BARELY, a week after the London court had dismissed the $1.1 billion Malabu case, involving the purchase of Oil Prospecting Licence (OPL)245, on grounds of lack of jurisdiction, the court in Milan, Italy, has adjourned a similar case ‘to a yet to be announced date’ because of the negative impact of coronavirus pandemic.
An investigation by Vanguard showed that the adjournment of the case earlier slated for May 14, 2020, has kept the parties – FG, Shell and Eni – waiting.
When contacted, Dr. Umar Jibrilu, media aide, office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, stated: “The case was initially slated for the 14th May, 2020, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, it has been adjourned till a date to be communicated later.”read more
By Brian Melley | AP
May 26, 2020 at 7:22 p.m. GMT+1
LOS ANGELES — Big Oil lost a pair of court battles Tuesday that could lead to trials in lawsuits by California cities and counties seeking damages for the impact of climate change.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by energy companies and ruled state courts are the proper forum for lawsuits alleging producers promoted petroleum as environmentally responsible when they knew it was contributing to drought, wildfires, and sea level rise associated with global warming.
The lawsuits claim Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and other companies created a public nuisance and should pay for damage from climate change and help build sea walls and other infrastructure to protect against future impact — construction that could cost tens of billions of dollars.read more
The coronavirus pandemic has brought into sharp relief the existential threat posed to the world’s biggest oil companies from policies aimed at combating climate change by offering a glimpse into a future with little demand for petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
It has also brought to the fore a question with profound implications for the energy industry and Houston, where fortunes rise and fall with the price of oil. Has the virus — in two short but life-altering months — fundamentally changed society and consumer behavior, making it likely that global oil demand would peak earlier than expected, perhaps even during this decade?read more
This 1988 Shell report, discovered by Jelmer Mommers of De Correspondent, shines light on what the company knew about climate science, its own role in driving global CO2 emissions, the range of potential political and social responses to a warming world.
The confidential report, “The Greenhouse Effect,” was authored by members of Shell’s Greenhouse Effect Working Group and based on a 1986 study, though the document reveals Shell was commissioning “greenhouse effect” reports as early as 1981. Report highlights include:read more
OPL 245 Scandal: Biased media reports protect oil giants, former public officers – Group
Godwin Tsa, Abuja: 24 MAY 2020
A coalition of local and international anti-corruption movements have raised concerns over what they allege to be a plot to foil the corruption charges against some mega oil companies involved in the Malabu (OPL 245) oil scandal.
In a statement on Sunday, the groups under the aegis of the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA), Re-Common, Cornerhouse and Globalwitness collectively called on the media to protect the interest and integrity of the judiciary by being professional in their reportage on the scam associated with OPL 245.read more
By Justin Nobel • Wednesday, April 29, 2020 – 10:38
Cancerous lesions have developed across Keith MacDonald’s body and his son is dead from leukemia. His life has disintegrated, and in his eyes fault lies with the third richest company on earth. It is headquartered in the Netherlands, incorporated in the United Kingdom, and is an entity (thanks to the Parliamentary Pension Fund) that every single British MP has a stake in — Royal Dutch Shell.
The story of how MacDonald got here is a tale of adventure and tragedy fit for a Hollywood thriller, only it is real. Even with many unknowns, MacDonald’s case unearths a shocking part of the world’s most powerful industry that somehow has remained hidden for generations.read more
A UK judge dismissed on Friday a lawsuit against Eni and Shell brought by the Nigerian government alleging that the oil and gas supermajors knew about US$1.1 billion in bribes given to secure an oil license in Nigeria nearly a decade ago.
The judge in London dismissed the case on the grounds that the UK has no jurisdiction to try the lawsuit that is basically the same for which Shell and Eni are currently under trial in Italy, Bloomberg reported.read more
May 22, 2020: 8:42 AM EDT: Last Updated May 22, 2020: 8:43 AM EDT
LONDON — An English court threw out a $1.1 billion case Nigeria had brought against Royal Dutch Shell and Eni related to a dispute over the OPL 245 oilfield, a court document showed on Friday, while a related trial in Italy continues.
The Nigerian government filed the case in 2018 at a commercial court in London alleging payments made by the companies to get the OPL 245 oilfield license in 2011 were used for kickbacks and bribes.
Justice Butcher said in his ruling seen by Reuters that the High Court “must decline jurisdiction over the action against” Shell and the other defendants.read more
BREAKING: Shell, Eni Escape $1B UK Bribery Suit Over Oil Field Deal
Law360. London (May 22, 2020, 10.57AM BST) — A judge in London ruled on Friday that Nigeria’s $1 billion lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell and Italian oil giant Eni over alleged bribery in a massive 2001 deal cannot go ahead in England because the courts don’t have jurisdiction to hear the claim.
