By Nick Goodway: 19 April 2016
My eye was caught yesterday by a document from Royal Dutch Shell snappily entitled Report on Payments to Governments for 2015. (I know, I don’t lead a very exciting life.) This is one of the myriad new reports that corporates are forced to release each year in the interests of greater transparency and good governance.
But for once, alongside the hundreds of such reports I have binned, there was some interesting stuff here. In short, the report details how much Shell paid to each government in the countries in which it operates in terms of their share of production, royalties, taxes and fees.
The five countries that collected the most from Shell last year were Nigeria ($4.95 billion, or £3.5 billion), Malaysia ($4.41 billion), Norway ($4.16 billion), Oman ($2.11 billion) and Iraq ($1.36 billion). Those are not insubstantial sums to several of those countries, and the payment to Norway helps to explain why it now runs the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
Running further down the list of 24 countries enjoying Shell’s beneficence there is Qatar on $990 million, Denmark on $576 million and even China on $459 million.
So how did the UK fare in this handout last year? Somewhat bizarrely, the answer is that we, the British taxpayer, actually handed Shell a net $123 million. That was made up of a $128 million tax rebate less $5.46 million paid in licence fees.
In fact, the amount the taxman returned to Shell for its Brent and Northern North Sea properties was £154 million. That is despite the fact that Shell currently operates other fields including Curlew, Gannet, Nelson and Clipper in the North Sea, all of which are producing oilfields. I have always been party to the view that the Thatcher government sold our North Sea oil inheritance too early and too cheaply. That is highlighted by how well other nations seem to have cashed in on their natural resources. I hadn’t realised that one day we would be paying the oil majors for the privilege of them extracting our oil and gas.
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.
