Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc is a major energy company, one of the top four vertically integrated private sector oil/gas companies in the world (along with BP, ExxonMobil, and Total). Shell also has a significant petrochemicals business (Shell Chemicals) and an embryonic renewable energy sector developing wind and solar opportunities. Its corporate headquarters are in The Hague, Netherlands, with legal headquarters in London, United Kingdom.

Royal Dutch Shell plc
Type Public (NYSE: RDS.A / RDS.B)
Founded 1907
Location The Hague/London
Key people Aad Jacobs, Chairman
Jeroen van der Veer, CEO
Industry Oil and gas
Products Oil
Natural gas
Petrochemicals
Revenue $268 billion USD (2004)
Website www.shell.com
Shell's revenues of $268 billion (2004) made it the fourth largest corporation in the world in 2004 and its profits of $18.18 billion made it the world's second most profitable business in terms of gross profits (calculations based on those numbers demonstrate a gross profit margin of 6.8%). Shell has operations in 140 countries in the world, the biggest of which is in the United States where its operating company is Shell Oil Company, which has its head office in Houston, Texas.

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group was created in 1907 when Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (legal name in Dutch, N.V. Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij) and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc merged their operations to compete against the then-giant American oil company, Standard Oil. Prior to unification, the group operated under a number of operating and shareholder agreements.

Royal Dutch Petroleum Company had been founded in 1890 by Jean Kessler, along with Henri Deterding and Hugo Loudon, when a Royal charter was granted by Queen Wilhelmina to a small oil exploration company known as "Royal Dutch."

The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (the quotation marks are official) was a British company which dated back to 1897 and which had been founded by Marcus Samuel, and his brother, Samuel Samuel.

In 1919, Shell took control of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company and in 1921 formed Shell-Mex Limited which marketed products under the “Shell” and “Eagle” brands in the United Kingdom. In 1931, partly in response to the difficult economic conditions of the times, Shell-Mex merged their marketing operations in the UK (only) with those of British Petroleum to create Shell-Mex and BP Ltd a company that continued to trade until the brands separated again in 1975.

In November 2004 it was announced that that the Shell Group would move to a single capital structure, creating a new parent company to be named Royal Dutch Shell plc, incorporated in England and Wales, and with its principal listing on the London Stock Exchange but its headquarters in The Hague in the Netherlands. The unification was completed on 20 July 2005.

Under the old capital structure, Shell's ADRs were traded on the New York Stock Exchange under RD (Royal Dutch) and SC (Shell).

Shell is the world's third largest publicly traded Oil company based on revenues (After BP and ExxonMobil) and the second most profitable (after ExxonMobil) - (Fortune Global 500 2004)

Contents
1 Origin of the name and logo
2 Businesses
2.1 Texaco
3 Ownership
4 Management
5 Environmental and Reputational issues
5.1 South Africa
5.2 Nigeria
5.3 Brent Spar
5.4 Canada
5.5 Ireland
5.6 Oil and Gas Reserves recategorisation
5.7 Sustainable Development
6 Combination of Royal Dutch and Shell
7 External links

Origin of the name and logo

A Shell petrol station sign in the UK
A Shell gas station in the U.S.
Shell Centre Building in London, UKThe origin of the brand name Shell is linked to the origins of The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company. In 1833, the founder's father, also Marcus Samuel, had himself founded an import-export business to sell seashells to London collectors. When collecting seashell specimens in the Caspian Sea area in 1892, the younger Samuel realised there was potential in exporting lamp oil from the region and commissioned the world's first purpose built oil tanker, the Murex, to enter this market. By 1907 the company had a fleet of oil tankers.

The Shell emblem is one of the most familiar commercial symbols in the world. Known as the "Pecten" after the sea shell on which its design is based (the giant scallop, Pecten maximus), the latest version of the logo was designed by Raymond Loewy and introduced in 1971.

Businesses
One of the original Seven Sisters, Royal Dutch/Shell is the world's third largest oil company by revenue, and a major player in the petrochemical industry and the solar energy business. Shell has five core businesses: Exploration and Production, Oil Products, Downstream Gas and Power, Chemicals and Renewables, and operates in more than 140 countries across the world.

