The Associated Press
PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has asked the head of the International Monetary Fund to consider a tax on oil companies’ profits to help countries without energy reserves, the finance minister said Wednesday.
Christine Lagarde told LCI television that Sarkozy had asked the new IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a Frenchman, to consider a tax that would affect oil companies worldwide.
The decision comes in the wake of announcements of record earnings by many oil majors, boosted by historic crude prices.
Sarkozy wants “to think on a global level about a kind of tax that would allow those countries that have the least energy to benefit from these exceptional earnings,” Lagarde said.
Environmentalists and others in France have long floated the idea of taxing French oil giant Total, whose record-breaking profits they regard as reprehensible. The company, France’s biggest by market value, reported Wednesday that net profit was up by 62 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to €3.6 billion (US$5.23 billion).
Lagarde said the French government was pushing for a global tax so that not only Total — the world’s fourth largest oil and gas company — would be penalized.
It must be “on a worldwide level,” she said.
Earlier this month, Exxon Mobil Corp. posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company — US$40.6 billion (€27.9 billion).
Europe’s largest oil company, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, posted a 60 percent gain in fourth-quarter profit to US$8.47 billion (€5.83 billion).
Published: February 13, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/13/business/EU-FIN-France-Oil-Tax.php
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.
