Shell’s failed blundering attempt to kill my royaldutchshell.website

By John Donovan (last updated 5 Sept 2021)

Last week, a CYBERSECURITY INTELLIGENCE outfit acting for Shell issued a 5-day ultimatum on behalf of Shell to the company hosting my royaldutchshell.website.

I would not have had a clue about the ultimatum letter if the hosting company had not tipped me off about what was going on behind my back at Shell’s direction.

For 26 years, I have used the Internet as a medium to criticise and expose Shell’s unscrupulous dishonest activities, including, for example, the Shell securities fraud that ruined Shell’s reputation. read more

Shell seeks Alaska lease extension, but no plans to return

Extension seen as way to make the leases more attractive to a potential buyer

Oil company Shell is seeking an extension of leases it holds in Alaska as a way to make the leases more attractive to a potential buyer and does not itself plan a return to operations in the state, spokesperson Curtis Smith said Friday.

Smith said the leases for which the company is seeking an extension represent the bulk of leases Shell still holds in Alaska. read more

RETIRED SHELL CHIEF SAFETY OFFICER: Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) has gained its reputation as an organisation with no morality that if it can get away with it will lie repeatedly even when trapped by its own evidence, by its own falsehoods. It seems based on its track record RDS has no justification to support its protestations about public authorities using whatever legitimate means they can to dig out from the corruption cesspit the truth.  

By Bill Campbell [from 1996 to retirement Upstream Senior Maintenance Engineer, Global Consultant on this and Techical and Finance audits before retirement as SIEP Audit Manager]

Re the article on the Moerdijk explosion and the Dutch prosecutors getting to the truth don’t you think it’s a bit rich that RDS protests? Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) has gained its reputation as an organisation with no morality that if it can get away with it will lie repeatedly even when trapped by its own evidence, by its own falsehoods. read more

By Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage – November 28, 2017

The federal government has given an Italian company the go-ahead to explore for oil in Arctic waters this winter.

It’s the first oil exploration in Arctic federal waters since Shell abandoned its campaign in 2015.

The company, Eni, aims to begin drilling in December. It will operate from an existing man-made gravel island called Spy Island. Spy Island is about three miles offshore, in state waters west of Prudhoe Bay.

The prospect is about four miles away from the island, so Eni plans to use extended-reach drilling. According to the company, it will be be the longest extended-reach well in Alaska. read more

By William Yardley: 18 Nov 2016

The Obama administration said Friday it was banning offshore oil drilling in the Arctic through 2022, a move that prompted widespread praise from conservation groups but raised questions over how long the decision will stand just two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

A new five-year leasing program prohibits any drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas — an environmental battleground in recent years —and also blocks expansion in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, while allowing some new leasing in the Gulf of Mexico. read more

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. read more

Terry Macalister: Saturday 13 August 2016 07.00 BST

Arguments around the Arctic have more recently centred on oil company drilling such as Shell’s controversial and now abandoned attempts to explore off the coast of Alaska and new plans to open up the Norwegian far north.

But the increasing scope for industrialising the region as the ice melts has also triggered geopolitical tensions and talk of a new cold war because the legal status of who owns what up there is uncertain.

FULL ARTICLE read more

LONDON/HOUSTON | BY RON BOUSSO AND ERWIN SEBA: Mon Jul 4, 2016 3:25pm BST

Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) has asked Saudi Aramco for up to $2 billion (£1.5 billion) as part of the breakup of their giant Motiva Enterprises refining joint venture in the United States, the latest stumbling point in a partnership fraught with tension.

The payment would be compensation for the Saudi company retaining a larger share of the nearly two decade-old JV. Its split was announced in March and is expected to be completed in October but disagreements over the payment could postpone the final date, sources close to the talks told Reuters. read more

The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said a 2 mile by 13 mile (about 3 km by 21 km) sheen was visible in the sea about 97 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The sheen is near Shell’s Glider Field, a group of four subsea wells whose production flows through a subsea manifold to the Brutus platform, which sits in water with a depth of 2,900 feet (884 m).