Shell’s primary business was, and is, the management of a vertically integrated oil company. The development of technical and commercial expertise in all the stages of this vertical integration from the initial search for oil (exploration) through its harvesting (production), transportation, refining and finally trading and marketing established the core competencies on which the Group was founded. Similar competencies were required for Natural Gas which has become one of the most important businesses in which Shell is involved and which contributes a significant proportion of the companies’ profits. The Chemicals business, involving the production and marketing of a range of hydrocarbon derived chemicals products, was also a logical step downstream from the processing of crude oil in the refinery. Some of the Chemicals diversifications (e.g. Agrichemicals) have now been disposed of following major restructuring to Shell Chemicals over the past ten years, but there is still a large core chemicals business within the company.

Over the years Shell has occasionally sought to diversify away from its core oil, gas and chemicals businesses. These diversifications have included Nuclear Power (a short lived and costly Joint Venture with Gulf Oil in the USA); Coal (Shell Coal was for a time a significant player in mining and marketing); Metals (Shell acquired the Dutch metals-mining company Billiton in 1970) and Electricity generation (a joint Venture with Bechtel called Intergen). However none of these ventures were seen as successful and all have now been disposed of. In recent years Shell has moved tentatively into alternative Energy with investments in Solar Power; Wind Power; Hydrogen and Forestry. The Forestry business went the way of Nuclear, Coal,Metals and Electricity generation and was disposed of in 2003.

Texaco
In 2001, Shell purchased about 13,000 Texaco stations and several refineries in the United States to permit Texaco to merge with Chevron Corporation. Shell may exclusively use the Texaco brand in the U.S. through 2004, and non-exclusively through 2006.

Ownership
Prior to unification on 20 July 2005, the group was a dual listed company. The two holding companies were the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc of the United Kingdom. These two companies jointly owned all the operating companies in the group, although some (e.g. Shell Canada) also have local shareholders and are traded on local stock markets. The Shell interest in subsidiaries is always divided 60/40 in favor of Royal Dutch. In many cases, subsidiary companies are held in partnership with other companies or governments.

Even now, likely for tax reasons, the company's shares are divided into two classes, A and B, representing the former Royal Dutch and Shell shares respectively.

Although, to meet company law in all countries, there were executive and non-executive nominated directors of both Royal Dutch and Shell Transport and Trading , the Group had in fact been run by an executive body called the "Committee of Managing Directors" (CMD), whose members were the (executive) Managing Directors of the two parent companies.

An original investor, the largest single shareholder of Royal Dutch Shell is the holding company owned by the Dutch Royal Family, which was set up by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.

Management
CEO: Jeroen van der Veer
CFO: Peter Voser
On 4 August 2005, the board of directors of Royal Dutch Shell plc announced the appointment of Jorma Ollila, currently Chairman and CEO of Nokia, to succeed Aad Jacobs as the company’s Non-Executive Chairman. The appointment will be effective from 1 June 2006. Commentators have pointed to the break of tradition in this appointment as Ollila will be the first Shell Chairman to be neither Dutch nor British.

Environmental and Reputational issues
Over the years Shell has been criticized by environmental and human rights groups for a number of their operations, especially in South Africa and Nigeria.

South Africa
In the 1970s and 1980s Shell was heavily criticised by anti Apartheid activists for continuing to carry out business in the Republic of South Africa. Annual General Meetings of the two Group holding companies were disrupted by protesters and Shell was also accused of sanctions breaking. Shell always argued that unlike other multinationals who withdrew (e.g. Mobil) it could be more of a force for good by staying in the country than by leaving.

Nigeria
Shell operates in Nigeria under the name Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). Shell's involvement in Nigeria came to the fore after the execution of dissident Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others. The political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa had implicated Shell during his “treason” trial by saying “…the ecological war that [Shell] has waged … will be called to question sooner than later and the …crime of the Company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.” Shell was also found to be providing money and supplies to the Nigerian military. When Saro-Wiwa was executed on trumped-up charges some of the world-wide condemnation of the act was aimed at Shell who by association was implicated.

