Posts under ‘Shell Chemicals’

Families are leaving Beaver County as Shell’s ethane cracker sets to open

By Reid Frazier | The Allegheny Front

Cheryl and Luke Hardy moved to Beaver County in 2012. Luke came from Albany, New York, where he was finishing graduate school, and Cheryl, from Washington, D.C.

The location of Beaver County was equidistant from their jobs – Luke’s at a university in Ohio and Cheryl’s in the Pittsburgh suburbs.

They eventually bought a house in Beaver, an attractive town on the Ohio River with historic homes and a walkable business district. The couple enjoyed events and festivals in town and going to restaurants there. When their children were born, they walked them to a nearby playground and thought of someday walking them to the nearby elementary school.

They barely noticed in 2016 when Shell announced it was building a multi-billion dollar plastics plant, called an ethane cracker, across the river. As construction workers began building the massive plant, it became harder to ignore every time they drove their kids to daycare. read more

The Telegraph

Energy bosses are provoking Sunak into another ruinous tax raid

BP chief executive may live to regret calling his company a ‘cash machine’: Shell unveiled a quadrupling of profits and a bumper payout for shareholders. Chief Ben van Beurden sounded cock-a-hoop. It had been “a momentous year”, he declared.

You’ve got to hand it to the bosses of Britain’s energy giants. The response of the industry’s top figures to growing calls from the Labour Party, trade unions, and eco-activists for a windfall tax has been so risible that a Conservative Government is now said to be warming to the idea, having repeatedly ruled it out. read more

CNBC

Big Oil braces for shareholder revolt over climate plans in proxy voting season

Sam Meredith@SMEREDITH19 PUBLISHED WED, MAY 11 2022

• Oil and gas majors on both sides of the Atlantic are scheduled to hold their annual general meetings in the coming weeks.
• The forthcoming proxy season comes amid intensifying pressure on Big Oil to set short- and medium-term targets in line with the landmark Paris Agreement.
• At present, not a single oil and gas major is aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goal of curbing global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

LONDON — Some of the world’s largest corporate emitters face the prospect of a shareholder rebellion this month, with climate-related votes poised to spike throughout the proxy season.

Oil and gas majors on both sides of the Atlantic are scheduled to hold their annual general meetings in the coming weeks. Existing climate strategies are up for votes alongside a range of investor-led resolutions targeting emissions reductions. read more

Shell plc publishes first quarter 2022 press release

May 05, 2022 02:01 ET | Source: Shell plc

London, May 5, 2022

“The war in Ukraine is first and foremost a human tragedy, but it has also caused significant disruption to global energy markets and has shown that secure, reliable and affordable energy simply cannot be taken for granted. The impacts of this uncertainty and the higher cost that comes with it are being felt far and wide. We have been engaging with governments, our customers and suppliers to work through the challenging implications and provide support and solutions where we can. read more

S&PG Global

Platts

Shell expects new US petrochemical complex to start up by year-end: CFO

• Author Kristen Hays 
• Editor Benjamin Morse 
• Commodity Petrochemicals

Shell Chemicals expects its new petrochemical complex in southwest Pennsylvania to come online by year-end, Royal Dutch Shell CFO Jessica Uhl said Feb. 3.

She said during the company’s Q4 2021 earnings call that the company was finishing up the project in 2022, “which should hopefully be up and running by the end of the year.”

The project also will mark Shell’s re-entry into polyolefins. In 2017, CEO Ben Van Beurden said during a company earnings call that Shell has been in polyolefins “through a very difficult convoluted way in the past through a number of joint ventures,” but the new complex “will be a re-entry in a way that will sustain our position as a polyolefins player.” read more

Pennsylvania ethylene cracker plant more than 95% built as Shell prepares for operation

Shell Chemicals on Monday confirmed the company’s multi-billion dollar Potter Township complex, long considered one of the largest construction projects in the nation, is now more than 95% complete. 

The company has yet to announce a firm opening date, but crews began start-up activities early last year around the time Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden announced the chemical plant will be “fully operational” in 2022. read more

Extract from a letter to the Beaver County Times about Shell’s new Pennsylvania  ethylene cracker plant

FROM DAVE SUTTON

In great detail, the article describes how the opening of this plant will render the Beaver Valley environment untenable for human habitation.

According to the self-proclaimed experts quoted, cancer will be rampant, the air will be toxic along with the water. Even the light and noise from the plant will destroy everyone’s well-being. However, the Beaver County Emergency Services stands ready to aid at a moment’s notice. read more

The Times

Critics, defenders debate cracker plant impact as project nears completion

Shell Is the Greenest Big Oil Company. Look What That Got It.

