ROYAL DUTCH SHELL: Ice buckets, rust buckets and superbuckets
By John Donovan
According to the the Vancouver Observer, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden, has accepted the ice bucket challengefrom Leonardo DiCaprio to oil sands executives.
The reputation of his predecessor as Shell CEO, Peter Voser, sunk after he faced and failed a challenge in the Arctic.
Voser came spectacularly unstuck as a result of sending a couple of refurbished old rust buckets into Alaskan waters in an ill-fated tax dodging scandal resulting in ship board fire, explosions, pollution, groundings and public humiliation.
Since its in a good cause, lets hope Mr van Beurden fares rather better.
And we won’t dwell on the leaked superbucket motivational message from Peter Voser, described by one of our contributors as platitudinous nonsense and by one recipient, as “Bullshit of Olympic proportions”.
Shell not abandoning its US shale ambitions
By John Donovan
Shell CEO Ben van Beurden claims that despite a series of asset sales and costly write-downs, the oil giant is not abandoning the prospect of North American oil and gas shales.
Shell’s recent reappraisal resulted in a $2bn write-down in book value and plans for Shell to sell hundreds of thousand of US acres.
Related quotes from Ben van Beurden:
“Asset sales have helped the company narrow its focus on fewer projects where Shell can better compete with the smaller oil and gas companies that have dominated US shale development.”
“It’s a different type of game but it’s not best left to the independents. We can play and win at it as well.”
Time will tell.
During a conference speech at Columbia University yesterday, Mr van Beurden also proposed that the US should resume exporting oil and embrace global markets.
Any such resumption would require lifting the longstanding US crude oil export ban in force since the Arab oil embargo in the 1970′s.
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
