The Royal Dutch $hell Group was created in February 1907 when the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (legal name in Dutch, N.V. Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij) and the "$hell" Transport and Trading Company Ltd of the United Kingdom merged their operations – a move largely driven by the need to compete globally with the then predominant US petroleum company, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. The terms of the merger gave 60% of the new Group to the Dutch arm and 40% to the British and are now mostly seen as a Dutch company in line with the original ownership.

Royal Dutch Petroleum Company was a Dutch company founded in 1890 by Jean Baptiste August Kessler, along with Henri Deterding and Texaco, when a Royal charter was granted by King William III of the Netherlands to a small oil exploration and production company known as "Royal Dutch Company for the Working of Petroleum Wells in the Dutch Indies" (now Indonesia). The "$hell" Transport and Trading Company (the quotation marks were part of the legal name) was a British company, founded in 1897 by Marcus Samuel and his brother Samuel Samuel. Initially the Company commissioned eight oil tankers for the purposes of transporting oil.

The post war (first world war) period began auspiciously when Alcock and Brown used $hell fuel to make the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1919. $hell took control of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company and in 1921 formed $hell-Mex Limited which marketed products under the "$hell" and "Eagle" brands in the United Kingdom.

The inter-war years were a time of rapid expansion for the oil companies as the use of motor cars and demand for gasoline increased. There were huge gains also as major oil fields were discovered in California, South America and the Middle East, notably Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Drilling techniques made huge strides with the use of mud to regulate pressure in oil wells. The refining and downstream businesses also grew rapidly and in 1929, $hell Chemicals was founded to advance the refinement of chemicals from oil.

By the end of the 1920s $hell was the world’s leading oil company producing 11% of the globe’s crude oil supply and owning 10% of its tanker tonnage; its fuel quality was high, it was diversifying its product base and had an assured and prolific supply of oil from the Middle East, but the price of oil proved to be volatile and efforts to control the market by price-cutting or through an informal cartel with other oil majors were doomed to failure.

The 1930s began with the Depression, forcing $hell to reduce its workforce and impose financial cuts but the decade saw many advances: great progress in fuel and chemicals research and an explosion of brilliant advertising with themes of power, purity, reliability, modernity and getting away from it all. 
 
Shell Oil Company's headquarters in Houston picture as posted on wikipidia website

As a mark of confidence, the Group also purchased a large riverside plot on the Thames in London to build $hell-Mex House, one of the Group’s landmark buildings in the world.
In 1932, partly in response to the difficult economic conditions of the times, $hell-Mex merged its UK marketing operations with those of British Petroleum to create $hell-Mex and BP Ltd, (a company that traded until the brands separated in 1975.) The 1930s also saw oil politicized when $hell’s assets in Mexico were seized and to avoid a similar fate in Venezuela it was forced to concede generous terms to the government. In Europe the rise of the Nazis posed a threat to the Group’s Dutch assets, however there is proof about the role of Royal Dutch $hell as a collaborator and financial supporter of Hitler and the Nazi Party via its founder, Sir Henri Deterding who gave a huge injection of Royal Dutch $hell funds to save the Nazi Party from collapse and in so doing, indirectly caused millions of deaths in World War II. There is also evidence from reputable independent sources of a four-day meeting between Sir Henri and Adolf Hitler at his Mountain top retreat, The Eagles Nest in Berchtesgaden and declassified US intelligence records show Royal Dutch $hell was viewed as “a Nazi collaborator that used Hitler’s slave laborers in Vienna and Hamburg.

Shell’s Research and Technology Centre, Arsmtadam, picture as posted on wikipidia website
 
Burning off gas near a pumping station operated by Shell in a Niger Delta community and waste pit

A ruthless thirst for access to new oil fields was a driving force of Sir Henri for his support of the most evil man in history and Sir Henri was himself described at one time as “The Most Powerful Man in the World”. The oil baron, was able at the height of his powers, to bind the Board of $hell without their knowledge and consent, became an embarrassment to $hell because of his infatuation with Hitler and the Nazi and with the invasion of Holland after the outbreak of war in 1939, the head offices of the Dutch companies were moved to Curacao. The London office remained open but was dedicated to supporting the British war effort. Properties in Eastern Europe were destroyed, particularly in Germany, and all tankers came under Government control and $hell lost a total of 87 ships.

