myiW Current Conditions and Forecasts Community Forums Buy and Sell Services
 
Hi guest · myAccount · Log in
 SearchSearch   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   RegisterRegister 
Big Oil and citizenship
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 60, 61, 62 ... 79, 80, 81  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Sun Apr 24, 2016 7:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't know mac, the idea of Shell committing fraud is a bit farfetched.

Today, we have to look at where they can be the best. Maybe more about the nature and quality of the lubricants that they've developed.

I have to admit, I'm a Mobil 1 devotee. I'm a junkie from at least 1990. The stuff works.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't think that corporations are citizens, particularly not well-behaved or responsible ones:

Quote:
I don't know mac, the idea of Shell committing fraud is a bit farfetched.


Well, let's ask if their behavior has been ethical:

Quote:
In 2010, Shell was accused of bribery practice with Nigerian officials in order to gain profit. Shell bribed Nigerian officials to make it easier for them to import goods and equipment, get lower taxes and avoid the customs. Shell said that it paid 2 million U.S Dollars to its Nigerian Workers in its deep water Bonga Project. Shell actually knew that part of the money will go to Nigerian officials whom will make shell avoid the customs process. This will give shell an obvious competitive advantage in the market. Shell actually gained $14million profit from this bribery of the Bonga project. Shell will pay $48.1 million dollars in order to settle probes by the U.S Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission.

In January 2004, "fraudulent overstatement of proven hydrocarbon reserves by Shell in Form F20 returns filed with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission"(John Donovan,2007). Shell has given misleading and wrong statements about its reserves. It paid a $120 million fine for this claims settlement.

One of the famous unethical practices by Shell was causing the high levels of pollution in Nigeria.40% of shells oil spills worldwide was in Nigeria. The oil spill also caused water contamination. It caused oil pollution in the Ogoniland region for the past 40 years or so. The pipelines were built in front of the people's houses and in their farmlands. They suffered oil leaks through the pipelines. This has totally destroyed the environment over there. It killed the aquatic life; killing many fishes. Also enveloped the land with oil. This has been really devastating for the Ogoni people, economically and healthy, since their economy depends mainly on fishing and farming. People suffered respiratory diseases such as bronchial asthma; and cancer. Lots of vegetation is dying, especially Mangrove swamps, due to wastes of oil in the Niger River. The reason Shell has been successful in doing these unethical practices in Nigeria is because they used to bribe the Nigerian officials frequently to ease the process.

Royal Dutch Shell Blames oil spills on sabotage to its equipment ( Chima Williams,2009). This explains how rude and unethically they take responsibility for their awful actions.

According to the Covalence ethical ranking in 2008, saw Shell in the 510 position out of 541 multinational companies. "Covalence' s ethical quotation system is a reputation index based on quantifying qualitative data" and "It is a barometer of how multinationals are perceived in the ethical field"(John Donovan 2009). The covalence ethical ranking is based on important issues such as Human rights policy, Waste Management, Labor standards and product social utility.

A research done by Management and Excellence in 2005 sees Shell as the number 1 most ethical oil company in the world. But by the end of 2011, Shell's position is expected to deteriorate much due to the bribery scandal it suffered for the last few
months.https://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/the-unethical-business-practice-of-bribery-by-shell-business-essay.php

And the Nigeria issues loom large, here is another account:

Quote:
Anyone who works in sustainable business or CSR will probably have cut their teeth on the classic (some would say infamous) case study of “Shell in Nigeria.”

What makes it such a compelling case is that it has yet to reach any final resolution. Ever since Shell was tarred with the brush of bad publicity surrounding the execution in 1995 of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by the Nigerian government, it has struggled to regain its social license to operate.

My first direct encounter with Shell in Nigeria came a few years after the incident, when I was running KPMG’s sustainability practice in South Africa. In fact, KPMG’s sustainability practice in the Netherlands had worked closely with Shell to pioneer its triple bottom line reporting approach, and the KPMG Norway practice was working with Shell in Nigeria on sustainability reporting and environmental management.

Two things stick in my mind from that time.

One was being rather puzzled by the failure of Shell Nigeria’s HSE (health, safety and environment) reports to mention the Saro-Wiwa fiasco, which was still very much at the forefront of protests and boycotts against Shell, both in the country and abroad. If ever there was an elephant in the room!

The second recollection was a trip to Nigeria by one of my team members to do an audit on Shell’s ISO 14001 system. When she returned, I was aghast to learn that, at one point, the Shell vehicle had been surrounded by an angry mob threatening violence, after which the team travelled to Shell sites by helicopter and with an armed guard.


http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/964-oil-on-troubled-waters-can-shell-make-good-in-nigeria

And now the FERC fraud judgement I cited above.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Come on mac, you know where I stand on Citizen's United.

Regarding your earlier quote about Shell's involvement in California during the energy crisis, you're not offering much of a citation there, at least for me.

As far as Shell actions in Nigeria, one has to ask what the government and systems are like in Nigeria. Certainly, nothing like here in the US.

Lastly, here in the US, I'm interested in meaningful regulations and aggressive monitoring in performance. There's no getting around our continuing need for the oil and petroleum industry long into the future. Moreover, I like the idea of challenging them to innovate, just like our defense and civil space industries.