Brent Spar
Shell was also challenged by Greenpeace for plans for subsea disposal of the Brent Spar, an old oil transport and hub station located in the North Sea, into the North Atlantic. Shell eventually agreed to disassemble it onshore in Norway, although Shell has always maintained (supported by third party advice) that its original plan to sink the platform was safer and better for the environment.

Canada
In Canada, Shell Canada settled a lawsuit in which an additive in their gasolines created problems on fuel gauges, especially in automobiles produced by DaimlerChrysler.

Ireland
In Ireland, Shell has drawn criticism by attempting to pipe unrefined gas from the Corrib Gas Field onshore and to refine it at a plant in north County Mayo. Natural gas is sometimes refined at source when offshore. The concerns lie in piping the gas, at high pressure, through inhabited areas. Five men were jailed in June 2005 for obstructing the construction of the pipeline through their lands.

Oil and Gas Reserves recategorisation
Shell drew fire in 2004 when it had to perform a major recategorization of its reserves, admitting that a significant share of reserves previously booked as proven did not fulfill the requirements for proof under the US regulatory provisions. The delayed Annual report and Accounts 2003 restated proven reserves reduced 6.648 mn USD in 2001 and reduced by 6.469 mn USD in 2002. This corresponds to roughly 13% of the previous proven reserves base. As a contributing factor, it was identified that in previous years the leading management's bonus payments were linked to the proven reserves base. This practice has since been discontinued. The reserves issue led to the dismissal of the Group Chairman Sir Philip Watts , and the departure of the CFO and other top executives.

Sustainable Development
On June 17th of 2004, Shell chairman Ronald Oxburgh made a statement to The Guardian that in the face of the threat of global warming he was "really very worried for the planet”. As a remedy he proposed the practice of carbon sequestration, which involves removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and burying it underground. "Sequestration is difficult, but if we don't have sequestration then I see very little hope for the world," he said. Lord Oxburgh's comments were consistent with Shell's commitment to Sustainable Development, a commitment which was a key part of the reputation building efforts that the Group undertook after Brent Spar.

Combination of Royal Dutch and Shell
On October 28, 2004, the company announced its proposal formally to merge Royal Dutch and "Shell" Transport and Trading into one entity, Royal Dutch Shell plc, to be "incorporated in the UK but headquartered and tax resident in the Netherlands." The new parent company's primary listing will be on the London Stock Exchange. On the 28th of June, 2005 investors in both "Shell Transport and Trading" and in "Royal Dutch" approved, at their Annual General Meetings, plans to merge the Group's dual-ownership structure and create a single company worth £120bn ($219bn).

The type of business structure now to be created was not possible under the relevant laws in 1907 when the Group was established, and the unique form of organisation that was then adopted by Shell, although durable, had come under criticism in recent years. Some critics thought that as the two parent companies had separate boards, with separate memberships, this meant that there was a certain amount of (undesirable) independence of each of the companies from the other. Others felt that the real power in Shell lay not with the two parent company boards at all but with the "Committee of Managing Directors" (CMD) which had no legal status, but nevertheless took all the key operational decisions. The new organisation structure follows a more conventional business model (e.g. in line with most other private sector oil companies) and most commentators have commented favourably on the change which they believe will establish a more transparent and accountable corporation. The CMD is abolished under this new structure, board meetings will be more executive in character and there will (now) only be one "Shell" AGM, in one location, every year.

Royal Dutch Shell plc is a major energy company, innovation the one of the top four vertically integrated private sector oil/gas companies in the world (along with BP, ExxonMobil, and Total). Shell glass also has a significant of petrochemicals business (Shell Chemicals) and an embryonic renewable energy sector developing wind and solar opportunities. Its corporate headquarters pocket are in The Hague, Netherlands, with legal headquarters in London, United Kingdom.