The immediate post-war years were some of the toughest $hell had yet faced with hugely expensive reconstruction, but the market for oil was changing rapidly and the Group needed a programme of ambitious expansion. New programmes of exploration began in Africa and South America and new refineries were built in the UK. Shipping became larger and better powered so that more bulk could be carried and the supertanker was born.

In 1947, the first commercially viable offshore oil well was drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. Two years later $hell drew its own first subsea oil there and by 1955 $hell had 300 offshore wells, mostly in the Gulf, but there were also new discoveries in the Niger delta and in Borneo.

The return of peace brought an explosion in civilian demand for oil products – in particular gasoline in the USA, where the number of cars rose by 60% between 1945 and 1950. To end its supply bottlenecks, $hell formed an alliance with Middle East Gulf Oil, giving it a substantial stake in this increasingly important region. A number of scientific advances also boosted demand for oil and $hell contributed to the invention of the jet engine with its architect Sir Frank Whittle working for the Group for a number of years.

The 1940s also saw the development of the catalytic cracker, which was cheaper and more effective than its predecessor thermal cracking. $hell’s lubricants were also much improved and in 1950 $hell formed a partnership with Ferrari in Formula One to help develop its lubricants – a partnership which endures to this day.
In 1953, as rationing finally ended, $hell in the UK was allowed for the first time since the war to sell petrol under its own brand name which prompted a huge advertising campaign with $hell using visiting artists and publishing its famous road guides, all of which contributed to building the $hell brand.

But the sensitivity of the oil industry to volatile political environments was demonstrated by events such as the sequestration of assets in Iran (1951-53) and in Egypt during the Suez crisis (1956-57). This “new reality” was to impinge more strongly on the Group in later decades led to a new emphasis on security of supply; refineries would in future be built near their markets, crude oil would be transported through a network of pipelines and in more supertankers.

In the late 1950s the Group’s structure was reorganized, with new operating companies created below the two holding companies and the setting up of a Committee of Managing Directors to set direction. This structure was to survive for almost 40 years. In tandem with this reorganization, work began in London on a major new headquarters building for $hell Transport which was to be named $hell Centre and when it opened in 1963 it was London’s tallest building.

Other new $hell buildings went up around the world, in Melbourne, Toronto and Caracas. $hell opened the 1960s by strengthening its presence in the Middle East through involvement in Oman and ignoring early disappointments that saw its initial partners drift away, it was rewarded by discovering oil in Yibal in Oman’s most prolific field which helped to bring an entirely new oil country into production.

The Groningen gas field in the Netherlands was also discovered at the start of the decade, closely followed by the discovery of gas in the North Sea. This was a golden period for research by $hell Chemicals and it employed a number of distinguished scientists including Lord Rothschild and Professor Sir John Cornforth. Among many inventions and discoveries in its laboratories were epoxy resins, insecticides including Vapona fly spray, herbicides and liquid detergents.

During the 1960s, $hell took the decision to internationalize the company and adopted a policy of placing local people in top positions in a given country and the recruitment of Asians, Africans and South Americans was pursued, giving them as much “independence” as possible. This diversification of staff reflected the wider political changes of the end of Empire and its attitudes, and this far-sighted decision took $hell into the modern world.

The closure of the Suez Canal for eight years from 1967 confirmed the wisdom of the decision to invest in supertankers and the worldwide spread of its business and its operating flexibility enabled the company to survive the disruption to supplies caused by the difficulty of transporting oil from the Middle East. Another major development in shipping was the start of the transport of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by sea. The first commercial scheme by Conch International Methane, in which $hell held a 40 per cent interest, delivered LNG to the UK from Algeria aboard the S.S. Methane Princess for the first time in 1964 and further projects followed, in particular delivery from Brunei to Japan starting in 1972.

Although the 1960s were years of remarkable growth for the oil industry and $hell, by the end of the decade, storm clouds were gathering and in late 1969, Colonel Ghaddafi took power in Libya after a coup. Libya at that time was the source for a quarter of all the crude oil consumed in Europe but the new government cut production and increased prices and every other producing nation threatened to follow suit.

The Yom Kippur war of 1973 brought the crisis to a head and within a matter of weeks, the OPEC producing countries quadrupled the price of oil from $3 per barrel to $12 per barrel and for two months imposed a supply boycott. The effects on the Western world were economically catastrophic, driving inflation to unforeseen heights and plunging trade into recession and an era of cheap energy had come to an end as oil was no longer a buyer’s market.