Shekhar Patil: 31 Oct 2021

Royal Dutch Shell PLC shows much that is wrong with environmental, social and governance investing. The Anglo-Dutch company was the first to target reduced carbon emissions from customers, has gone further than any of the other oil supermajors to shift its direction away from fossil fuels and is closest of any of them to meeting the Paris carbon target. It even has a better ESG score than electric-car leader Tesla or hydrogen wonder stock Plug Power. read more

By John Donovan

Last Sunday I was described in the Channel 4 TV documentary Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant as Shell’s No1 Enemy and as Shell’s nightmare. (Transcript of the relevant segment)

Within days I seem to have lost both titles to a billionaire upstart, Daniel Loeb, who seems intent on breaking up Shell.

From my unique perspective on Shell senior management over recent decades, he is right to question competence and direction.

How has Shell ended up with a foe (me) operating a website using the top-level domain name royaldutchshellplc.com and as a consequence dealing on Shell’s behalf with job applications and all manner of other email correspondence meant for Shell? This is the humiliating situation Shell has been in since 2005. Evidently, no one at Shell has had the gumption to do anything to put an end to such a farce. read more

Forbes

One Foot On The Dock: Why Breaking Up Shell May Be Just The Beginning

Activist investor Dan Loeb made headlines this week with his move (through his Third Point LLP) to take a stake in Royal Dutch Shell and then argue that it should be broken up into two entities.

His proposal is to spin out what he calls the “legacy business” and an “energy transition business” (the latter to include LNG, renewables, and energy marketing). His argument is that the company is currently satisfying few stakeholders (shareholders, ESG advocates, etc) by trying to do everything under one roof. read more

The Pennsylvania Petrochemical Complex is more commonly referred to as the ‘Shell Cracker Plant’

PENNSYLVANIA RECORD

Class action lawsuit: Shell Oil Company workers allege they were not paid time-and-a-half for overtime

By Nicholas Malfitano | Oct 26, 2021

PITTSBURGH – A class action lawsuit brought on behalf of workers at Shell Oil Company alleges that the employees in question did not receive time-and-a-half compensation when they worked overtime hours.

Robert J. Merryman of Beaver Falls filed suit in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas on Oct. 15 versus Global Scaffold Construction Services, Inc. and Christopher Fannin, of Walker, La. read more

‘Activist’ Billionaire hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb buys $500m stake in Royal Dutch Shell and demand it splits in two to focus on renewable energy

• Billionaire hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, head of Third Point LLC, has acquired $500million in shares of Royal Dutch Shell PLC 
• In a letter obtained by The Wall Street Journal the firm has demanded that the oil major to separate into two separate entities 
• One would include Shell’s legacy businesses and provide steady cash flow while the other would house renewables and other units needing more investment 
• Third Point’s suggestions come after Exxon shareholders elected a third director nominated by activist hedge fund Engine No 1 to the energy company’s board
• Alexander Karsner, a senior Google strategist, joins environmental scientist Kaisa Hietala and former Andeavor CEO Gregory Goff on the 12-person board 

By SHANNON THALER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 04:46, 28 October 2021 | UPDATED: 06:22, 28 October 2021

A billionaire hedge fund manager has acquired a large stake in Royal Dutch Shell PLC and is demanding that the oil major to separate into two separate companies.

Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC is pushing for the separation to attract new investors and hold on to current ones as many have sold their shares over concerns that Shell is not environmentally friendly.

According to The Wall Street Journal the activist hedge fund’s stake in Shell is worth more than $500million and is one of Shell’s largest investors. read more

EXTRACT FROM A U.S. SENATE REPORT 1943

By John Donovan

A recently published book revealed the extent to which Shell played a key role in Hitler’s war effort. Unfortunately for Shell, new information about Shell’s Nazi history emerges on a regular basis.

The information below is from a hearing held in the United States Senate in 1943. It is available online as a result of a digitization project by Google.

The featured extract has the headline SHELL OIL INTERESTS OFFERED TO HELP GERMANY EVADE BLOCKADE. It is about a business deal between Shell and its German partner in many major ventures, I.G. Farben. The chemical giant supplied the Zyklon-B gas used to exterminate millions of innocent people in the Holocaust. Many I.G. Farben directors were found guilty of war crimes. read more

Sniffing out danger? That odor from the Shell cracker plant put the community on alert

Aug. 10, 2021, 10:50 PM

Shell Oil Company has agreed to pay $29.5 million towards ongoing cleanup costs at the McColl Superfund Site in Fullerton, Calif., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The cost recovery settlement will go towards cleaning up waste and contaminated groundwater at the site, a disposal area for petroleum refinery waste contaminated with benzene, metals, and a volatile chemical known as tetrahydrothiophene, according to a federal consent decree. A federal court earlier found Shell liable for the cleanup as one of the parties responsible for the contamination. read more