Royal Dutch Shell plc
Type Public (NYSE:
RDS.A / RDS.B)
Founded 1907
Location The .22 Hague/London
Key people Aad Jacobs, Chairman
Jeroen van der Veer, CEO
Industry Oil and gas
Products Oil
Natural gas
Petrochemicals
Revenue shell $268 billion USD (2004)
Website www.shell.com
Shell's revenues of $268 complex billion ( 2004) made it shell the fourth largest corporation in the world in 2004 and its profits of of $18.18 billion made it the world's second most profitable complex business clam in terms of gross profits (block calculations based on those numbers demonstrate a new gross profit shell shell margin of 6.8%). Shell has operations locations in 140 countries in the world, the biggest file edit shell script
of which is in the United States where its operating sea company is Shell Oil Company, which has
its head alone shells office in shell Houston, Texas.

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group was created in 1907 when Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (legal name in Dutch, N.V. Koninklijke Nederlandsche full Petroleum Maatschappij) and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc merged their operations to compete against the then-giant American oil company, Standard Oil. Prior to unification, the group operated shell under a number
of operating and identification shareholder agreements.

Royal Dutch Petroleum Company
had been founded in beach: 1890 by Jean Kessler, along
with Henri Deterding shells and Hugo art Loudon, when a Royal charter was granted by Queen Wilhelmina to a small oil exploration company known as aston "Royal Dutch."

The stand "Shell" Transport and shell Trading Company (the
quotation marks are official) was a British company which dated back to 1897 and which had best been founded by Marcus Samuel, and his brother, Samuel Samuel.

In 1919, Shell took control of leis on the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company and in 1921 prices formed Shell- Mex Limited
which
marketed products under the “Shell” shells and “Eagle” brands
in the United Kingdom.
In 1931, partly in response
to the difficult economic conditions of the times, Shell-2 Mex merged their marketing operations in the UK (only) with those of British Petroleum to create music Shell-Mex and BP Ltd
a company
that continued to trade until the brands separated again in 1975.

In November shells 2004 it was announced that
shell that the Shell Group would move to a single capital structure, creating a new parent company to be named Royal Dutch Shell plc, incorporated in England and Wales, and to with its principal listing
on the London Stock Exchange but its bracelet headquarters in The Hague
in the Netherlands. The shells unification was completed on 20 ghost shell July 2005.

Under the old capital structure, Shell's ADRs were traded on the ideas New York Stock Exchange under RD (Royal Dutch) and salted SC (Shell).

Shell is the world's third largest publicly traded Oil company based on revenues (After BP and ExxonMobil) and the second most profitable (after ExxonMobil) - (Fortune Global 500 2004)

shell gas station locations

Origin of the name and logo

function A Shell petrol station sign in the UK
A Shell gas lighting shell station in the U.S.
Shell Centre Building in London,
in UKThe origin of the brand name Shell is linked to the origins of The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company. In 1833, the founder's father, also Marcus Samuel, had himself founded an sea import-export shell business to sell seashells to
London collectors. When collecting seashell specimens in the Caspian Sea
area in 1892, the younger Samuel realised there was potential in exporting lamp oil from the region and commissioned the world's first purpose mp3 built in oil tanker, the Murex, shell to enter this market. By 1907 the company had a fleet of oil tankers.

The gourmet Shell emblem is and one shell of the most familiar commercial shells symbols in the station world. Known as fort the "Pecten" after the sea shell on which its design is based (the giant scallop, Pecten maximus), the latest version of the logo was chemical
designed by Raymond Loewy and introduced in 1971.

and Businesses
One of the original Seven art Sisters, Royal Dutch/Shell is the tankers world's shell third largest oil company by revenue, and a major player in wreath the petrochemical industry and the solar energy business. Shell 6 has five core businesses: Exploration and Production, Oil Products, Downstream
Gas in and Power, Chemicals shell and Renewables, and operates in more than 140 countries across the world.