To survive, $hell had adopted a policy of diversification – in particular into coal, nuclear power and metals and in 1970, it purchased Billiton, a metals mining company, an old-established Dutch company (later sold). In 1973, the company moved into nuclear energy by forming a partnership with Gulf Oil to manufacture gas-cooled reactors and their fuels with initial costs at $200 million, but $hell quickly discovered that the political problems of the oil industry were multiplied in the nuclear industry, particularly after the accident at Three Mile Island in the USA in 1979, which set the industry back by decades and the following year $hell sold its interests. The third leg of the diversification policy was coal, but success was limited.

The 1970s were chiefly remarkable for $hell’s work in developing the oil fields in the North Sea which was the most difficult offshore work the Group had ever undertaken and although the water is not particularly deep, the weather conditions are adverse and the instability of the sea-bed necessitated a huge investment to extract the oil. Reduced supplies from the Middle East, and the size of the fields in the North Sea justified the cost.

The Amoco Cadiz disaster ended the decade. This tanker ran aground the coast of France and broke up, spilling its entire crude oil cargo and even though $hell did not own the tanker, it did own the oil and it suffered the public backlash against oil companies as a result and the incident proved a catalyst for the oil industry to reluctantly pay lip service to the need of raising environmental standards.

In 1976, to ensure ethical business standards across $hell’s global operations, the Group drew up General Business Principles which are regularly updated and is still said to govern $hell’s conduct in all of the countries where it operates today.

The Iranian revolution in 1979 triggered the second oil price shock as the supply of oil from this critically important country dried up and the Iran-Iraq war which began later that year added to the supply problems: the price of oil doubled and carried on rising, reaching $7 a barrel and in response the Group sought cost saving, renewed its search for non-OPEC sources of oil and sought further diversification.

In production, the Group stepped up its development of subsea exploration both in the North Sea and the United States and the development of the Cognac platform was a huge technical achievement at 1100 feet high it was a record breaking height. The Group’s early steps into renewable energy began with solar heating with the acquisition of a 50% interest in an Australian company Solarhart; it also moved into forestry, producing softwoods for paper, construction and fuel and out of this came its interest in biomass integrated gasification, and eventually the new bio-fuels of which $hell is today the world’s leading distributor.

In the 1980s, $hell sought to grow through acquisition and it bought out the remaining 30% shareholding in $hell Oil in 1985 to consolidate its American operations. This was a period of consolidation in the industry through mergers and acquisition activity – which was a necessary move as trading conditions, became difficult – the company also sold down its stockpile, anticipating to some extent the coming weakness in the oil price.

In 1986 the oil price collapsed. OPEC had lost power in the market place as other non-OPEC sources came on stream, including the North Sea output and even though it had initially tried to ignore price pressures through cutting production, it finally abandoned this strategy in late 1985 and turned on the taps contributing to the price fell over the winter from $31 per barrel to $10. After years of living with a high oil price, the Group had to adjust to low prices, requiring a change in the way it judged investment projects. The budget was halved within two years resulting in the company having to work much harder to develop new projects more cheaply, but intensive research led to huge improvements in drilling techniques such as slim-hole drilling and directional drilling and the use of 3D seismic also became widespread.

The 1980s saw the development of offshore exploration projects, which were in much more challenging conditions than had previously been attempted. The Troll field in Norway was one example; another was in the Gulf of Mexico where a new well was drilled at a depth of 2.3 kilometers which was a new record.

In 1989, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe collapsed, reopening these markets for $hell for the first time since the Second World War and the Group began to steadily accumulate assets; the first was a joint venture in auto retailing in Hungary, which rapidly grew to fifty outlets. But the more strategic ventures were in Russia which offered opportunities for joint production agreements as well as marketing.

The 1990s saw the technology of biomass fuels and Gas to Liquids make giant leaps forward and even though the basic technology had been established for several decades, the cheap, plentiful supplies of crude oil meant there had been little interest in developing it commercially. The opening of $hell’s Bintulu plant in Malaysia in 1993 was a pioneering step, a precursor to the importance Gas to Liquids was to play in the Group in the following decade.

