Friday, January 24, 2014
JOHN DONOVAN JANUARY 24, 2014 ARTICLES
Iran courts western oil majors at Davos
FINANCIAL TIMES
In a closed-door meeting on Thursday, including BP,Eni, Royal Dutch Shell and Total, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Rouhani and his oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told executives to submit contracts they would like to see Iran adopt.
Non-Payment By Shell After Oil Spill Triggers Protests
A number of Ogoni people picketed First Bank in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, on Wednesday (22 January 2014). Their protests aimed at the execution of a judgment of a Federal High Court, which ordered Shell to pay N80. 3 billion to the Ogoni community, in compensation for an oil spill in the area. The protesters required the bank, which is Shell’s guarantor, to fulfil its obligations.
Banking activities at First Bank Area office in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, was disrupted on Wednesday [22 January 2014] as protesting members of Ogoni ethnic group in the state picketed the bank.
The over 1000 protesters picketed the bank to push for the payment of N80.3 billion to Ogoni community by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) in connection with an oil spill.
A Federal High Court in Port Harcourt had ordered SPDC to pay N80. 3 billion to Ogoni community for the oil spill in the area.
Simeon Monokpo, leader of the group, said in an interview that his group was at the bank before 6.00 a.m. to picket it and stop banking activities.
“Our protest is in respect of the court judgment in our favour by the high court which ordered Shell to pay the community N80.3 billion and first bank was the company’s guarantor in the trial.
He said the money was expected to be deposited with the bank by SPDC while its appeal went on, but the appeal had since failed.
“So, we are demanding that being the guarantor to Shell, the bank should pay us the money.
“We are saying that First bank should wire that money into the account of the community, represented by Barrister Henry Nwaosu.
“The court order we got on Thursday [16 January 2014] directed First bank to pay us the money forthwith,” Mr. Monokpo said.
Mr. Monokpo said that the picketing would not only continue, but would be extended to all the branches of First Bank in Rivers if the money was not paid.
“We shall extend this demonstration (picketing) to all First Bank branches in the state if we are not paid; and the bank will not operate until the authorities obey the court order by paying us,” he said.
The protesters deposited a white coffin bearing a live chick and a bottle of Fanta on top at the bank entrance, which signified burial, while the locked gates were sealed with fresh palm fronts.
Mr. Monokpo said that the gods in the community were annoyed with SPDC’s conducts in Ogoni land.
The major spill took place 20 years ago in Ebubu Village in Eleme Local Government Area.
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
PIPELINE INCIDENTS SINCE 1986
SHARED FROM : http://www.upworthy.com/
WATCH: This Is One Time-Lapse Big Oil Doesn't Want You To See
Oil spills often bring to mind images of oil-drenched birds and blackened coastlines, but this incredible time-lapse video presents the human and financial cost of every oil spill since 1986. Politics aside, these stats are downright disturbing.
This video was made with data from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration by the Center for Biological Diversity in the hopes of revealing a troubling history of pipeline spills ahead of the Keystone XL decision.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Madagascar has a plague epidemic — and it's spreading
SHARED FROM : Melanie Jones info@watchdog.net
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The bubonic plague once wiped a third of the world's population — and now, Black Death is sparking one of the worst outbreaks globally in years.
Black Death has already killed 20 villagers after a sudden outbreak in Madagascar, and the Red Cross warns the island nation is at risk of a plague epidemic. Even worse, strains of the disease seem to be spreading, and may even be mutating to populate at lower elevations.
The World Health Organization needs to send help to Madagascar, and to keep this potentially deadly disease from spreading. With antibiotics, bubonic plague is now treatable — but without them, this devastating illness will cause lymph swelling, pustules, gangrene, and an agonizing death.
That's a fate no one should suffer — and a problem we can't afford to ignore. Please, join us in calling on WHO to start beating this plague virus back, treating victims and keeping it from spreading!
PETITION TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: Don't ignore the bubonic plague outbreak in Madagascar. Help the Red Cross keep it from being an epidemic, sending medicine and stopping it from spreading the other nations.
Click here to sign -- it just takes a second.
Thanks,
-- The folks at Watchdog.net
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
JOHN DONOVAN JANUARY 23, 2014 ARTICLES
Ex-Shell Oil president: ‘I felt extorted’
The former president of Shell Oil USA didn’t candy-coat it: America’s political fund-raising system, he said, amounts to legalized extortion. “I feel extorted,” John Hofmeister told CNN’s Drew Griffin. “Every time I wrote a check I felt that it was a form of extortion, the price of entry, because of the reception that you got when you contributed versus the reception when you did not contribute.” Hofmeister, who ran Shell Oil USA from 2005 through 2008, said he was constantly being asked for political donations, by members of both parties.
