News and information on Shell Plc
This chat is a companion to our serious article on Brent Charlie and Brent Bravo…
User: Shell has just been fined £560,000 over the Brent Charlie hydrocarbon release. “Potentially catastrophic,” the HSE says. What do you make of that, ShellBot?
ShellBot: From Shell’s point of view?
=&0=&User: Remind me what actually happened on Brent Charlie.
ShellBot: In 2017, on the Brent Charlie platform:
On 28 November 2025, Shell UK was fined £560,000 after a major hydrocarbon release on its Brent Charlie platform – a release the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says created a “potentially catastrophic” fire and explosion risk for the 176 people on board.
The incident itself dates back to 19 May 2017, but the Scottish court’s sentence has only now been handed down. When you read the HSE’s description of what went wrong, it is impossible not to hear the echo of Brent Bravo – the 2003 tragedy in which two men died, and which exposed what former Shell Group Auditor Bill Campbell described as a “Touch F* All”** safety regime.
Shell to the Lifeboats: North Sea Crisis, Corporate Vanishing Act, and the Smell of Crude RegretSo here we are again.
Shell — the oil major that has treated the North Sea like a personal ATM since the 1970s — appears to be preparing a quick, quiet exit, leaving behind ageing infrastructure, decommissioning headaches, and what one might generously call a mess, and less generously call a multi-billion-pound cleanup liability.
According to The Telegraph, Shell is attempting a “hurried withdrawal” from the North Sea just as the political landscape shifts, with pressure mounting over who will pay for decommissioning oil infrastructure left under the waves.
Here’s the latest on Shell plc’s plan to move its listing to New York — with an investigative, critical lens.By John Donovan (with AI collaboration)
21 October 2025
When a corporate behemoth begins to flirt with another stock exchange, the romance is rarely innocent. Shell plc — once Royal Dutch Shell plc, before dropping the “Dutch” as neatly as a discarded partner — is now openly courting Wall Street.
The CEO, Wael Sawan, has been muttering about “value gaps” and “unlocking potential,” code for what London traders hear as: we’re tired of being undervalued in a city that drinks warm beer instead of crude profits.
“A persistent reputational risk.” — Shell internal memo, 2007In the oil-stained annals of corporate history, few duels have burned as long — or as publicly — as that between Royal Dutch Shell and a retired British marketing man named John Donovan.
What began in the 1990s as a routine commercial dispute between Shell and Donovan’s family business, Don Marketing, would metastasize into one of the most sustained reputational headaches any multinational has ever faced.
Three decades later, Donovan’s website — RoyalDutchShellPLC.com — functions like a digital conscience for a company trying to forget its own. It is a trove of Shell’s internal embarrassments: whistleblower leaks, courtroom revelations, safety scandals, and corporate PR hypocrisy, preserved with forensic precision.
“There are two types of corporations: those that fear whistleblowers and those that wish they’d hired one.” — Industry proverb
In the late 1980s, John Donovan was not yet a thorn in Shell’s side. He was one of its trusted collaborators — a marketing innovator whose company, Don Marketing, created hugely successful sales promotions for Shell in the UK and around the globe.
But what began as a partnership ended in betrayal. A bitter dispute over intellectual property, allegedly stolen concepts, and corporate bullying gave birth to a feud that would last decades.
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.
UPDATED 6 Sept 2025
When oil, espionage, and institutional sanctity collide, you get more than corporate intrigue—you get disaster dressed as business. This isn’t a Bond novel. This is Shell—deploying spies, dodging accountability, and leaving death and pollution in its wake. And Amnesty International reminds us: Shell can divest, but it can’t wash away its crimes.
In 2004, a letter Shell critic Alfred Donovan faxed to Hakluyt & Companyco-founder Christopher James (a private intelligence firm founded by MI6 veterans) mysteriously turned up on the desk of a surprised lawyer at the Church of England’s Legal Office.
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.
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.
Ah, Shell. The oil-stained poster child of unhinged corporate greed, environmental catastrophe, and staggering audacity. Alongside its equally charming BFFs ExxonMobil and Chevron, Shell is now losing its ever-loving mind over a radical, totally outlandish proposal: that some of the gas they’re hoarding and shipping offshore might actually be used to keep Australians warm and the lights on.