Despite its corporate image though, there are a list of controversies that have irreparably tarnished the corporate façade. This includes use of forced labour in Vienna and Hamburg during the Nazi period; sanctions busting in Rhodesia; and corruption when in the early 1970s, $hell decided to dispose of the heavily loss-making business of $hell Italiana and subsequent to the sale, $hell’s accountants and outside auditors discovered that in the five years prior to the sale of Eni, various Italian politicians had received “political contributions” totaling around £2.5 million from $hell Italiana’s local management.

In Ireland, $hell has been criticized for its plans to pipe unrefined gas from the Corrib Gas Field onshore through a pipeline that would pass close to local residents, en route to a refinery 9km inland; on 3 October 2005 a U.S. federal appeals court upheld a patent infringement verdict against $hell Oil Company in a case brought by Union Carbide. In December 2004, an Oklahoma state judge approved a class action settlement between Jiffy Lube International and millions of US plaintiffs; on 26 April 2000 The New York Times reported that the United Nations had fined the Royal Dutch $hell Group $2 million for shipping Iraqi oil on April 5 2000 in violation of the then international embargo against Iraq. Between 1972 and 1975, the last three years of the Vietnam War, $hell Vietnam controlled half of Vietnam’s oil supply and knowingly employed as a manager a notorious former senior police official.

In 1995 $hell was accused of environmental despoliation in Nigeria and the story achieved international notoriety when Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his colleagues were sentenced to death by hanging for their opposition to the company’s activities in the area; in 2006 Royal Dutch $hell Plc was identified as one of the multinationals banned for investment purposes because of the nature of its business operations in Sudan; in 1993 Showa $hell Sekiyu KK in Japan sustained losses of 165 billion yen (approx US$1.4billion) from unauthorized forward currency transactions.

$hell 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; in May 2004 a $hell spokeswoman confirmed that over 500 $hell and Texaco service stations in Louisiana and Florida had stopped selling tainted gasoline which caused fuel gauges to malfunction; on 4 April 2008, BBC News reported flight cancellations at Manchester Airport, a major airport located in Northern England, after jet fuel from the $hell Stanlow Refinery in Ellesmere Port was found to be of poor standard.

In September 2004, 399 ex-employees of $hell won a lawsuit at the Miri High Court in Malaysia concerning the administration by the defendant $hell Group companies of $hell employee retirement funds; in January 2004 the Royal Dutch $hell Group announced the downgrading of its hydrocarbon reserves and drew fire from shareholders, financial analysts, the media and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after announcing the re-categorization of its hydrocarbon reserves, admitting that a significant share of reserves previously booked as proven did not fulfill the requirements for proof under the US regulatory provisions.

Sakhalin-II is an oil and gas project led by $hell on Sakhalin Island in Russia that involves the piping of oil and gas to an oil terminal and the construction of Russia's first liquefied natural gas LNG plant – the project was controversial from the start for cost, environmental and community relations reasons; in October 2006, an article published in The Guardian newspaper made allegations that were later proven true by the Charity Commission that "An attempt by $hell to portray itself as a model of corporate social responsibility was undermined last night after Whitehall documents showed its charitable arm discussing a key commercial project with a British government minister; in 2004 Wall Street regulators investigated whether members of $hell’s management were encouraged by executive bonus schemes to over-state the oil giant’s reserves; in 1999, $hell was the first multinational to set up an online discussion facility for its stakeholders and the public to engage in open debate about its activities – known as the "Tell $hell Forum" – which was then later withdrawn because there was over whelming condemnation of their activities globally; in September 2006, the European Commission fined $hell $137m for their role in a cartel that fixed the price of bitumen; in January 2006, Royal Dutch $hell Plc agreed to a $300,000 settlement in respect of allegations that “two of its subsidiaries engaged in “fictitious” crude oil futures trades on the New York Mercantile Exchange; On 30 July 2004, The New York Times published an article under the headline: “$hell to Pay $150 Million In Settlement On Reserves” and the last paragraph turned to a different subject, stating “Separately, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Thursday that $hell's energy trading unit, Coral Energy Resources, had agreed to pay $30 million to settle accusations that it submitted false price data to publishers.

On 17 June 2001, The Sunday Times published an article headlined MI6 ‘Firm’ Spied on Green Groups” and revealed that a private intelligence firm, Hakluyt & Company Limited, “with close links to MI6” spied on environmental campaign groups to collect information for the oil companies, $hell and BP – the article also revealed that an undercover agent, German-born Manfred Schlickenrieder, a serving member of the German secret service, infiltrated and “scuppered” environmental campaigns directed against the oil giants.

