PETROLEUM ECONOMIST
A new book tells the story of the oil industry’s boom-bust cycle through the personalities of its main protagonists. It isn’t always a flattering portrait, writes Derek Brower
The book is especially strong on such juicy details, not least when it describes the machinations rivalries, personality clashes and egos at work during the mega-merger period of the late 1990s. Browne’s successor, Tony Hayward, is seen entertaining Gazprom boss Alexei Miller at a Chelsea football match in London. Shell’s former chief, Jeroen van der Veer, argues in German, without interpreters, with Russia’s then president Vladimir Putin about the Sakhalin Energy project at a private function in Holland. And so on.
The majors also have personalities. Exxon, a participant in the mega-mergers when it bought Mobil, is the brooding presence throughout. Shell was repeatedly bruised by run-ins with environmentalists and activists, and its bi-national schizophrenia left it flatfooted as Browne and BP seized the agenda.
Shell also handled its Russian investments badly, unintentionally antagonising the authorities, with humiliation on Sakhalin island the result. The Anglo-Dutch firm emerges from the narrative as a sluggish behemoth, crippled by internal rivalries between the Hague and London, undermined by its own constitution and eventually brought low by the reserves scandal. Phil Watts, the chairman at the time, who was eventually exonerated from wrong-doing in the affair, receives relatively sympathetic treatment in the book. Shell did wrong, acknowledges Bower, but other majors were booking reserves in a similar way and escaped censure or lobbied their way out of it.
But it’s not a book that leaves the reader feeling positive about the characters who dominate the world’s most important industry. “Oil men can play to any rules they are asked to play,” Bower quotes former Shell chairman John Jennings. “Oil breeds arrogance because it’s so powerful.”
THE ABOVE ARE EXTRACTS FROM DEREK BROWER’S REVIEW: FULL REVIEW
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.
