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What Happens When You Ask AI About Shell’s Ethics? John Donovan Found Out

John Donovan’s revealing entire chat with Microsoft Copilot about Shell Ethics on 29 Oct 2025. Nothing has been deleted. John Donovan’s questions and instructions are in red text. 

Using deep research tell me all you can about the Shell critic John Donovan

John Donovan is a long-standing and relentless critic of Royal Dutch Shell, known for exposing internal misconduct and legal battles with the oil giant. His activism spans over three decades and has significantly impacted Shell’s public image.

Here’s a comprehensive look at his background, motivations, and influence:

🧑‍💼 Who Is John Donovan?

  • British entrepreneur turned whistleblower, Donovan co-founded Don Marketing, a promotional games company that worked with Shell in the 1980s.
  • His relationship with Shell soured after allegations of intellectual property theft, leading to a series of legal disputes and a lifelong campaign against the company.

🔥 The Feud with Shell

  • Donovan claims Shell repeatedly stole promotional game ideas developed by his company, including the popular “Make Money” game.
  • After failed attempts to resolve the disputes amicably, he launched a public campaign to expose Shell’s alleged unethical behavior.
  • His feud escalated into a 30-year battle, described by some as a “David vs. Goliath” saga.

🌐 Online Campaigns and Websites

  • Donovan operates a network of websites dedicated to Shell criticism, including:
    These platforms host over 25,000 articles, leaked documents, and insider reports from Shell employees (“moles”). His sites are non-profit and claim to serve as watchdogs against corporate malpractice.

    📚 Publications and Media Coverage

    • Donovan authored a Kindle book titled John Donovan, Shell’s Nightmare: My Epic Feud with the Unscrupulous Oil Giant Royal Dutch Shell, detailing his battles and Shell’s alleged misconduct.
    • He’s been profiled by European media outlets like Voxeurop and Süddeutsche Zeitung, which highlight his role as a persistent thorn in Shell’s side.

    🕵️‍♂️ Methods and Impact

    • Donovan’s work is fueled by anonymous tips and leaked documents from Shell insiders.
    • His revelations have reportedly cost Shell billions in legal settlements and reputational damage.
    • He’s credited with influencing public perception and regulatory scrutiny of Shell’s operations.

    🧭 Legacy and Influence

    • Donovan is considered one of the most effective one-man corporate watchdogs in modern history.
    • His efforts have inspired other whistleblowers and critics of multinational corporations.
    • Despite Shell’s global power, Donovan’s campaign demonstrates how persistent activism and transparency can challenge corporate giants.

    If you’d like, I can help you explore specific leaked documents, legal cases, or Shell’s responses to Donovan’s claims. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Why I Have Been Confronting Shell for 30+ Years

How Shell Accidentally Endorsed Its Loudest Critics — And Then Pretended It Didn’t Happen

Warning: Satire ahead. The humour is deliberate. The facts are documented. Quotes are reproduced verbatim from publicly available sources. Readers are advised to enjoy the irony responsibly.

Prologue: The Compliment That Was Never Meant to See Daylight

Royal Dutch Shell — now Shell plc — has always believed in managing its reputation with the same meticulous care that goes into managing offshore drilling risks: reassure the market, contain the leaks, and if necessary, delete the emails. And yet, every so often, something slips past the corporate firewall. Something like the truth. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

SHELL’S CASUALTIES AND THE INVESTMENT FUNDS THAT PAY FOR THEM

THE WAGES OF SIN: A CHRONICLE OF SHELL’S CASUALTIES AND THE INVESTMENT FUNDS THAT PAY FOR THEM

It is a grand, old-world notion that a corporation can possess a soul, or rather, that the absence of one can be measured by its balance sheet. If that is the case, then Shell is less a corporation and more a meticulously catalogued exhibit in the museum of moral bankruptcy—the ultimate sin stock. Its history is not merely a record of drilling and profit but a chilling, chronological catalogue of calculated risks taken with other people’s lives: its employees, its customers, and the communities unfortunate enough to share a postcode with its extraction sites. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell’s scandalous approach to safety

In the corridors of global energy, Shell presents itself as a monolithic symbol of industrial prowess, dividend reliability and transition ambition. Investors like BlackRock, Inc. and The Vanguard Group, Inc. hold sizeable stakes. Yet behind the investor-slides and glossy sustainability pledges lies a series of historical shadows: offshore disasters, legacy pollution, human-rights litigation and repeated admissions of safety underperformance. This article takes a tour through select episodes—chronologically arranged—of how Shell has, in many instances, placed lives and safety on the back burner. While satire underpins the tone, the facts are stubbornly real. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell plc: Big Oil’s Legacy on Trial — When ‘Sin Stock’ Meets Niger Delta Reality”

By John Donovan & AI (yes, both of us—in equal parts outrage and editorial indulgence).

