September 10, 2009
David Wighton: Business Editors Commentary
Size matters. In the oil industry, your worth is measured in hundreds of millions of barrels and yesterday BP and BG Group were standing at the bar sizing up each other’s discoveries.
Last week, BP was crowing about Tiber, an offshore discovery at record depths beneath the Gulf of Mexico, with between 4 and 6 billion barrels of oil in place. Yesterday, BG was yesterday claiming that Guara, another deepwater prospect, this time off the coast of Brazil, was bigger.
A joint development with Petrobras, it might contain up to 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil, the difference being that BP may only recover 500 million barrels from Tiber.
These are what oilmen call elephants or supergiants. At this stage, assessing what is actually there is finger in the air stuff.
If you asked a director of BG or BP how many of these billions of barrels they would sign off in a share listing document today, the answer would be zero.
More wells must be drilled.
Nevertheless, BP and BG are generating excitement about new oil frontiers and the noise contrasts with relative quiet elsewhere.
Shell has been doggedly spending and drilling since its reserves scandal of five years ago and is filling its tank but spectacular finds are lacking.
After the reserves debacle, Malcolm Brinded boldly set out plans to drill 15 “Big Cat” prospects but we never heard these lions roar. To be fair, exploration is a cycle of many years between securing acreage, surveying and drilling wells. However, Shell made some strategic mistakes in ignoring Angola and failing to push more aggressively into the Gulf of Mexico.
In July, Peter Voser, Shells new chief executive, said the company had found 700 million barrels in the first half and it made another Norwegian discovery.
Gro is a gasfield that might contain between a modest 353 billion cubic feet of gas or an impressive 3.5 trillion cubic feet. Small cat or big elephant?
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.