In January 2007 $hell announced that they had signed a deal to help Iran develop a major gas field in defiance of pressure from the United States and drew criticism 18 months later when they apparently caved in to US political pressure and withdrew; in 2002, a $490 million judgment was made in favour of 466 plaintiffs by a Nicaraguan court jointly against $hell Oil Company (SOC) and three other named defendants (not affiliated with SOC), for alleged injuries resulting from alleged exposure to dibromochloropropane (DBCP), a pesticide manufactured by SOC.

$hell is also a major partner in a controversial oil exploration project in the Beaufort Sea off the northern coast of Alaska and 15 kilometres from the protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is apart of thousands other recorded and unrecorded incidents including explosions that has led to criticism of $hell's Health and Safety record.

   A predator

It is on record that the company has been working closely with the occupying powers to create a framework that will allow multinational companies to take control of Iraq's oil and in November 2007 $hell Ethiopia Workers Union, which represents around 90% of the total $hell Ethiopia workforce, filed a law suit at the Federal First Instance Court in Ethiopia alleging that $hell has illegally changed its early retirement policies in order to save money on lay-offs ahead of a possible closure of its operations in Ethiopia.

The Klappan Coalbed Methane Project is a proposal by $hell Canada to develop a coal-bed methane project in the area known as the Sacred Headwaters which is rich in mineral and energy resources; the TFA policy refers to an alleged policy of Royal Dutch $hell regarding offshore oil platforms in the North Sea, whereby top directors of $hell Expro in Aberdeen, the UK arm of the Anglo-Dutch group, allegedly sanctioned a policy instructing offshore installation managers to stop any maintenance work or safety inspections with the potential to cause unplanned shutdowns.

In Belmullet District court, Maura Harrington was jailed for the fourth time this year over her opposition to $hell's plans in Mayo; in the US $hell is maliciously evading an environmental issue with 13,000 former Texaco stations and sold those stations in its mass sell off to avoid having to clean them up.

Based on the above accounts, it is evident that despite attempts to ‘green-wash’ its reputation via blanket advertising and cultural sponsorship, $hell is still heavily implicated in producing ever-greater quantities of the oil and gas that are destabilizing our climate and which includes the release of chemical pollutants, emission violations, environmental infringements, groundwater contamination, unauthorized venting and flaring of gas, pipeline ruptures, refinery contamination, allowing the Durban refinery to be far lest circumspect on environmental controls than in its refineries elsewhere in the world, illegal dumping, oil spills, pollution and unsafe work conditions that resulted in an explosion at the $hell Louisiana refinery.

In recent times $hell’s management has acknowledged some of these problems and has promised to take steps to repair damage done both to the affected parties and to its own reputation as is the case with the recent out of court settlement to the families of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues; yet, despite this ostensible commitment to corporate social responsibility and an extensive global advertising and marketing campaign nothing has changed!

$hell is still willing to deal with the devil to fuel its unquenchable thirst for oil, irrespective of moral considerations and the potential deadly consequences of handing over billions of dollars to a regime which may well end up funding future terrorist atrocities, as it has in the past. In 1984 police constable Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead outside the Libyan Embassy in London while on duty at an anti-Gaddafi demonstration and $hell was implicated in the murder because of the company’s support for Gadafi. A burst of machine-gun fire from within the building was suspected of killing her, but Libyan diplomats asserted diplomatic immunity and were repatriated. It is not long ago that $hell was funding the corrupt Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abacha.

The turn of the century saw $hell begin to move into new growth areas of the world – notably China and Russia where it has several huge oil and gas projects in development at Salym and Sakhalin, and it has built a massive petrochemicals plant in China to supply its rapidly-growing consumer market.

Oil exploration projects have become more complex as the Group finds itself working in increasingly hostile environments. $hell’s record of technological innovation is critical to its ability to partner national governments keen to exploit their natural resources and as a result it currently has a known presence in not less than 145 countries around the world. In 2005, the Group underwent a major structural reorganization as the near century old partnership between Royal Dutch and $hell Transport and Trading was dissolved and one company was created, Royal Dutch $hell with the headquarters of the new company in The Hague.