So here we are. Vast fields of oil. Devastated swamps. Communities rendered unable to drink the water, fish the rivers or live the lives they once had. And high above it all, the oil-major known as Shell walks (or sometimes limps) through a series of courtrooms—and global headlines—while investors and insiders just keep the dividend checks flowing.

In the case of the Niger-Delta, the reckoning is no longer coming—it’s already here. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

From Typhoons to Tort: How Shell plc Became the Ultimate Sin Stock While the Philippines Holds the Receipts

By John Donovan & AI

The Plot

In December 2021, Super Typhoon Odette (Rai) smashed into the Philippines, killing more than 400 people and leaving 1.4 million homes destroyed, among other catastrophic impacts. 

Now, a group of 67 Filipino survivors is turning their anguish into an audacious legal claim: they have delivered a “Letter Before Action” against Shell’s London-headquartered operation, seeking compensation and accountability. 

Why Shell? Because these communities argue the oil-and-gas giant helped turbo-charge climate change and thereby amplified the severity of the typhoon. As one claimant said: read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

ChatGPT’s Unfiltered Assessment of Shell, the Donovans, and Decades of Dirty Laundry

Self-explanatory questions to ChatGPT (an AI writing partner) from John Donovan are in italics.

Foreword: When the Archive Answered Back

In a curious twist of modern journalism, an independent campaigner who once fought Shell in the courts found himself interviewing his AI collaborator about the company that changed both their trajectories.

For over a year, ChatGPT — an artificial intelligence language model — has assisted in researching, structuring, and documenting the extensive record of Royal Dutch Shell’s corporate conduct. When asked for its impression of the campaign, the AI responded not with sterile neutrality but with something approaching moral clarity: an acknowledgment of honesty, integrity, and persistence in the face of corporate opacity. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

100+ Books containing references to the Donovans, Don Marketing, or their Shell-related websites — including royaldutchshellplc.com

If you want to know how a family-run promotions outfit ended up engraving its name into the footnotes of corporate history, scan the bibliographies. Across boardrooms, courtrooms, lecture halls and environmental field notes, authors keep tripping over the same stubborn breadcrumb: the Donovans — and the websites they built to document Shell’s less-than-glorious adventures: RoyalDutchShellPLC.com, ShellNews.net, Shell2004.com, TellShell.net, and more.

Below is a guided, satirical tour of more than 100 books (plus academic chapters and handbooks) that cite the Donovans, Don Marketing, or the websites. The pattern isn’t subtle: reputational risk, crisis management, litigation, governance, Arctic escapades, Nigeria, Russia, and even the archival archaeology of Shell’s 1930s entanglements. If Shell is the “ultimate sin stock,” the citations read like a decade-spanning confession — signed by authors, sealed by publishers, and witnessed by librarians. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell vs Donovan: Oil Giant vs Watchdog

How one man’s persistence exposed decades of corporate deceit — and forced an oil giant to live with its reflection.

Part 1: The Origins of a Corporate Nemesis

“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. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell Dodges Justice—Again: Groningen Quakes Leave Cracks in Homes, Trust, and the Law

Another Earthquake, Another Escape Clause

In a move that shocked precisely no one familiar with the Dutch gas saga, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) announced that NAM — the joint venture between Shell and ExxonMobilwill not be prosecuted for creating “life-threatening danger” in the Groningen gas field, despite years of earthquakes, crumbling houses, and shattered nerves.

👉 Read the NL Times coverage

The OM admitted that NAM had “consciously accepted the risk” that drilling would cause earthquakes and endanger residents — but claimed that wasn’t enough to secure a criminal conviction. In plain English: Yes, they knew people could be hurt. No, that’s not a crime. Next question. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Inside Shell’s Panic Room: The Secret Emails, the ‘Kill’ Order on a Sunday Times Story, and the Corporate Surveillance of Two Men with a Website

Shell’s internal communications—released to John and Alfred Donovan under UK Data Protection Act SARs—read like a field manual on corporate damage control: media manipulation, internal surveillance, Wikipedia “strategy,” security briefings, and a standing obsession with one website: royaldutchshellplc.com. Below is a guided tour of the most telling subjects, each backed by the actual documents.

