Athabasca takes the offshore route: Oilsands players look abroad for added expertise
Financial Post – Canada; May 02, 2006
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In his groundbreaking 2005 book, The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman, the New York Times columnist, talks about how technological advancements such as the World Wide Web flattened the world by eliminating global geopolitical barriers, encouraging trends including the offshoring of knowledge work to China and India and other lower-cost, skills-rich and eager places.read more
ABU DHABI (Reuters) – Saudi Aramco said on Monday it hopes to sign deals with Total (TOTF.PA) and ConocoPhillipsfor two new refineries in the kingdom by the end of May.
“The company board of directors last week approved the recommendation to engage in MoUs with these two companies and now these companies will have to obtain approval from their own board,'' Khalid al-Buainain, vice president of refining at Aramco told reporters at an oil and gas conference in Abu Dhabi.read more
Mitsui, Mitsubishi in talks for supply of LNG output from Sakhalin – report
AFX Asia (Focus); May 02, 2006
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TOKYO (AFX) – Trading companies Mitsui & Co and Mitsubishi Corp plan to provide liquefied natural gas from the Sakhalin 2 project off the eastern coast of Russia to Chubu Electric Power Co and Osaka Gas Co, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported without citing sources.read more
SINGAPORE PRESS: Shell, Exxon Mobil Mull New Investments
SINGAPORE (Dow Jones)–Oil companies Shell and Exxon Mobil (XOM) are considering new investments in Singapore worth several billion dollars, according to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the Business Times reported Tuesday.
Shell is close to a final decision on building a new steam cracker in Bukom with a capacity of around one million tons, while ExxonMobil is in an “advanced study stage” for a second cracker on Jurong Island, Lee told an election rally, according to the report. read more
African News Dimension (South Africa): Nigeria: Senate panel indicts NNPC, Shell, others in Bonga projects
By AND Nigeria
(Information added by ShellNews.net: “SNEPCO” is the abbreviation for Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited.)
ALLEGING grave irregularities in the Bonga Oil Field development project, the Senate Committee on the Upstream Petroleum Sector, has recommended the payment of USD 4,691,2b to the Federal Government by Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO). read more
By Daniel Engber Posted Monday, May 1, 2006, at 6:18 PM ET
Download the MP3 audio version of this story here, or sign up for The Explainer's free daily podcast oniTunes.
The governing board of Bee County, Texas, has called for a boycott of ExxonMobil gas stations starting Monday. According to a poll conducted by the Beeville Bee-Picayune, 72 percent of county residents will participate; they hope to force pump prices down to $1.30 a gallon. Can a consumer boycott really affect gas prices?read more
New Shell chairman outlines four prioritiesMay 2 2006
REALISING the challenges ahead in making the company stronger, Shell Malaysia chairman Saw Choo Boon has outlined four priorities to keep its business going and growing.
The four priorities are to maintain the current buoyant economic performance, continue to grow its business, attract more and different global shared service hubs to Malaysia, and continue to recruit and train staff.
“All these are important to ensure that we will be present in Malaysia for another 100 years,” he said.
During a recent interview with Business Times, Saw spoke at length about Shell Malaysia’s progress since it first discovered oil well in Miri, Sarawak, in 1910, the outlook of the industry in Malaysia, and commented on the current escalating price of oil.
read more
A guide to company results and meetings, and economic statistics
Tuesday May 2
Technology company CSR should deliver strong first-quarter results on the back of sales of its mobile phones and headsets. Charles Stanley forecasts pre-tax profit of $26m (£14.4m) for the three months to March compared with $10.9m in the same period a year earlier.
Sands of grime put Canada in energy elite By Fred Langan (Filed: 02/05/2006)
High in northern Alberta a company called Syncrude is mining oil from a black pit that measures 35,000 acres. Giant lorries, the largest in the world, take three loads of oil sands from a huge shovel then deliver it to a crusher on its way to becoming oil.
