By Karl West
Last updated at 10:37 PM on 18th July 2010
Under-fire oil company BP has started talking to leading shareholders about a radical restructuring, including a break-up of the business.
The early stage discussions with investors have focused on a possible sale of the group’s petrol stations and refineries, scaling back its troubled US operations and ramping-up in-house engineering instead of outsourcing.
Spinning off the oil major’s so-called ‘downstream’ assets has long been mooted by analysts and investors.
It accounts for just 3 per cent of group profits, and yet employs the lion’s share of BP’s workforce, accounting for 50,000 of its 80,000 staff.
BP is also moving ahead with a sale of about 10 per cent of its assets, including its stake in the giant Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska.
The overhaul would leave BP a significantly smaller player with a much greater focus on exploration in emerging oil regions, such as West Africa and Brazil.
Talks with investors about ‘Future BP’ follow its part in the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A source said: ‘All sorts of things have been discussed.’
A BP spokesman declined to comment.
On Saturday, the oil group extended for another 24 hours a critical test of its ruptured Macondo well.
BP stopped the gusher on Thursday evening after fitting it with a 45-tonne cap.
Last night, BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles said he was ‘hopeful’ that the ruptured well can remain sealed until a pair of relief wells permanently stop the flow.
‘Right now there is no target set to open the well back up to flow,’ he added.
‘Clearly we don’t want to re-initiate flow into the Gulf if we don’t have to.’
BP last month said it was making a £13billion fund available to compensate people affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The environmental disaster has enraged the US public and angered the White house, which is also asking difficult questions about BP’s role in a deal between Britain and Libya for the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi.
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.
