Divergent ratings for Shell and BP
By Carola Hoyos in London
Published: September 2 2008 03:00 | Last updated: September 2 2008 03:00
Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agency, yesterday downgraded its long-term rating for BP, the UK oil and gas company, while it upgraded the one for BP’s closest rival, Royal Dutch Shell, illustrating the widening perception of the two companies’ circumstances.
S&P noted Shell’s success in reserve replacement and said current projects should sustain its production at a relatively steady rate in the next decade.
The company’s conservative financial profile also contributed to S&P’s decision to raise its long-term issuer credit rating to double A+ from double A.
In contrast, S&P lowered its corporate credit ratings on BP to double A from double A+ plus. S&P argued that BP’s refining and marketing was weaker than its peers and “bridging part of the profitability gap with peers will require a prolonged effort, and the other part of the gap is structural”. BP’s clash with its Russian partners over TNK-BP, the venture that provides for 25 per cent of BP’s production, also influenced the decision, the rating agency said. BP is being less conservative than its peers in distributing its gains to shareholders, having lifted its annual common dividends by 30 per cent to more than $10bn this year.
“While remaining very strong, BP’s financial profile is now significantly less conservative than peers’ and is becoming more in line with a double A rating,” S&P said in a statement.
Neither BP nor Shell lack money, as the industry has amassed large cash piles thanks to high oil prices.
Their shares were down yesterday, largely because oil prices fell $4 a barrel to about $110 a barrel.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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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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