“Each truck carries about 400 tons of material and we get about 200 barrels of oil from that,” says Jim Carter, president and chief operating officer of Syncrude, the largest oil sands operator in the world. The Fort McMurray, Alberta, company is a consortium owned by seven firms, including Canadian Oil Sands Trust (37pc), Imperial Oil, which is the Canadian arm of Exxon Mobil, (25pc) and Petro Canada (12pc). read more
FEATURE-Sakhalin weighs environmental cost of Shell project
01 May 2006 22:30:05 GMTSource: Reuters
By Tom Bergin
STARODUBSKOYE, Russia, May 2 (Reuters) – Soil particles hang suspended in the frozen water and machine-crushed stone has replaced pebbles on the riverbed since a consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell dug it up to lay an oil pipeline.
“There was a spawning ground here but they have destroyed it,” said Dmitry Lisitsyn, an environmentalist on Sakhalin island, a harsh, starkly beautiful land off Russia's Far East.
Lisitsyn said that when the thaw comes, soil particles in the ice and from damaged river banks will seep downstream and leave large parts of the river unsuitable for spawning fish.
Residents of Sakhalin, historically one of Russia's poorest regions, had great hopes for Shell's giant oil and gas project, the biggest undertaken by the Anglo-Dutch oil major <RDSa.L>.
However, some people on the island north of Japan now fear the environmental costs of the $20 billion project may leave them worse off than before.
The consortium's fields contain 4.5 billion barrels of reserves but extracting them is complicated because they lie under the feeding grounds of the critically endangered Western Grey Whale, and the sea in the north is frozen for six months.
Shell and its Japanese partners Mitsui <8031.T> and Mitsubishi <8058.T> must construct an 800-km (500-mile) pipeline to a new export terminal on ice-free Aniva Bay in the south.
The pipeline must cross 1,100 rivers and water courses — home to salmon spawning grounds — and the terminal requires dredging and dumping in Aniva Bay.
Islanders are not too worried about the whales, the focus of opposition from western environmental groups. They are more concerned about the fishing industry, which accounts for 22 percent of industrial production and employs 40,000 of the 530,000-strong population during the summer salmon season.
SHELL EMBLEM
At the port city of Korsakov, near the export terminal, residents say the project is already causing problems.
One elderly man told a public meeting that a local firm could no longer sell seaweed to Japanese customers because of the perception that Aniva Bay was polluted.
Others said that since the dredging and dumping, once-rich harvests of lucrative scallops — whose shell is the oil giant's corporate emblem — had dwindled. “We are worried about the environmental dangers of a potential oil spill … (but) … our troubles are centred on scallops,” Korsakov Mayor Gennadiy Zlivko said.
The Korsakov meeting was hosted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which is assessing the environmental and social effects before deciding whether to advance a loan to the consortium, called Sakhalin Energy.
In November, Sakhalin's sole representative in the federal parliament, Ivan Zhdakayev, wrote to the EBRD saying the project did not meet the bank's strict policies, citing non-compliance with environmental and economic requirements.
Last week, conservation group WWF said the EBRD should not grant the loan without more measures to protect the environment. It said ice and poor weather around the fields would make it nearly impossible to clean up any spills for half of the year. Jeroen van der Veer, Shell's chief executive, said earlier this year that from an environmental perspective the project was one of the best in Russia.
Sakhalin Energy says careful execution and monitoring means the river crossings will have little impact on spawning areas.
It says it moved an offshore pipeline route away from the whales' feeding grounds to remove any threat and that dredging and dumping in Aniva Bay was limited to a small part.
Despite describing some early river crossings as “appalling”, improved practices have led EBRD environmental officials to deem the work acceptable, while even environmentalists accept Sakhalin Energy's performance is mostly better than Russian oil firms' traditional record.
The EBRD's board is expected to vote in June on whether to approve the $300 million loan to support the project.
DEVELOPMENT WORRIES
Officials at the bank say some of the complaints about risks are a form of negotiation — common on the part of communities near oil developments — to extract more benefits from Shell, the world's third-largest listed oil firm by market value.
Many residents, especially outside the capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, say they have not gained much from the project, although unemployment has fallen from 20 percent in 1999 to 7.1 percent in 2004, according to EBRD figures.
