The management team wants the company to focus on long-term returns, which means investing in different types of projects.
Tyler Crowe: (TMFDirtyBird):Aug 17, 2017
Like so many other integrated oil and gas companies, Royal Dutch Shell‘s (NYSE:RDS-A) (NYSE:RDS-B) goal of the past several years was to preserve capital by any means possible in the short term without giving up too much of the future. Based on the company’s most recent earnings report, it has done a pretty good job of achieving that first goal. The second part? That is all up to what Shell’s management does from here.There were several hints on the company’s most recent conference call that suggest Shell has developed a new playbook that looks very different than its prior one. Here are quotes from that conference call that show Shell’s possible future.
Making the grade
Shell has been trying to pull off an elaborate corporate shift over the past couple of years. It wanted to absorb and integrate BG Group into Shell, unload about $30 billion in assets from the combined company to lower total debt levels, reduce operating costs and capital spending, and get back to generating enough cash to cover capital expenditures and dividends. To make this transformation even more challenging, it was trying to do it in a low oil price environment.
Based on the company’s most recent performance, it looks like management has pulled it off. Here’s CEO Ben van Beurden taking stock of the situation.
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.