David Fitzpatrick and Drew Griffin, CNN Investigations: January 23, 2014 — Updated 1324 GMT (2124 HKT)
(CNN) — The former president of Shell Oil USA didn’t candy-coat it: America’s political fund-raising system, he said, amounts to legalized extortion.
“I feel extorted,” John Hofmeister told CNN’s Drew Griffin. “Every time I wrote a check I felt that it was a form of extortion, the price of entry, because of the reception that you got when you contributed versus the reception when you did not contribute.”
Hofmeister, who ran Shell Oil USA from 2005 through 2008, said he was constantly being asked for political donations, by members of both parties. It’s against Shell Oil policy, he said, for corporate contributions to be made. So any donations came out of his own pocket — something, he said, he felt forced to do.
Hofmeister said he and other oil executives were summoned to more than a dozen Capitol Hill hearings in 2008 when the retail price of gasoline began to skyrocket. In one hearing, a member of Congress suggested that nationalizing U.S. oil companies might be a way to tamp down prices at the pump.
Not long after one of those hearings, Hofmeister told CNN, several members of Congress pressed him for political contributions. And it’s all perfectly legal.
The influence of politics and money has become a legal game of extortion, critics say, made all the more insidious because the so-called extortionists are politicians who write the laws and legally manipulate the system for their own gain.
“It is a feeding frenzy that’s going on,” said Peter Schweizer of theGovernment Accountability Institute, a nonprofit research group. He’s written a book called “Extortion,” describing America’s political system as one where lawmakers learn how to transform power into cash. “I think we need to somehow break the back of the ability of politicians to leverage their position to extract donations,” Schweizer said.
“Most fund-raisers will tell you the place that you start raising money is from people who can’t say no,” said Schweizer. “So if you’re a government contractor or you’re somebody that’s doing business with the state or federal government, you’re going to be put in a position where you’re going to be expected to raise funds, because if you don’t, the fear might be that you’re going to lose the contract.”
Hofmeister, the former Shell executive, told CNN he realized he would have to cough up several thousand dollars of his own money each year, “if I am going to do my job.”
He said the system is “pay to play” and he agrees that the word “extortion” is accurate, “as harsh as a word that is.” “We talk about corruption in Third World countries. In this case, the corrupters have written a law to make it legal to the corruptees. And I consider that atrocious in the name of democracy,” Hofmeister said.
Schweizer didn’t seem surprised by Hofmeister’s story.
“You hear that from businessmen all the time — that they come to Washington, they appear before a congressional committee, they are grilled on a matter and it is made pretty clear after the fact that, ‘If you make donations or if you do fund-raising for me, I might understand issues a little bit better as far as you are concerned,’” Schweizer told CNN.
It’s just business, said Hofmeister. But he said it’s also a process that includes a healthy dose of political theater.
“The political theater of the hearing matters to them. And that’s exactly the mindset which I used to go into the hearing,” Hofmeister said. To please the powerful politicians, he found himself asking himself questions like “What role shall I play?”
“If you’re testifying, you’re in the subordinate role because the members are always up in a dais looking down at you,” said Hofmeister. “So you know you are subordinate to them. This is their town, their home, you’re an invited guest. But when the hearing is over … the curtains close on the theater. It’s back to business. And business is raising money.”
Now, more than five years after leaving Shell, Hofmeister chairs theNational Urban League and serves on an advisory committee for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Royal Dutch Shell: Reminiscences of an old EP hand
Then came the roaring 90s. Everything had to be done faster, shareholder value, bonuses, do like ENRON etc etc. This led to an influx of fast talking americans with me first, rest later attitude and the contractor will fix it. Scandals like the Tejas Gas disaster (carefully kept away from the press) and other bad things emerged (just check out the Donovan website). And the fast talking americans then swarmed out over Shell International and changed the culture. Me first, screw the rest. The rest is history…..
Controversy over Shell/Gazprom £4 million gifts to Cambridge University
Graphic from the remarkable Guardian newspaper article:Unloveable Shell, the goddess of oil (Click on image to enlarge): Sub-headline: For a century, Shell has explored the Earth to make our lives more comfortable, But in its wake, says Andrew Rowell, lies a trail of corruption, despoliation and death
The University of Cambridge has come under fire for its acceptance of two benefactions from controversial oil giants, Shell and Gazprom. Gazprom, a Russian oil giant, is the first company to drill arctic oil and was the subject of a high profile Arctic 30 protest. An Amnesty International report found Shell to have made “deeply suspect and often untrue” claims about the causes and volumes of oil spills in the Niger Delta. Speaking exclusively to The Cambridge Student, Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace UK’s Senior Climate Advisor said: “Shell and Gazprom need to buy a lot of social capital – they’re drilling for oil in the Arctic without any credible response plan for the inevitable spills.