“No sustainable business development has been created on Sakhalin,” Ivan Stepanchenko, a member of a small business association, told an EBRD public meeting in the capital.
Sakhalin is unlikely to develop an oil services industry like that of Scotland's North Sea hub Aberdeen, said Michael Bradshaw, professor of human geography at Britain's University of Leicester.
The economy is likely to remain dependent on fishing, making it vulnerable to any environmental damage caused by the project, or even the perception of such damage.
So far, official data suggests salmon stocks are buoyant and EBRD officials said there was no convincing evidence of any negative impact on the whales. Shell has, however, been hit. The environmental disputes and partly related cost overruns have damaged its reputation, and led investors and analysts to question the way it handles big, environmentally-sensitive projects. “Shell should have been able to spot that dealing with endangered whales was likely to require exceptionally careful handling and the deployment of best practice in every respect,” Citigroup said in a research note.
Sakhalin could also harm Shell's ability to turn around one of the poorest industry records for adding new reserves. “Despite many key international project successes over recent years, Sakhalin may appear as a black mark on Shell's resume when it pitches to resource-holding nations for involvement in future world-scale projects,” said Jason Kenney at ING.
This is not a Shell website. That fact should be abundantly plain from the overall content of this home page and our sister Shell-focussed websites, including shellnazihistory.com. Click on the Disclaimer link at top of this page for more information. You Can Be Sure Shell does not endorse or approve of this website. There are no subscription charges nor do we solicit or accept donations. It is an entirely free to use website drawing attention to the negative side of Shell while also publishing positive news about the company. The Shell logo image with the white text used on this website, as per the above example, is in the public domain because its copyright has expired and its author is anonymous. It can be found on WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. Our shellenergy.websitepublishes Shell Energy customer complaints posted on Trustpilot where there is an ample supply. Use this link for Shell’s own website.
SHELL’S ROLE IN NIGERIAN OPL 245 BRIBERY SCANDAL
Whatever fig leaves they might be trying to use to hide the truth, Shell and Eni paid over $1bn to a company called Malabu for the OPL 245 licence. Even though the payment was channelled through the Nigerian government, it was clear that Shell knew that the ultimate beneficiary was Dan Etete, the former minister of petroleum. Etete is the owner of Malabu, to whom he awarded the licence when he was Nigerian Minister of Petroleum.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
MORE INFORMATION
Shell appeased and collaborated with the Nazis. The oil giant instructed its employees in the Netherlands to complete a form giving particulars about their descent, which for some, amounted to a self-declared death warrant. Shell used slave labor and was a close business partner in Germany of I.G. Farben, the notorious Nazi run chemical giant that also used slave labor and supplied the Zyklon-B gas used during the Holocaust to exterminate millions of people, including children. Shell continued the partnership with the Nazis in the years after the retirement of Sir Henri and even after his death. It was money generated on Shell forecourts around the world, profiteering from cartel oil prices, that funded the Nazi party and saved it from financial collapse. Evidence about Shell's Nazi connections can be found in extracts from "A History of Royal Dutch Shell" Volumes 1 and 2 authored by historians paid by Shell, who had unrestricted access to Shell archives. There are 67 pages in total, so takes some time to download.
Photograph (full size here) shows a Swastika flag flying at the head office of Royal Dutch Petroleum, 30 Carel van Bylandtlaan, The Hague, during the Nazi occupation of the in World War II (From Image Database Hague Municipal)
Sir Henri Deterding, the founder of the Royal Dutch Shell Group - known as "The Most Powerful Man in the World" - who became an ardent Nazi and financial supporter of Hitler and the Nazi party.
Reading between the lines in various legal documents, it seems that the allegations are that after the technology in question had been disclosed to a Shell company in the USA, the information was passed to Shell in the Netherlands in breach of confidentiality. And Royal Dutch Shell subsequently exploited the technology without payment or credit to the company holding the rights; Newton Research Partners. The inference seems to be that Twister B.V. was founded by Shell partly on trade secrets stolen from Bloom/Newton.
