AN INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INVESTIGATION
By the Donovan–Shell Archive
5 November 2026
Researched and drafted with assistance from ChatGPT, using authenticated corporate statements, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development project disclosures, European Union regulatory documents and contemporaneous reporting.
Shell has signed an agreement giving it exclusive rights to purchase substantial quantities of sustainable aviation fuel from a proposed Moroccan refinery. The announcement supports the company’s ambition to become a major supplier of lower-carbon aviation fuels. But an examination of previously published development-bank records reveals a more complicated picture. The $239 million facility is not yet operating. Its proposed financing remains under review, environmental assessments are continuing, and its planned start-up is almost two years away. The agreement also comes just fourteen months after Shell abandoned construction of its own much larger biofuels plant in Rotterdam. Together, the documents reveal an important evolution in Shell’s lower-carbon strategy: securing future supplies through commercial agreements while other companies develop and finance the production facilities.
Shell sold the German battery pioneer in August. By October, Sonnen GmbH had filed for insolvency. Yet across the Atlantic, the company’s American operation is helping launch an innovative electricity-grid project. The contrast raises fresh questions about what survives when a former clean-energy flagship is dismantled.
Shell’s latest financial statements reveal a remarkable accounting consequence of the Middle East conflict. While the oil giant reports extraordinary profits, soaring tanker freight rates have triggered billions of dollars in additional shipping-lease liabilities. The figures are non-cash adjustments, not realised losses, but they expose another dimension of Shell’s vulnerability to geopolitical disruption.
By John Donovan — 29 October 2026
By John Donovan — 29 October 2026
