Kashagan AKA “Cash All Gone”
Forgot the initial cost estimate, probably around $8-10 billion. Now 10+ years too late and ballooned to $50 billion. Most normal companies would have gone bust long ago.
Shell inherited some beauties from the boys of the roaring 90s. I hope someone will write a book one day on this era.
Reserve crisis, Pearl, Sakhalin, Kashagan, Alaska, tarsands, and I must have forgotten a few. Repeated over-promise and under-delivery. All many billions over budget, extreme overruns in startup, loss in AAA status, removal of operational and technical expertise. I find the silence on Prelude ominous. Probably goes the same way as the others.
Don’t forget that in the early 90s we were by very far the biggest private operator of oil and gas in the world. About as big as the next three or four together! We were earning the money for the other majors! We were very conservative, hardly borrowed money, had the best finance systems and were technically superior to the (all) others. That had a small price, in the eyes of MBAs we had too many people per barrel produced etc. and there were some minor inefficiencies in the R&D. Not very strong top down management, operating companies reinvented the wheel often. But people felt safe; it was possible to make mistakes and learn from them.
Then came Herkstroter and his bankers and MBAs and we were told to go for shareholder value, borrow more and trim down on technical staff. The rest is history.
We had AAA rating and could fix any problem. We did not waste billions like the ones mentioned above by simply stupid behaviour caused by not daring to speak up.
Glad I have worked in the good old days!
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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.