We all have to ask, where are the jobs of the future? That's one of the areas where the strong arm of government can find value. How can we incentivize the oil industry to go in the right direction?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's the Sacramento Bee article. Shell bilked the state out of $779 million. Chump change for them, but indicative of how they do "business." When organizations do such things repeatedly--a startlingly high number are carbon-based energy companies. http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article71703497.html
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 8:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Seems to me that Democrat Gov. Gray Davis made some big mistakes, which allowed Shell to have their way.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 12:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

While "an administrative law judge at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found that Shell Energy North America and Iberdrola Renewables LLC conned state officials during negotiations over long-term energy deals", one has to ask what's the next step. Is the California Public Utilities Commission going to collect some restitution? The article doesn't offer a clue. Maybe the whole thing will be appealed and fade into the woodwork for 15 more years.

Lastly what was the con, and how does it constitute fraud? Again, the article doesn't offer a clue.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 4:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Chandler--the California PUC is one of the state agencies that invests a lot of authority in their administrative law judges. The finding of an ALJ is worth substantially more deference than a staff recommendation in any other agency. They must make detailed findings of fact and law, and must be scrupulous in avoiding ex parte contacts and making a decision based on a written record that is available to all interested parties, including Shell. I believe that recommendation goes to the full PUC that has the authority to fine Shell. Not sure how much that will be. My point is that there is plenty of evidence that Shell behaved inappropriately in this circumstance. (I have lunch every few months with a former head of the PUC, one of the smartest people I know.)

I was about to dismiss Techno's comment, but I did a little digging. I was initially going to blame it all on Phil Gramm, the man who was responsible for repeal of the Glass Steagall Act and wrote into it measures to prevent regulation of the derivatives that brought down the world economy. To be sure, he had a hand in this; this from a 2002 op ed piece in the New York Times captures how many feel about Gramm:

Quote:
Enron And the Gramms
By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 17, 2002

When Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy danced, it was most often to Enron's tune.

Mr. Gramm, a Texas Republican, is one of the top recipients of Enron largess in the Senate. And he is a demon for deregulation. In December 2000 Mr. Gramm was one of the ringleaders who engineered the stealthlike approval of a bill that exempted energy commodity trading from government regulation and public disclosure. It was a gift tied with a bright ribbon for Enron.

Wendy Gramm has been influential in her own right. She, too, is a demon for deregulation. She headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration. And she was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993.

In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron's board of directors.

According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, ''Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001.''

As a board member, Ms. Gramm has served on Enron's audit committee, but her eyesight wasn't any better than that of the folks at Arthur Andersen. The one thing Enron did not pay big bucks for was vigilance.

There's a lot more you can say about the Gramms and Enron, and not much of it good. But Phil and Wendy Gramm are just convenient symptoms of the problem that has contributed so mightily to the Enron debacle and other major scandals of our time, from the savings and loan disaster to the Firestone tires fiasco. That problem is the obsession with deregulation that has had such a hold on the Republican Party and corporate America.


You can see an account of his role in deregulating energy commodities, and the runup to the ENRON melt down here: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/article_redirect.cfm?ID=7104

But California bears some responsibility for dabbling in energy deregulation on its own. The Public Policy Institute of California, a highly credible group, prepared a paper in 2003, authoried by Christopher Weare, titled "The California Electricity Crisis: Causes and Policy Options." Makes interesting reading. He identified five factors to look at: shortage of generating capacity, bottlenecks in related markets, wholesale generator market power (that is, manipulation of markets by folks like Enron and Shell), regulatory missteps and faulty market design. His conclusion in the forward: "...No single factor can fully account for the crisis...market manipulation by generators does not tell the whole story." The run-up in prices started in April of 2000, and basically increased the price of electricity by about a factor of ten.

Now don't get me wrong. I am actually in favor of structured de-regulation of many aspects of the economy. It worked very well with air travel and trucking, and I think that the rigid public utility structure in California discouraged innovation and competition in energy. But careless deregulation has done far more mischief than the constraints imposed by outdated regulatory structures.

Techno may be partially correct that Gray Davis bears some responsibility. The energy deregulation in California was encouraged by AB 1890, which passed in 1996 while Pete Wilson (R, from San Diego) was governor. But Davis was elected in 1998 and appointed the officials that were responsible for implementing that act.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
MULLDE102f



Joined: 15 Jun 1997
Posts: 131

PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 5:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Seems to me that Democrat Gov. Gray Davis made some big mistakes, which allowed Shell to have their way."

So...you're saying that the Democrats failure to regulate the industry enough resulted in Shell's abuse of the system.

Sounds about right.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
MULLDE102f



Joined: 15 Jun 1997
Posts: 131

PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 5:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually, before MrIndustryShill gets a chance to weigh in, let me change that to "Shell's taking the opportunity to abuse the system"
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 6:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks mac for adding a bit more to the picture. Still though, I'm not clear how Shell and Iberdrola conned the state in negotiations, and why they are now considered culpable for fraud. Maybe the average citizen will never know. It's quite possible that any California PUC outcome down the line might bury the details in a final agreement for simply the payment of a fine or restitution. I guess time will tell.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 60, 61, 62 ... 79, 80, 81  Next
Page 61 of 81

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum

myiW | Weather | Community | Membership | Support | Log in
like us on facebook
© Copyright 1999-2007 WeatherFlow, Inc Contact Us Ad Marketplace

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group