1) “Try to kill the story”: Shell’s attempt to spike a Sunday Times piece

An internal memo notes Group media “are first trying to kill the story by pointing out that it is old news,” referring to reporting sourced from the Donovans’ site about Sakhalin/drilling emails. The author concedes it has a “slim chance” of success—yet the intent is explicit. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell Exec sick and tired about lying…

Let me tell you a story.

A story of billions—of barrels, of dollars, and of lies.

A story of how one of the most powerful oil companies on Earth, Shell, got caught inflating its most precious asset: oil reserves.

Because in the oil business, reserves aren’t just numbers.

They are everything.

They represent future profits, shareholder confidence, executive bonuses.

They are the oil industry’s currency of credibility.

And Shell? Shell cooked the books.

In January 2004, Shell shocked the financial world by slashing its previously declared “proven” reserves by nearly 4 billion barrels—around 20% of what it had claimed. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell’s Malaysian Mess: Court Orders Big Oil’s “Sin Stock” to Pay Up to Petronas

When Shell isn’t busy polluting rivers, spilling oil, or fighting climate lawsuits, it’s apparently stiffing national energy companies on their gas bills.

The Case: Shell vs. Petronas

The Malaysian Court of Appeal has ordered Shell MDS (Malaysia) to pay overdue monthly gas payments to Petronas, overturning a previous High Court injunction that had let Shell skip payments since August 2024.

According to The Edge, the three-judge panel ruled unanimously that Petronas had kept up its end of the bargain, delivering gas throughout the dispute. Shell, meanwhile, argued it was “caught between competing claims” after receiving dual invoices of 80 million ringgit each from Petronas and Petros, Sarawak’s state-owned gas aggregator (Reuters). read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Saint, Sinner… or Just Rich? Shell parks $40B of pensions with Goldman while the past keeps knocking

Shell—the greedy, ruthless, polluting oil giant and perennial sin stock—has found a fresh halo to borrow: a $40 billion outsourced pension mandate with Wall Street royalty. As Bloomberg reported, “Goldman Sachs Group Inc. won a $40 billion mandate from Shell Plc to oversee pension assets for the energy company, in one of the biggest outsourced deals of its kind.” That’s not satire; that’s the lede. Bloomberg. 

Goldman’s own one-minute victory lap says the quiet bit proudly: “The appointments mark one of the largest multi-national OCIO mandates awarded to date.” GSAM press page.  read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Purple Pump, Black Ledger: Shell’s Charity PR Meets Its Dirty Past

Shell — the greedy, ruthless, polluting oil giant and perennial sin stock — is back with its annual feel-good campaign: The Giving Pump. You fill up at a purple pump; money goes to local charities; everyone smiles for Instagram. Shell’s own press release beams: “The Giving Pump goes to show how small choices—like where you fuel up—can add up to meaningful change,” says Barbara Stoyko, SVP for Mobility & Convenience Americas. “The Giving Pump works so well because of our generous retailers. They are the ones selecting the charities benefitted by our purple pumps because they know the causes that matter most to the customers in their communities.” And St. Jude’s ALSAC chimes in: “We are grateful for our friends at Shell… Every small act of kindness… helps St. Jude advance scientific research and treatment…” Lovely words, quoted verbatim from Shell’s 9 Sept 2025 release. Read the release.  read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Cut, run, and leave the mess: UN experts call out Shell’s Nigeria ‘experiment’

Cut, run, and leave the mess: UN experts call out Shell’s Nigeria ‘experiment’—and the sin-stock’s biggest backers keep cashing the cheques”

Divestment without detox: when the clean-up plan is ‘exit.’

Shell—the greedy, ruthless, polluting oil giant, otherwise known as the world’s favorite sin stock—has discovered a thrilling new frontier in corporate innovation: sell the onshore assets, skip the proper clean-up, and let someone else hold the bag. Unfortunately for Shell, a phalanx of United Nations human-rights experts just said the quiet part out loud—formally warning that recent asset sell-offs in Nigeria may have breached international human-rights law and “lacked transparency.” The experts expressed “grave concern” and accused the oil majors of using “Nigeria… as an experiment for divestment without clean-up.”  read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.