140 of the 600 oil spills in the Niger Delta between January and September 2013 were caused by Shell Image credit: Sosialistisk Ungdom – SU
Bad benefactions: “Do they know what they’re selling?”
Story: Amy Provan
The University of Cambridge has come under fire for its acceptance of two benefactions from controversial oil giants, Shell and Gazprom.
Shell is giving £3.8 million to support the establishment of a laboratory for the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. £260,000 from Gazprom will support Russian language training in the University.
Yet Greenpeace UK has criticised the University for accepting donations from two such contentious sources.
Gazprom, a Russian oil giant, is the first company to drill arctic oil and was the subject of a high profile Arctic 30 protest. An Amnesty International report found Shell to have made “deeply suspect and often untrue” claims about the causes and volumes of oil spills in the Niger Delta. Rather ironically, the benefactions were announced alongside a continuation of the Arcadia Fund’s support for the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, which funds the Executive Director.
Speaking exclusively to The Cambridge Student, Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace UK’s Senior Climate Advisor said: “Shell and Gazprom need to buy a lot of social capital – they’re drilling for oil in the Arctic without any credible response plan for the inevitable spills.
“If they have a blow-out like the one BP had in the Gulf of Mexico, it could be spewing crude oil into the Arctic ocean for a year before they cap it. When that happens, they’re hoping these donations will act as good PR for them, and that’s what they’re buying here – respectable allies which they expect to need. The question is, do Cambridge know what they’re selling?” One student of Russian at Cambridge finds it a “disgrace that the University should accept funding from a company with such a controversial reputation. I would hate to think that my Russian teaching is being funded by a company that carries out the drilling of oil in the arctic and encouraged the imprisonment of environmental protestors.”
William Kerr, another Russian linguist, bemoaned the lack of funding for his department. “It isn’t ideal, but any contribution to the study of Russian regardless of where it comes from, is something to be welcomed. Funding from a company such as Gazprom is certainly better than no funding at all.”
Meanwhile Cambridge University Amnesty International has said that “the University has an irrefutable responsibility to thoroughly check the sources of all donations and ensure that the benefactions received do not induce or encourage the violation of human rights conventions and comply with the highest ethical standards.”
In a joint statement, CUSU and its Ethical Affairs team told TCS “These benefactions emphasise our university’s lack of an explicit and formalised policy for vetting the donations it receives. We hope that our ongoing dialogue with the University will result in the development of a policy to assess firstly the environmental and social track records of benefactors, and secondly the impact of their donations on teaching and research.”
According to its website, the Department for Chemical Engineering’s is part of a teaching consortium, with companies like Shell. Defending these relationships, the Cambridge Careers Service said, “Students – especially PhD researchers – have a chance to learn/hear more about the work of the company, often during informal chats over the ‘water cooler’ with a current or former member of that company’s staff.”
There is however “never any link between the funds they provide and a requirement for a certain number of Cambridge recruits… we believe in a student’s free choice of employer and would do nothing that might infringe this.”
The University has defended their acceptance of the two benefactions “neither of which represent any kind of political endorsement and neither of which has any strings attached.
“The University has explicit processes for the handling and vetting all benefactions, including published ethical guidelines on the acceptance of donations. In particular, every benefaction over £1 million, or which is likely to give rise to significant public interest is considered in detail by the University’s Advisory Committee on Benefactions and Legal and External Affairs.”
David Street, the Cambridge Greenpeace co-ordinator, has told TCS that he “can emphatically say that accepting these benefactions shows a disregard for the ethics, environmental records and the attitudes towards human rights of these companies. Cambridge University is wealthy enough to be choosy about who they accept benefactions from and it’s disappointing that they are going to accept these ‘gifts’.”
Arctic Ocean oil drilling opponents win appeal
SEATTLE — The U.S. government violated the law when it opened millions of acres of the Arctic Ocean to offshore oil drilling, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, possibly delaying plans by companies such asRoyal Dutch Shell to drill off the northwest coast of Alaska in the near future. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the Interior Department did not properly evaluate the impact of oil development in the Chukchi Sea when it sold more than $2.6 billion in development leases in the environmentally sensitive area in 2008.
January 22, 2014, 10:19 p.m
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
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SYNDICATED ESTAFA
MY QUEST FOR SWINDLED
RETIREMENT PAY BY SHELL
 
SWINDLING ITO, SYNDICATED ESTAFA
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DUTY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT ENTITIES
SHELL SWINDLING OF RETIREMENT PAY 5TH YEAR
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Until the early 90s Shell Oil had many great designers and other top professionals. They were second to none when it came to HPHT welldesigns (and offshore development, geophysics etc). Also very pragmatic and hands-on experience.