(Reuters) – Greenpeace volunteers who occupied a Shell Offshore oil drilling vessel en route to the Arctic Ocean last week acted dangerously and jeopardized company property and human life, according to arguments filed in Alaska federal court by Shell lawyers Jeffrey Leppo and Ryan Steen of Seattle.
Not so, responded Greenpeace lawyer Michael Moberly of Anchorage, who wrote that the captains of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza and Shell’s Blue Marlin were in constant communication throughout the environmentalists’ Arctic drilling protest.
An article byAshleigh Barbourpublished 16 April 2015 by The Press and Journal
Shell failing to do enough to prevent “major accidents” at north east site
Offshore giant Shell has been accused of breaking safety rules at its site at the huge St Fergus gas terminal.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has issued an improvement notice for the second time in just over a year after it emerged not enough was being done to prevent “major accidents” at the complex north of Peterhead.
The HSE accused Shell of failing to take “all measures necessary” to identify tasks which had the potential to cause a “critical” situation.
It told the company: “You have failed to adequately identify the safety critical tasks which have potential to initiate, escalate, recover from, or mitigate the consequences of, a major accident at the St Fergus gas plant.”
Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE: RDS.A) (NYSE: RDS.B) (the “Company”) announces that its 2015 Annual General Meeting will be held at the Circustheater, Circusstraat 4, 2586 CW The Hague, The Netherlands at 10:00 (Dutch time) on Tuesday May 19, 2015. The Notice of Annual General Meeting (the “Notice”) can be viewed and downloaded from http://www.shell.com/agm.
The AGM will be webcast on the day so shareholders unable to attend in person can still follow proceedings. Details of the webcast arrangements can be found in the Notice of Annual General Meeting.
Shell’s (LSE: RDSB) merger with BG Group will create a Footsie titan. The enlarged group will make up around 10% of the index, and provide 10% of the index’s dividends.
And at present levels the company supports a dividend yield of 6.2%, a yield that’s hard to turn down.
However, some analysts have begun to voice their concerns about the sustainability of Shell’s dividend payout after it acquires BG. Should dividend investors be worried?
Forget Tax Day: You Won’t Believe All that’s Happened on THIS Day BY LARRY WINES
Is April 14th history’s worst day? You decide.
It was a silent ambush during the closing night performance of the comedy “Our American Cousin” in Ford’s theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln would die the following morning, April 15th. And his death isn’t the only tragedy that began on an April 14th and ended early the next day. (Wait for it.)
The Lincoln assassination also introduced Americans to the unacceptable idea that an inconsequential nobody could change history by killing a very important president. That same unacceptable idea, sadly, would plague us again and again.
Back to April 14th. In 1912, while on her maiden voyage, the largest and most luxurious ship ever built (to that time), the RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland at 11:40 pm, ship time. Two hours and 40 minutes later, on the morning of April 15th, she sank into the strangely calm, smooth-as-glass, icy waters of the North Atlantic. Over 1500 men, women, and children lost their lives because the ship had been built and put into service with a grossly insufficient number of lifeboats, making it one of the most arrogant acts of hubris ever. The sinking is also regarded as the end of “The Gilded Age,” because some of the most pampered, insulated, privileged and influential people in the world froze and drowned along with nearly everyone from Third Class, who had pretty much always known a hard life filled with sudden and tragic death.
Eight years later, in 1920, an April 14th tornado outbreak tore things to pieces in Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. In all, it left 219 people dead, hundreds more injured, many seriously, and millions of dollars in damage at a time when a million dollars was a LOT of money.
Fifteen years after that, April 14th, 1935 brought the worst sandstorm of “The Dust Bowl” of 1931-1939, the Great Depression of 1929-1940, and all of American history. That April 14th would become known as “Black Sunday” across much of the United States because the daytime sky over the plains and Midwest was literally black.
Though the U.S. wasn’t yet in it, Europe was in the throes of World War II on April 14th, 1941, when the first massive Nazi roundup of Jews took 3,600 people from Paris, France to the concentration camps as the first major step in the horror of the Holocaust.
Twenty-eight years after that, on April 14th, 1969, a powerful tornado caused an estimated 660 deaths and tens of thousands of injuries in what was then East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh.
Thirty years later, Sydney, Australia was struck by “a gigantic and severe” hailstorm on April 14th, 1999. An estimated 500,000 tons of hail fell. Insurers were hit with 1.7 billion dollars in claims, monetarily the costliest event in Australia’s history. One fisherman died, but only 50 injuries were reported.
Five years ago, on April 14th, 2010 the region around Yushu, Qinghai, China, experienced six separate earthquakes plus related aftershocks, killing more than 2,700 men, women, and children. The largest was 6.9 on the Richter scale. In the town of Gyegu, 85% of all structures were destroyed, including 11 schools.
And one year ago, April 14th, 2014, over 200 school girls were abducted by terrorists in the north of Nigeria.
And you thought the 13th was always bad. Or maybe you were worried about the April 15th tax deadline tomorrow.
Perhaps the old Creedence Clearwater Revival song should be the anthem of April 14th:
“I see a bad moon a’ rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin’
I see bad times today.
“Don’t go around tonight
Well it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise.
“I hear hurricanes a’ blowing
I know the end is a’ coming soon
I fear rivers overflowing
I hear the voice of raze and ruin.
“Well, don’t go around tonight
Well it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise.
“Hope you have got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye.
“Well don’t go around tonight
Well it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise.
“Don’t go around tonight
Well it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise.”
SEE BELOW FOR THE 1001STTIME THE REITERATION OF DEMAND PAYMENT OF RETIREMENT PAY WHICH SHELL REFUSED TO HONOR IN THE PRESENCE AND DEEMED APPROVAL OF THE HONORABLE MAGISTRATES OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE PHILIPPINES