DISCLAIMER: This is not a Shell website nor is it officially endorsed by or affiliated with Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Originally co-founded by the late Alfred Donovan and his son John, it is now operated by John, Shell's "No.1 Enemy", aided by an expert team, with invaluable support from retired Shell senior executives and officials as guest contributors and leaked information from Shell insiders.
(JOHN DONOVAN, WEBSITE OWNER) For nearly a decade, we have operated globally under the Royal Dutch Shell Plc top level domain name, dealing on Shell’s reluctant behalf with job applications, business proposals, Shell pension enquiries, shareholder enquiries, complaints, invitations to speak at conferences, an approach from the Dutch Defence Ministry and even terrorist threats. All meant for Shell. Prospect magazine has aptly described this website as being:"An open wound for Shell": WIPO proceedings by Shell to seize the domain name failed. NO SUBSCRIPTION CHARGES: All of our watchdog activities monitoring Royal Dutch Shell, including operating this website, are carried out on a non-profit basis. Any advertising revenues generated are used to recover and/or defray operational costs. We are a news aggregator and original content website. All information is available free for educational and research purposes. SHELL TACIT ENDORSEMENT: WHAT A WELL INFORMED SHELL OFFICIAL SAID ABOUT US:
"John and Alfred Donovan well known in UK/Hague. They perceive Shell played them and so have made it their mission to embarrass,belittle and criticize Shell, which they do quite well. Their website, royaldutchshellplc.com is an excellent source of group news and comment and I recommend it far above what our own group internal comms puts out."
WARNING TO SHELL EMPLOYEES: Shell Global Affairs Security "CAS") is spying on Shell employees globally trying to trace who is visiting, posting, or leaking information to this website from Shell premises. Threats, including death threats, have allegedly been made against conscience driven Shell whistleblowers supplying us with information. The worlds biggest leak of employee details as part of a claimed corporate revolution by 116 Shell employees, suggest the espionage operation, threats and draconian litigation have not been entirely successful in cutting off the supply of information to this website. The insider leaks had already cost Shell billions on the Sakhalin Energy project and the loss of SEIC Deputy Chairman, David Greer. We publish our own carefully researched articles about Shell e.g. "How Royal Dutch Shell saved Hitler and the Nazi Party". MEDIA COVERAGE: Prospect Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian, have all published major articles about us: "Rise of the Gripe Site";"Two men and a website mount vendetta against Shell' and "92-year-old's website leaves oil giant Shell-shocked”. SHELL PETROL STATION images displayed in the website header panel are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Information on copyright issues here.
John Donovan can be contacted at [email protected]
SHELL’S $500,000 WEDDING GIFT TO CORRUPT BRUNEI ROYAL FAMILY
EXTRACT FROM ASIAN JOURNAL ARTICLE IN LIST OF LINKS BELOW: "Fireworks will light up the sky for three nights. The local unit of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has donated 500,000 Brunei dollars (US$292,400; euro 243,700) for the display, and for cultural events to be hosted by popular performers from Malaysia."
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS:
THIS IS WHAT IT SAID:
Subject: This could be the most important whistleblower email you have ever received.
Some unfortunate Royal Dutch Shell workers have already lost their lives. More lives are at stake.
My name is Bill Campbell. I am a former Group Auditor of Shell International. I am writing to you on a matter of conscience in an effort to avert the inevitability of another major accident in the North Sea. The consequences could potentially impact on families in many constituencies, including your own.
As Royal Dutch Shell and the Health & Safety Executive would acknowledge, I am an expert on safety matters relating to offshore oil and gas platforms. In 1999, I was appointed by Shell to lead a safety audit on the Brent Bravo platform. The audit revealed a platform management culture that basically gave a higher priority to production than the safety of Shell employees. To our astonishment we discovered that a "Touch F*** All" policy was in place. Worse still, safety records were routinely falsified and repairs bodged.
I personally brought the shocking situation to the attention of senior management including Malcolm Brinded, the then Managing Director of Shell Exploration & Production. I revealed that ESDV leak-off tests were purposely falsified, not once but many times and that Brent Bravo platform management had admitted responsibility for the dangerous practices being followed. In response to my team ringing alarm bells, management pledged to rectify the serious problems which had been uncovered.