Royal Dutch Shell and an Italian oil giant have got out of a $1 billion bribery lawsuit filed by Nigeeria because the English courts dont have jurisdiction. (AP) Judge Chrisopher Butcher said in his written decision…read more
Royal Dutch Shell will use measures including voluntary severance for staff to bolster its finances as the coronavirus pandemic batters profits, according to people with knowledge of the matter.In a note to staff, Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden wrote that the organization was being reshaped to make it leaner and more resilient, the people said. The company has already slashed spending and surprised investors with a two-thirds cut to its dividend.
Shell isn’t the only company making big changes to withstand the unprecedented oil-industry disruption caused by Covid-19. Most of its peers have made big spending reductions, while Norway’s Equinor ASA also cut its dividend.
BP Plc promised its employees their jobs were safe at least until the end of June, but companies including Chevron Corp., Marathon Oil Corp. and Halliburton Corp. are laying off employees.read more
BASRA, Iraq, May 21 (Reuters) – Shell has evacuated its foreign staff, numbering around 60, from Iraq’s Basra Gas Company and flew them out of Iraq on Wednesday, two Basra Gas Company executives told Reuters.
The staff were evacuated for security reasons after workers who had been laid off from work staged a protest in the Basra Gas Company headquarters and close to another company compound, two officials said.
Basrah Gas Company is a joint venture between state-owned South Gas Company, Shell and Mitsubishi.read more
Union plans ‘protected action’ strike aboard Shell’s Prelude floating LNG
18 MAY 2020
Leaked information outlines union plans to conduct a ‘protected action’ strike aboard Shell’s Prelude floating LNG vessel offshore Western Australia, as well as other offshore facilities.
Members of the two unions voted unanimously in taking action over an impasse on working arrangements and a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement with contractor Sodexo.
Sodexo provides catering, cooking and cleaning staff to oil and gas facilities including Shell’s Prelude FLNG project, and Inpex’s offshore facilities. read more
BP, Shell Must Face Claims Emissions Caused Fatal Cancer
law360.com — Law360 (May 19, 2020, 7:51 PM EDT) — An Illinois appeals court has restored a wrongful death lawsuit brought against BP and other companies over a man’s cancer allegedly linked to a nearby refinery’s benzene emissions, deciding that suspicion alone of benzene’s link to the cancer isn’t enough to start the clock running on a claim.
INVESTORS have signalled unease about Royal Dutch Shell’s boardroom pay policy at the company’s annual general meeting.
Around seven per cent of votes cast opposed approval of the directors’ remuneration policy of the oil giant at the meeting.
Chief executive Ban van Beurden’s total remuneration dropped by around £9m last year, from £17.8m in 2018, following a fall in the value of his performance-related awards.read more
A shareholder activist group has claimed a ‘big win’ after an increase in the number of investor votes urging Shell to meet its climate targets.
Follow This, which has led a campaign to encourage oil firms such BP, Shell, Chevron and Equinor to align their targets with the Paris Climate Agreement, saw 14.4% of investors vote for its resolution at Shell’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) – an increase from 5.5% in 2019.read more
Listen and read proof in audio and transcript form of Shell CEO Ben van Beurden’s cover-up tactics in the OPL 245 Nigerian corruption scandal. The instruction given by him in the covertly recorded call to CFO Simon Henry was at odds with Shell’s claimed core business principles. Cover-up and obstruction, instead of transparency and integrity, says Shell critic John Donovan
SHELL EXECUTIVES AT THE CENTER OF A SCHEME TO STEAL $1.3 BILLION FROM NIGERIA’S PEOPLE
SHELL ADMITS DEALING WITH NIGERIAN MONEY LAUNDERER – BBC NEWS
SHELL, ENI AND NIGERIAN OFFICIALS IN OPL 245 CORRUPTION SCANDAL
INVESTIGATION OF OPL 245 NIGERIAN OIL CORRUPTION SCANDAL
SHELL KILLS FOR OIL IN NIGERIA
ESTHER KIOBEL SUES SHELL FOR COMPLICITY IN HUSBANDS MURDER
ESTHER KIOBEL: EVIL OIL GIANT SHELL COLLUDED IN THE EXECUTION OF MY INNOCENT HUSBAND
SHELL LIED ABOUT CLEANING UP OIL IN NIGER DELTA
SHELL SPIES INFILTRATED NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT
DUTCH EARTHQUAKES CAUSED BY SHELL/EXXON
LEGO DROPS SHELL OVER GREENPEACE OIL SPILL VIDEO
SHELL ARCTIC DRILLING ACCIDENTS
SHELL KNEW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE DECADES AGO
JOHN DONOVAN TV DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW
ABANDONED BY SHELL: KEITH MACDONALD & FAMILY, VICTIMS OF RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION AT WORK
ROYAL DUTCH SHELL FOUNDER SIR HENRI DETERDING, NAZI FINANCIER
JOHN DONOVAN PROMOTIONAL GAMES FOR SHELL AND OTHER CLIENTS
AN OPEN WOUND FOR SHELL SAYS FT
John Donovan’s ebooks
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.
Bonus Group: Useless degree????.
