Daily Telegraph
Total, the French energy giant, and four other companies must pay £9m in fines for safety violations that led to an oil depot explosion measuring 2.4 on the Richter scale.
A court ordered Total to pay the largest sum of £6.2m for its involvement in the blast at Buncefield five years ago – Europe’s largest ever fire outside a war zone. It caused £1bn of damage, injured 43 people and forced 2,000 residents to be evacuated from their homes near the site in Hertfordshire.
Hertfordshire Oil Storage, Total’s joint venture with Chevron that controlled the depot, was separately fined £2.45m.
“We fully accept our responsibilities for the events that took place and recognise the devastating consequences that the incident had on the surrounding communities and businesses,” said Lee Young, Total UK’s head of legal and company secretary.
Two UK oil giants, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, were also implicated through their joint venture, British Pipeline Agency, which was forced to pay a lesser sum of £780,000.
Motherwell Control Systems and TAV Engineering were both fined £1,000 with £500 in costs.
“The failures which led in particular to the explosion were failures which could have combined to produce these consequences at almost any hour of any day,” said David Calvert-Smith, the judge who sentenced the companies at St Albans Crown Court, Hertfordshire, on Friday.
“The fact that they did so at 6:01 on a Sunday morning was little short of miraculous.”
No one was killed in the explosion, which happened when 250,000 litres of petrol spilled from a storage tank and caught fire, while safety alarms failed to operate.
Des Collins, a lawyer representing injured workers, said the sentences were “hardly even a slap on the wrists for endangering the lives and livelihoods of so many”.
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: 
MORE DETAILS:
A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