When I later complained that the pledges were not being kept, I was removed from my oversight function.
Four years later, a massive gas leak occurred on the platform. Two workers lost their lives. I have no doubt at all that the inaction of the relevant Asset Manager, the General Manager, the Oil Director and Malcolm Brinded, contributed in some part to the unlawful killing of two persons on Brent Bravo in September 2003.
Shell subsequently pleaded guilty to breaches of the HSE regulations and a record-breaking £900,000 fine was imposed. I thought this would bring about a real change in policy to put the emphasis on safety.
Unfortunately I was wrong. Although I supplied the evidence related to 1999, and the fact that there had been a collapse in controls of integrity from 1999 to 2003 on all 16 of Shell's North Sea offshore installations covered in a post fatality integrity review to the HSE for review by the Procurator Fiscal, none of this evidence was presented before the Sheriff at the subsequent Inquiry. The situation is explained in a letter to the Procurator Fiscal and the Sheriff (on 24th February 2007).
Shell management has engaged in spin to try to pretend that it is getting to grips with its safety problem. However, its atrocious safety record - the worst in the North Sea in terms of accidental deaths and absolute number of enforcement actions – tells a different story. This fact has resulted in a number of newspaper articles.
I have had meetings with senior Shell people including its CEO Mr. Jeroen van der Veer. I regret to say that I have found him to be economical with the truth. He prefers to support cover-up and deceit rather than confronting the underlying problems. Brinded is now Executive Director of Shell Exploration & Production. He believes in burying evidence.
My family and friends would probably prefer me to give up on this matter and enjoy my retirement after so many years working for Shell.
However, by writing to every MP in the UK, no one can ever say that I did not do my best to avert an inevitable further major accident event in the North Sea. When it happens (I pray that I am wrong) I will make this warning communication available to the media together with the vast amount of evidence in my possession.
At least my conscience is clear. I have done everything possible to ring the alarm bells about Shell management and its unscrupulous attitude to the safety of its employees.
Yours sincerely
Bill Campbell
ENDS
(Malcolm Brinded and Jeroen van der Veer are no longer with Shell. The Oil Director referred to in the email is Chris Finlayson, who left Shell to become Chief Executive of British Gas before being fired - his photo immediately below)
SIR PHILIP WATTS, THE GROUP CHAIRMAN OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL GROUP, FORCED TO RESIGN IN 2004
Shell’s reputation was destroyed in 2004 after FIVE consecutive cuts to its hydrocarbon reserves covering 55% of its total reserves. US and UK financial regulators imposed $150 million in fines on Shell for securities fraud. Shell was also rocked by class action lawsuits. Sir Philip Watts
and Walter van de Vijver (whose headcut images appear courtesy of The Wall Street Journal) were among the Shell executives forced to resign. More details at the foot of this column.
MORE DETAILS: The Shell reserves scandal brought about
the end of the Royal Dutch Shell Group in its original form as an Anglo-Dutch partnership.
Shell Transport & Trading Co and Royal Dutch Petroleum were unified into a single Dutch owned company - Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
Sir Philip turned to religion and is now a very wealthy priest after receiving a payoff/pension package from Shell reportedly worth $18.5 million. Walter van de Vijver in contrast was the victim of a sadistic sacking by his Shell senior management backstabbing colleagues.
Displayed below are some of the spectacular promotional campaigns my company Don Marketing created for Shell in the 1980s and 1990s. This was before the series of SIX high court actions we brought against Shell for stealing ideas (4) and for defamation (2) - all settled by Shell. This website is a permanent response by me to the malicious underhand tactics, including treachery, espionage and intimidation, used by Shell during and after the bouts of litigation. More information is printed at the foot of this column.
