by Angela Macdonald-Smith: Mar 24, 2017 at 11:00 PM
Outgoing Shell Australia chairman Andrew Smith has held up Australia’s faltering energy policy and its “complacent” stance on competitiveness as risks to the energy giant’s appetite for investment here to grow in “new energy” areas such as renewables.
Mr Smith, who started with Shell as a refinery engineer in Geelong in 1986 and is being promoted after four years as “country chair”, said Australia needs “massive” investment to move towards a position of “net zero” emissions.
But the private sector needs certainty around energy policy, fiscal policy and a competitive business climate to make the necessary investments, he said.
Terrific run
“We’ve had a terrific run with the Australian economy – we are now up to 23 years of uninterrupted economic growth – but I do see we have become complacent and the world moves on,” Mr Smith said.
“The chickens start to come home to roost and we see that with the energy system now.”
Shell has named Australia alongside Oman and Brunei as locations where it is examining opportunities to advance its “gas-plus-renewables” strategy, to support what chief executive Ben van Beurden describes as an “unstoppable” transition to a cleaner economy.
But Mr Smith said that while Australia had a lot of sun and wind to underpin such investments, regulatory certainty was also important, making it “premature” to move ahead.
“There are a lot of opportunities around the world and … energy policy is quite uncertain in Australia and that makes it somewhat difficult.”
Mr Smith, who will head Shell’s global trading and supply business in London, also took aim at the failure for activists to be held to account, leading to “daft” policy outcomes such as the ban on onshore drilling in Victoria.
After Shell’s £47 billion takeover of BG Group in 2015, Shell owns one of the three LNG export ventures in Queensland, which have been criticised for sending east coast gas offshore and driving up prices for local manufacturers.
Hypocrisy charge
But Mr Smith said the gas wouldn’t have been developed without the LNG market and renewed his attack on the Victorian government for its onshore drilling restrictions, describing calls for gas from Queensland to be sent south to Victoria as “rank hypocrisy”.
“Why does it think it’s OK to have the same industry that they won’t allow to develop supply the gas? That just does harm to consumers in Victoria, it does harm to manufacturing.”
Shell also owns 50 per cent of the large undeveloped Arrow CSG resource in Queensland, together with PetroChina, which Mr Smith said the oil major was looking to develop “as soon as we can”.
After dropping plans for a separate LNG project using Arrow gas several years ago, work is focusing on bringing costs down and finding an “economically attractive” way of developing the gas using existing infrastructure, complicated by the different partners involved.
Mr Smith’s tenure as Shell Australia chair included the $2.9 billion sale of the refining business to Vitol, and the start-up of the over-budget $US54 billion Gorgon LNG project, of which Shell owns 25 per cent. It also included the decision not to proceed with the Woodside Petroleum-led Browse project as a floating venture.
He described Gorgon is “a great resource base” offering 50 years of gas supply. But he was wary on the potential for a fourth LNG train at Gorgon, putting the focus instead on fully utilising existing processing infrastructure.
“The cheapest LNG train will be the ones already built,” Mr Smith said.
Whether Shell supported gas from Browse being transported south for processing at LNG plants at Karratha, however, was yet to be seen.
“The economics will decide which is the right way to develop the Browse Basin,” he said.
Shell is expected to sell its remaining 13.3 per cent stake in Woodside as part of a $US30 billion divestment target for 2016-18 but Mr Smith declined to comment on current thinking.
Shell’s former head of oil sands in Canada, Zoe Yujnovich, an Australian citizen who has also worked at Rio Tinto, is taking over as chair in Australia.
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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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