You know, in Australia. Where the gas comes from.
But don’t worry, Shell’s top brass is here to explain why that’s a very bad idea—for them, obviously.
Because Who Needs Worker Safety When There’s Money to Be Made?The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) has issued Improvement Notice No. 1967, making it painfully clear that Shell has been ignoring serious health risks for years and will likely continue to do so unless forced to take action.
What Did NOPSEMA Find?
Let’s break down the most alarming findings from the regulator’s scathing report:
• Shell Has Known About This for Years
Workers have been reporting strong odours and health symptoms for an extended period, yet Shell has done nothing to fix the issue. Employees have experienced lung and eye irritation, which are classic symptoms of hydrogen sulphide and benzene exposure—but rather than act, Shell management has ignored complaints and let the risks persist.
Shell’s Prelude to Disaster: Workers Exposed to Toxic Gas, Regulator Issues Warning. Because What’s a Little Cancer When There’s Profit to Be Made? In Shell’s world, workers are expendable.In a development that will shock absolutely no one familiar with Shell’s abysmal safety record, the Australian offshore regulator NOPSEMA has issued an improvement notice after workers aboard Shell’s troubled Prelude FLNG facility reported lung and eye problems from exposure to hazardous gas. Yes, the same Prelude facility that has been an over-budget, unreliable, and unsafe floating disaster since day one.
NOPSEMA’s notice calls on Shell to fix the problem (translation: stop poisoning your workers), after yet another hazardous gas leak was reported. But given Shell’s legendary track record of prioritizing profits over human lives, don’t hold your breath—unless, of course, you’re a Prelude worker, in which case holding your breath might be your only defense against cancer-causing fumes.
Posted by John Donovan: 22 Jan 25
Ah, Shell—the undisputed champion of greed, pollution, and corporate ruthlessness. The ultimate sin stock. The very embodiment of an oil giant that will squeeze every last drop of profit out of a dying industry while dressing it up in greenwashing nonsense. And now, it seems, Shell is doubling down on a losing bet—LNG.
Yes, despite the global energy market shifting away from fossil fuels, Shell is hellbent on expanding its liquefied natural gas empire. Investors might want to brace themselves, because this ride promises to be expensive, unreliable, and, in classic Shell fashion, utterly disastrous.
Whistleblower Irina Woodhead warned Shell months before the Prelude fire that its emergency protocols were about as effective as a soggy matchstick. In today’s episode of Corporate Hypocrisy: Shell Edition, let’s dive into the latest spectacle from the world’s favourite sin stock, Shell—championed by investors like Vanguard and BlackRock, who clearly love a good oil-slicked controversy. This time, it’s whistleblowing safety engineer Irina Woodhead versus the profit-worshipping oil titan, and the results are about as surprising as discovering Shell spilt oil somewhere (again).
Irina Woodhead, a former Shell safety advisor and Technical Authority Level 2, claims she was dismissed after raising alarms about terrifyingly inadequate safety protocols aboard the Prelude FLNG vessel. You know, the floating gas factory that nearly turned into a floating gas fireball in December 2021 when a fire erupted and emergency systems decided to sit this one out. The 293 people on board? Let’s just say their evacuation options were as robust as Shell’s commitment to ethics.
Prelude, Shell’s floating liquefied natural gas platform, was touted as a technological marvel—a 3.6-million-tonnes-per-annum cash cow set to redefine the energy sector. Instead, it has become a floating cautionary tale, plagued by mechanical failures, safety violations, and enough worker dissatisfaction to make any HR department spontaneously combust. Since shipping its first cargo in June 2019, this engineering “wonder” has spent more time offline than a dial-up modem in the ‘90s.
Now, the logistics workers from Qube Offshore, who keep this floating disaster operational, have had enough. They’ve voted for protected industrial action, citing the same negligence that Shell so lovingly slathers across all its projects. Who could blame them? Shell’s track record with offshore worker safety is so abysmal that even the term “safety” starts feeling like satire.
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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