MORE DETAILS: After a solicitor acting for Shell threatened to make the litigation "drawn out and difficult" with the intention of draining the resources of a financially weaker opponent, my late father (Alfred Donovan) and I decided to mount a wide-ranging campaign as a counter-measure. We jointly founded the Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group, which nearly 15% of Shell UK retailers joined. We regularly conducted ethical surveys involving up to 1500 Shell petrol stations. All responses were opened and authenticated by an independent solicitor who supplied Affidavits confirming the results. In whole page announcements in trade magazines (examples above) we challenged Shell to commission and publish the resuits of independent research asking the same questions and offering respondents GUARANTEED anonymity. Shell never took up the invitation. Instead it asked the UK Advertising Standards Authority to investigate our Shell surveys. No problems were found. The head-cut image of Alfred Donovan appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
SHELL CONTROVERSIES
selection of memorable warnings/articles/images associated with the controversial track record of Royal Dutch Shell.
WARNING: DO NOT DISCLOSE YOUR IDEAS TO SHELL GameChanger OR SHELL Ideas360 WITHOUT TAKING EVERY POSSIBLE PRECAUTION. Shell management has ample funds to pay for intellectual property but prefers to steal it from small businesses and in our experience, gives its full backing to dishonest managers willing to do its bidding. We have sued Shell repeatedly in the High Court for the theft of our Intellectual Property. It is doubtful if anyone can match our dire experience in dealing with this ruthless unscrupulous serial poacher of other parties ideas. Expect threats, legal machinations and sinister action from Shell and its spooks if you object to having your ideas stolen.
Some years ago extensive documentary evidence was brought to the attention of Malcolm Brinded above, when he was Chairman of Shell UK, proving beyond any doubt that Shell executives had conspired to rig a tender for a major contract. A number of innocent firms were deliberately lured into signing confidentiality agreements and disclosing Intellectual Property to Shell under false pretences, in a carefully contrived plot. The firm which was awarded the contract never took part in the tender. One objective of the Machiavellian plan was to stop/delay IP trade secrets owned by the participants in the tender from being disclosed to Shell's rivals. This was achieved by outright deception, without paying a cent to the firms involved, who wrongly believed they were participating in an honest tender. Instead of sacking the ring leader, AJL - who had a personal relationship with the firm which miraculously won the race in which it never ran - Shell senior directors, including Brinded, gave AJL their full backing. Some of the Shell executives involved, including for example, Tim Hannagan, still hold high positions inside Shell - in his case, Global Brand and Visual Identity Manager. If Shell does not accept that this is a true, provable account of what happened, then it should sue for libel. How on earth is such predatory conduct compatible with Shell's claimed business principles?
OVER 500 EXTERNAL PUBLICATIONS CITING OUR SHELL WEBSITES
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 websiteetc. 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 websites and/or our activities.
John Donovan, the website owner
A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
JOHN DONOVAN, THE OWNER OF THIS AND SEVERAL OTHER SHELL FOCUSSED WEBSITES
SHELL PRELUDE TO DISASTER
The links below are to a series of articles, many triggered by a well-placed whistleblower directly involved in the pioneering Royal Dutch Shell Prelude project. Includes articles by Mr Bill Campbell above, the retired distinguished HSE Group Auditor of Shell International and another retired Shell guru with a track record of spotting potential pitfalls in major Shell projects.
The campaign waged on this website by John Donovan to persuade Edward Heerema to rename the worlds biggest ship, The Pieter Schelte - which he named after his late father, Pieter Schelte Heerema, a former Officer in the German Waffen-SS - has been successful. On Friday 6 February 2015, Allseas announced that it was changing the ships name, and on 9 February announced the new name - Pioneering Spirit.
GLOBAL NEWS COVERAGE: FEBRUARY 2010
MORE INFORMATION: Contact details for over 176,000 employees and contractors of Royal Dutch Shell reached John Donovan and some environmental and human rights groups, ostensibly from disaffected Shell staff calling for a “peaceful corporate revolution” at the company. The database, from Shell’s internal directory, contained names and telephone numbers for all the company’s work force worldwide, including some home numbers. It was supplied with a 170 page covering note, explaining that it was being circulated by “116 concerned employees of Shell dispersed throughout the USA, the UK, and the Netherlands”, to highlight the harm done by the company’s operations in Nigeria. John Donovan brought the leak to the attention of Shell. Tests proved that the data was authentic and he destroyed the database after being informed by Mr. Richard Wiseman, the then Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, that the confidential information if publicly disclosed, could put Shell employees and contractors in real danger.