Financial Times: Oil nationalism
By Brian Groom
Published: June 8 2005
There is a flip side to high oil prices – even for the Seven Sisters. For if crude at above $50 a barrel continues to sustain the profitability of all the oil majors, it is steadily reinforcing nationalistic instincts among producing countries.
This “reaffirmation of the coercive power of the state” – as Shell puts it in a report this week – is rapidly turning into a headache for international companies. And this trend is not only confined to Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world’s two largest producers, but spreading elsewhere.
The reaction of oil producers is hardly surprising. High oil prices give them little incentive to open up new fields or to encourage international companies to take stakes in their national energy groups. Indeed, oil producers tend to turn to foreign investors only when prices are low.
Take Russia. Washington is worried about the way its two-year effort to develop energy co-operation with Moscow is stalling. Total, the French major, is also increasingly frustrated with what appear to be blatant delaying tactics to prevent it acquiring a 25 per cent stake in independent Russian gas producer Novatek. Gazprom is now finalising a strategic deal with Novatek designed by all accounts as a spoiler to the French.
All this could have serious implications. Between 1999 and 2003, private oil companies were responsible for two-thirds of all new discoveries but controlled only 20 per cent of world reserves. If national oil companies, which own the rest, continue to disregard new investments, the consequences are obvious.
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
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.
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: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