Shell’s primary business was, and is, the management of bikini a vertically behavior integrated oil company. The development of technical and commercial new expertise abalone in all the stages of this vertical integration from the initial search for oil (exploration) through its harvesting (production), crab transportation, refining and finally trading information and marketing established the shell core competencies on which the Group was founded. Similar competencies shells were required for Natural Gas which has become one of the most important businesses in which Shell turtle is camper involved half windows and which contributes a significant proportion of the truck companies’ profits. The Chemicals business, involving the production the and shells marketing of a sea range of hydrocarbon derived chemicals products, was also a logical step downstream from the processing of crude oil shell in the refinery. Some of the Chemicals diversifications (e.g. Agrichemicals) where have now pack shells been disposed of following major restructuring to Shell Chemicals over the past ten years, but there is still programming a large core chemicals business within the company.

Over the years Shell
has occasionally sought to diversify away from its core oil, gas and chemicals businesses. These diversifications have included half Nuclear Power (a short lived and costly Joint Venture with Gulf Oil in the USA); Coal (Shell Coal was for a time a significant player ghost in mining and marketing); sale Metals (Shell acquired the Dutch metals-mining blackhawk company Billiton in 1970) and Electricity generation ( a
joint Venture alone with Bechtel called Intergen). However none of these ventures were seen as successful and all have on now been disposed of. In recent years Shell has moved tentatively
into alternative Energy wholesale with investments
in Solar Power; Wind Power; Hydrogen and Forestry. explosive The Forestry business went the way of Nuclear, Coal,Metals and Electricity generation and was
disposed of in 2003.

Texaco
In 2001, Shell purchased how about 13,000 Texaco stations sea and several refineries in the United States to permit Texaco to
merge with Chevron Corporation. Shell may exclusively pictures use shot the Texaco brand in the U.S. through the 2004, and non-exclusively through 2006.

Ownership
Prior to unification on 20 July 2005, the group was a dual listed company. The two holding companies were the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and The find
"Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc of the United Kingdom. These shells two companies jointly
owned all the operating chemical companies in the shell group, although pulley some (e.g. Shell snail Canada) also have local shareholders and are traded on local stock markets. The Shell interest in subsidiaries out is always divided 60/40 in favor of

Royal Dutch. In many cases, subsidiary companies are held in partnership with other companies or governments.

Even now, likely for tax reasons, motorist the company's
shares are divided into
two classes, A and B, representing shell the former Royal prices Dutch and Shell shares respectively.

Although, to meet company law in all countries, there were executive and non-executive nominated directors of both Royal
Dutch and Shell Transport and Trading , the Group had in fact been run by an executive body called the "Committee of Managing Directors" (spa CMD), whose members were the (
executive) Managing Directors of the two parent companies.

An original investor, the largest single shareholder of Royal Dutch gohst Shell is the holding company owned by the Dutch Royal repair Family, which was set shell up shell by Queen Wilhelmina of shotgun the Netherlands.

Management
CEO: Jeroen van der Veer

CFO: Peter Voser
On
4 August 2005, the board of directors of Royal Dutch Shell plc announced the appointment solutions of Jorma Ollila, currently Chairman
and CEO of Nokia, to succeed Aad Jacobs as the company’s Non-Executive Chairman. The appointment will be effective from 1 June 2006. Commentators have pointed to the break of tradition shells in
this appointment as Ollila will be the
first Shell backpack Chairman to be neither Dutch nor roseburg
york British.

Environmental and Reputational issues
Over shell the years Shell has leer been criticized dodge replacement by environmental and human rights groups abalone for a shell number of their operations, especially bourne in South Africa and Nigeria.

South Africa
In the 1970s and 1980s i Shell was heavily clip criticised by anti stand Apartheid activists for continuing wholesale to carry out business in body the imperial Republic of South Africa. Annual General Meetings of the to two Group holding companies were disrupted by protesters and Shell was break also accused of sanctions breaking. Shell always argued that unlike other multinationals who withdrew (e.g. Mobil) it could be more of a force for good by staying in the country than by leaving.

Nigeria
Shell operates in Nigeria under the name Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). shell Shell's involvement shell in Nigeria came to - the orleans fore after the execution oregon of dissident Ken soft Saro-Wiwa and eight others. The political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa
had implicated Shell during his “treason” trial by saying “…the ecological war that [Shell] has waged … will be called to question sooner than later and the …crime of the Company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people shell will also be one punished.” Shell was also shell found to be shell providing money and supplies to the truck shell Nigerian military. When Saro- Wiwa was executed on trumped-up
charges some of the world-polish wide condemnation of the act was aimed at Shell who by association was implicated.

