February 1, 2008
Patrick Hosking: Business Commentary
Some people are never satisfied. Shell may have made greater annual profits last year than any other European company ever, but as one City sceptic remarked yesterday, one should expect nothing less from a company that has over the past decade enjoyed a ninefold increase in the selling price of its main product, crude oil.
However, big oil companies are facing nasty headwinds, not just from soaring exploration and production costs and thinner downstream margins, but also from the paucity of new finds. They are having to forage deeper into ever-costlier and politically suspect territories to rootle out ever-piddlier new pockets of the black stuff. The easy finds were all made long ago.
The unexciting share price trajectories of Shell and its peers demonstrate how investors take current profits as a given, and are much more concerned about where the money will be made in five or ten years.
For the first time, Shell omitted to publish reserve levels alongside its results, preferring to defer them by six weeks. There is nothing sinister in this, but it is a sore point for shareholders. They haven’t forgotten that the company misled them for years over its reserve levels. Unions and greens may focus on yesterday’s profit figures; investors will be more interested in the reserves numbers in March.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article3285676.ece
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.