In a statement, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said a company helicopter observed the sheen on Thursday, and that the wells were under control after it isolated the leak and shut in production. read more

By John Donovan

In June 2015, I published an article by a regular contributor about the notorious Noble Discoverer, one of two drill ships used by Shell in their notorious offshore Alaska drilling campaign.

The insider described Shell’s fleet of five vessels sent into Arctic waters as ancient rust buckets fit only for the scrapyard.  

Apparently an entirely appropriate assessment, as I understand from a different source that the Noble Discover may well be on her way now to the infamous Alang shipbreaker yards in India. read more

Shell gives up on all but one Chukchi Sea lease

Yereth Rosen: Alaska Dispatch News: May 9, 2016

Royal Dutch Shell has decided to give up all but one of its federal offshore leases in the Chukchi Sea, bringing what appears to be an anticlimactic end to its multibillion-dollar effort to turn those icy Arctic waters off northwestern Alaska into a new oil-producing frontier.

“After extensive consideration and evaluation, we have made the decision to relinquish all but one of our federal offshore leases in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. This action is consistent with our earlier decision not to explore offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future,” company spokesman Curtis Smith said in an email on Monday. read more

That’s the hypothesis of David Houseknecht, one of the region’s foremost geologists and project chief for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Energy Resources Program for Alaska.

Other experts say the idea helps explain why public well results and rock chips have shown a large amount of gas in the reservoir but limited evidence of oil. Unlike Alaska politicians who jumped at the chance to blame federal regulations for Shell’s decision to abandon the Arctic, the scientists say the answer is simply a matter of geology — the oil just wasn’t there in big volumes.   read more

To many analysts, it looked like Odum was pushed into leaving.

Steven Mufson March 11, 2016

Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil, was attending a meeting of the parent company’s executive committee in Singapore when word trickled in that an exploration well drilled in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea — the crowning step in a multi-year $7 billion quest — was a dry hole.

Maybe not bone dry. In a recent interview, Odum wouldn’t say. But in the oil business glossary, a dry hole is one that can’t pay off commercially, and Shell’s hole definitely qualified. The parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, abruptly dropped any further drilling — a setback for the industry, though a relief for environmentalists.

For years, they had fought a vigorous, litigious and politically intense battle over the Chukchi. Meanwhile Shell, lured by potentially rich rewards, had overcome a couple of embarrassing rig mishaps at sea and patiently navigated the courts and the Obama administration’s permitting process. Now, geology had rendered its verdict. read more

Sunday 17 JAN 2016

German carmaker Volkswagen was one of the “most disliked” companies for pressure groups last year following its emissions scandal, a survey has found.

Shell was the most criticised by campaigners, followed by Monsanto, which makes genetically modified food.

Half of the top-10 most criticised companies on Sigwatch’s list were energy firms, because of “the elephant in the room – climate change,” Mr Blood said.

Top was Shell, but TransCanada, ExxonMobil, EDF and BP also featured. read more

Dermot Cole: December 8, 2015

Fresh assertions that the Obama administration smothered Shell’s Arctic dreams followed the news that Statoil gave up on its leases, the second company to abandon plans to look for oil in the Chukchi Sea.

Citing market conditions and noting the leases “are no longer considered competitive within Statoil’s global portfolio,” the Norwegian company announced its withdrawal plans Nov. 17. The company had long taken a cautious approach in the region, using Shell as a bellwether. Earlier this year it had scaled back its plans to drill in the Barents Sea because of low oil prices. read more

A months-long investigation shows how the energy giant pressured the Interior Department during the company’s gung-ho Arctic push—and got most of what it wanted (except oil).

By Barry Yeoman: December 08, 2015

Last May, four months before the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell suspended exploration in offshore Alaska, Christopher Putnam needed to get something off his chest.

Putnam is 44, originally from Texas, a trained wildlife biologist who also served as an Army infantry sergeant during the Iraq War. For almost six years he has worked in Alaska for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, protecting marine mammals. It has been his job to ensure that Shell’s plans to drill more than 60 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea—the wild Arctic water between Alaska and Siberia—wouldn’t harm Pacific walruses, particularly the juveniles, calves, and nursing mothers that dominate the Chukchi during the drilling season. read more