, the prosecutor said

Lawsuit over oil field In a dim Milanese bunker, Tuesday was worked towards the denouement in the corruption case against oil companies Shell and Eni. Prosecutor Fabio De Pasquale calls it “the perfect economic crime.”

Carola Houtekamer: July 21, 2020

The lawsuit revolves around the acquisition of rights to the oil field “OPL 245”, for which Shell and Eni paid $ 1.3 billion. Photo George Osodi / Getty read more

Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and International Shipping: Extracts from above headlined article published in Oil & Companies News 13/07/2020

The global oil and gas industry has crashed. In mid-June, BP – formerly British Petroleum – slashed the value of its assets by US$17.5bn and revealed plans to cut its workforce by 15%. It forecast the price of oil would be a third lower than expected for decades to come and said it may be forced to leave new fossil fuel discoveries in the ground. read more

Oil and gas companies are hurtling toward bankruptcy, raising fears that wells will be left leaking planet-warming pollutants, with cleanup cost left to taxpayers.

Extracts from an article by Hiroko Tabuchi: July 12, 2020

Oil and gas companies in the United States are hurtling toward bankruptcy at a pace not seen in years, driven under by a global price war and a pandemic that has slashed demand. And in the wake of this economic carnage is a potential environmental disaster — unprofitable wells that will be abandoned or left untended, even as they continue leaking planet-warming pollutants, and a costly bill for taxpayers to clean it all up. read more

Bogus Group: Geert Vermeulen (Ethics & Compliance Officer) posted an article on Linkedin about the Shell OPL 45 debacle and all that surrounds it. This was a response to the article by Adam Bennett:

Geert, very easy to pass judgments without knowing full facts and in hindsight. Having previously led the business integrity department at Shell I can tell you things in Nigeria are never that clear cut. One thing I remain certain of is the moral compass of shells leadership.

Can’t be the same moral compass most of us are certain of. read more

English translation of an article published today by the FD

Commentator: Shell leaving would be an ‘eternal’ sin, but no disaster

Shell is considering moving its headquarters from The Hague to London. It should come as no surprise. The fact that it is seriously considering this step was already written in the stars when the promised abolition of dividend tax would not go ahead.

The energy giant is a British company, but has its headquarters in The Hague. This construction was chosen on the assumption that the dividend tax would be abolished. When that fell through after public pressure, Shell had to look for other constructions to solve the perceived complexity of the dual structure. read more

English translation of an article published today by the FD.

“I don’t want to survive this pandemic with a company that is no longer capable of anything”

Bert van Dijk

The corona crisis is forcing Shell to restructure the company. At the same time, CEO Ben van Beurden must chart the course for a low-carbon future. What choices does he make and why can’t things go a bit faster? “We cannot organize ourselves anti-economically. We don’t have that mandate.”

Ceo Ben van Beurden leads Shell from home during the corona crisis. ‘The good thing about this period is that you can help with homework.’ Photo: David van Dam for FD

In brief

• Shell CEO Ben van Beurden has to guide the oil and gas multinational through various storms.
• In a long conversation with the FD, he explains why he couldn’t help but decrease the dividend.
• He also outlines the dilemma of developing new revenue models, while the old revenue model cannot be immediately discarded.

Last week, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden reduced the value of Shell’s assets by nearly $ 20 billion last week. The massive write-off is necessary because the corona pandemic has hit the global demand for oil and gas heavily and uncertainty about the future has increased. read more

02 JULY 2020

Sergio Spadaro, the Italian deputy prosecutor, on Thursday told a Milan court prosecuting Shell and Eni over the OPL 245/Malabu affair that all parties involved in the deal were corrupt.

He said President Goodluck Jonathan, who led Nigeria from 2010 to 2015, Dan Etete, who allocated OPL 245 to Malabu Oil and Gas — a company in which he had interest as minister of petroleum — in 1998 and Diezani Alison-Madueke, who was minister of petroleum when the oil block was sold to Shell and Eni by Malabu in 2011, all had long-standing relationships. read more

Reuters: Reporting by Matthew Green in London, Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Emma Farge in Geneva; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa Shumaker: JULY 3, 2020

LONDON/WASHINGTON/GENEVA (Reuters) – Climate change may be having its day in court.

With the slow pace of international climate negotiations, lawyers from Switzerland to San Francisco are increasingly filing lawsuits demanding action.

And they are getting creative — using new legal arguments to challenge companies and governments before a judge. read more

Published date: 03 July 2020

Australia bore the brunt of Shell’s $22bn impairment charge this week, with the write-down reflecting its expansion into unconventional gas and pioneering floating LNG (FLNG) technology with the 3.6mn t/yr Prelude venture.

Shell said it will write down the value of its Australian gas assets by between $8bn-9bn, with up to 40pc of its asset impairment from Australia.

Along with Prelude, the other Australian asset to see its value cut was Shell’s upstream coal bed-methane (CBM) gas fields that provide feedstock for the 8.5mn t/yr Queensland Curtis LNG (QCLNG), which it bought through the £47bn ($58.6bn) purchase of UK energy firm BG Group in 2015. read more

Reuters: 2 July 2020

MILAN (Reuters) – Oil majors Eni <ENI.MI> and Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L> were aware that most of the money they spent to buy a Nigerian oilfield in 2011 would go in corrupt payments to politicians and officials, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

“They were kickbacks. And Eni and Shell knew it,” Sergio Spadaro told judges in Milan, summing up the prosecutors’ case in what is one of the industry’s largest corruption scandals ever.

Italy’s Eni and Shell, who deny any wrongdoing, bought the OPL 245 offshore field in 2011 for about $1.3 billion from Malabu, a company owned by former Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete. read more