The Times
Carl Mortished, World Business Editor
Essar, the Indian energy, steel and shipping group, has made a bid for Royal Dutch Shells Stanlow refinery at Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, part of a £1.2 billion offer for three fuel manufacturing plants. The other two are in Germany, at Heide and Harburg.
Essars bid came as the deadline closed yesterday in an auction of the three refineries that is likely to provoke anxiety about employment in the North West of England.
Stanlow is Shells last remaining refinery in the UK. The company closed Shell Haven, its Thames Estuary refinery, in 1999 and the site was redeveloped by P&O Ports, later taken over by DP World, the Dubai company.
The Shell auction, run by Lazard, has drawn interest from national oil companies, including Saudi investors and Libyas National Oil Corporation. The company is believed to be seeking as much as £1.5 billion for the three assets, but oil refining is suffering from a severe squeeze on margins because of weak demand for road fuel in Europe and relatively high crude oil prices.
Shell is shifting its refinery investments to Asia as ambitious Middle Eastern and Asian companies bid for access to European markets. Essar said that it wanted more distribution capacity in Europe.
Essar recently set up a mergers and acquisitions team in London to assess deals and is likely to push its case as an investor that is willing to invest in the assets and is more politically palatable than rivals such as an investor from the Middle East or Libya.
Libyas investment ambitions have become a sensitive issue over the proposed repatriation of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber.
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.