'Also it is not possible to be a competent geologist in the oil and gas business without having a very good background education in both sedimentation and stratigraphy. Both topics go hand in hand. Furthermore, managers at both the middle level and senior level need to be well versed in this subject area in order to make competent business development and exploration decisions.'
These would be the same 'job for life', middle to senior level managers and competent geologists who at BG Group, for example, assured work at a cost of £200MM which later cost the company £2Bn because it was wrong (according to the Chief Operating Officer at the time), and also spent more than five years working in an asset following corrupt workflows?
From your post on this Blog, I see that your time at a 'reputable university' was well spent in learning how to be exuberant with punctuation.
That is all I have to say on the topic. Cheers!
Useless degree????: I was reading your blog today and saw a reference to 'sedimentology' being a 'useless degree'. I do not believe any reputable university offers such a degree. Sedimentology is a sub-discipline within the field of geology. Reputable universities do offer degrees in geology. It is possible to specialize in sedimentology I suppose, but you need to be enrolled in a geology program to do so. I know, I am a geologist, among other things.
Also it is not possible to be a competent geologist in the oil and gas business without having a very good background education in both sedimentation and stratigraphy. Both topics go hand in hand.
Furthermore, managers at both the middle level and senior level need to be well versed in this subject area in order to make competent business development and exploration decisions.
That is all I have to say on the topic. Cheers.
Bonus Group: USA USA USA Hardly surprising is it. The company is overrun by sycophantic, grossly over paid, sniggering middle managers with numerous degrees in sedimentology, or some subject as equally useless, with little to no technical ability or technical background, who are dependent upon technical staff who likewise have little, to no, practical experience and who have only ever seen a rig laid up in the Firth of Forth in photographs, or when they went for a jolly with their wives for an outing one day. They spend their time documenting 'Lessons Learned' on fancy spreadsheets which are then filed in some obtuse filing system and they never learn the damn lessons!
USA USA USA: Missed opportunities is not as bad as the botched opportunities. RDS has always claimed that there is limited capital and resources to exploit every opportunity. We all agree. But the fact that so many recent projects have failed to deliver production promises, that is more clearly a lack of management and leadership. Prelude? Penn Chem? Olympus? and the many others that have not delivered on schedule, cost or production. Then there are the projects that move forward with little to no assurance of these vital front end loading to verify that the promise is realistic. It is just more of the same - Bloat / Cut / Reorg and repeat...
Exploration: Here's a list of missed company-maker plays by Shell since 2000. The record of exploration performance is woeful and many of the responsible are still in leadership roles. Give up and turn to wind and solar indeed...
Figures are total play discovered and recoverable, at 100% basis;
2001 - Mauritania-Senegal - 10 Billion BOE recoverable
2003 - US Gulf of Mexico Paleogene - 3 Billion BOE recoverable
2006 - Santos Pre-Salt - 45 Billion BOE recoverable
2010 - Campos Pre-Salt - 2 Billion BOE recoverable
2010 - Mozambique Rovuma - 23 Billion BOE recoverable
2011 - Angola Pre-Salt - 4 Billion BOE recoverable
2015 - Egypt Zohr - 3 Billion BOE recoverable
2016 - Guyana - 10 Billion BOE recoverable
TOTAL MISSED BY SHELL SINCE 2000 = 100 Billion BOE recoverable!
Bogus Group: Or perhaps arrests and incarceration's to follow?
Bonus Group: Bogus Group, thank you for sharing the link. It sounds all too familiar, redolent of both BG Group and also the Shell reserves recategorisation debacle of the early 2000s. During any teleconference with BG's offices in Houston what were conspicuous by their absence were employees, vast acres of empty desks in the background in a highly expensive building. It would be interesting to know how Shell have covered-up the financial consequences of BG's mismanagement e.g. hectares of moose pasture acquired for shale gas development that never happened. There was good reason why BG Group delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, and that was because their global reserves would never have withstood scrutiny under SEC rules. One wonders what the auditors were doing?
Perhaps, Helge Lund was not Andrew Gould's 'Fall Guy' after all and that he was complicit and therefore deserves little sympathy?
Bogus Group: In 2007, Statoil (now Equinor) under Helge Lund, drives expansion to ‘a higher gear’. In 2014 he moves to BG Group, in 2015 he prepares BG Group for Shell takeover. This article reveals a toxic mix of murky dealings, ineptitude, mammoth salaries and bonuses and extravagant lifestyles (sound familiar?). The revolving door of organisational failure continues to spin. https://www.newsinenglish.no/2020/05/11/scandal-losses-in-us-haunt-equinor/
OPL 245 Scandal: Biased media reports protect oil giants, former public officers – Group
The Syrian Job: Uncovering the Oil Industry’s Radioactive Secret
BASRA, Iraq, May 21 (Reuters) – Shell has evacuated its foreign staff, numbering around 60, from Iraq’s Basra Gas Company and flew them out of Iraq on Wednesday, two Basra Gas Company executives told Reuters.
Union plans ‘protected action’ strike aboard Shell’s Prelude floating LNG
BP, Shell Must Face Claims Emissions Caused Fatal Cancer
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.
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