Brent Spar
Shell was also challenged by Greenpeace can for
plans for subsea disposal camper of the Brent Spar, an old oil transport and hub station located in the North Sea, into the North Atlantic. Shell eventually agreed to disassemble it onshore in a Norway,
although Shell
has always maintained (supported by third party shell advice) niihau that its craft original plan to sink the platform was safer and better for the environment.

Canada
In Canada, pouch Shell Canada settled a lawsuit in which shell an additive in their gasolines
created problems on fuel gauges, shell especially in automobiles produced by shell shell DaimlerChrysler.

Ireland

In Ireland, Shell has drawn criticism shell by attempting hermit to pipe unrefined gas from the Corrib Gas Field onshore and to refine it at a plant scripts in north County Mayo. Natural gas is sometimes refined at source when unix offshore. The concerns lie in piping the gas, at high pressure, through inhabited areas. Five men were hard jailed in June 2005 for obstructing the construction of the pipeline through their lands.

Oil and Gas Reserves recategorisation
Shell drew fire square in 2004 when it had to perform a major recategorization of its reserves, admitting that for a significant share of reserves music western previously booked as proven did pink not fulfill the requirements for proof under the US regulatory provisions. camper The delayed Annual report and Accounts 2003 restated proven reserves reduced 6.648 mn USD in 2001 and reduced by 6.469 mn fossil louisiana USD art in 2002. This corresponds to shells roughly 13% of the previous proven reserves base. As a in contributing factor, it was identified that in previous years the leading management's bonus payments were linked to the proven reserves base. This practice has since shells been discontinued. The reserves issue led to the
dismissal of the Group Chairman Sir Philip Watts , and the departure of the build CFO and other top executives.

Sustainable Development
On June 17th of 2004, Shell chairman Ronald
Oxburgh made ex a statement to The Guardian that in the face of the shell
threat of
global warming
he was "really in very artillery worried for the planet”. As a remedy he proposed the practice of carbon sequestration, which involves shell artillery removing for carbon
dioxide from beach the atmosphere and burying it underground. "Sequestration is difficult, but if we don't have sequestration crab then resort I see very little hope for the world," he said. Lord Oxburgh's milled comments were consistent with sea Shell's commitment to Sustainable Development, a commitment which was
a key part of the reputation building shell efforts that the
Group undertook after Brent global Spar.

Combination of Royal Dutch and Shell
On October 28, 2004, the company announced its proposal formally to merge Royal Dutch and "Shell" Transport and Trading sconce into one entity, Royal wholesale Dutch Shell plc, to be "incorporated in the UK but headquartered and tax resident in shell the Netherlands." The new viper parent company's primary listing will be on the London Stock Exchange. On the 28th of how June, gas 2005 investors in both "Shell Transport and Trading" and in "Royal Dutch" approved, at their Annual General gretsch Meetings, plans to merge the Group's dual-ownership structure and create a single company worth £120bn (shells $219bn).

The type of business turtle structure now to be created was not ghost possible under the shell relevant laws in 1907 when the Group was established, and the unique form of organisation that was then adopted by Shell, although durable, had come under criticism in recent years. Some critics thought that as the shell two parent buttstock companies had separate boards, with credit separate memberships, wall this meant that there was a certain amount of (undesirable) independence shell shell of each of the companies from the other. Others camper felt that the real power in club Shell lay not with the two parent company company boards at all but with the "Committee of trailer Managing Directors" (CMD) which had no legal status, but nevertheless
took all the key operational decisions. The new organisation structure follows a more conventional business model (e.g. in line with most other private rio sector oil companies) and most commentators have commented favourably on the change which they believe will establish a more korn transparent and accountable corporation. The CMD is abolished under this new structure, shell board meetings will be more executive in character and there will (boho now) the only be one "Shell" AGM, in shell one location, every the year.

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