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Burgum doubles down on support for selling off public land, cuts partnerships to get Americans outdoors
DENVER—Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Bureau of Land Management Director Steve Pearce were in Grand Junction on Wednesday for a “roundtable with community outdoor recreation and health figures in promotion of the departments’ collaboration on the intersection of public land access, physical activity and public health outcomes,” according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.
According to the Sentinel, Burgum was asked about public land selloff and downplayed the significance of selling off 2-3 million acres of public land:
Burgum was asked about his previous advocacy for selling off two to three million acres of BLM and Forest Service land and how this contrasts with current efforts to expand public land access. He responded that, in America, “you can do two things at the same time,” noting that the few million acres mentioned are a small portion of the approximately 525 million acres of Forest Service, BLM and National Park Service lands.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Communications Director Kate Groetzinger:
“It’s shocking that Secretary Burgum is still defending Mike Lee’s failed public land sell-off attempt. The entire country—including hunters, anglers, and conservative lawmakers—adamantly rejected Lee’s attempt to sell off national public lands last year. We know that Burgum’s office helped Lee write talking points for his failed gambit to privatize public lands, and the fact that Burgum is still pushing it shows the fight is not over. Clearly Doug Burgum still wants to sell off our public lands.”
Also at the roundtable Wednesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted the power of nature to improve Americans’ health. The Sentinel wrote:
“Burgum said in a press conference after the roundtable that some participating physicians suggested that the government adopt language that it’s ‘prescribing’ Americans with ‘vitamin N’ for ‘nature’ to get them active outside.
“‘We need to get kids outdoors. Particularly, we need to connect them to the wilderness. The wilderness is a seminal experience for American kids and has been since our nation was founded,’ Kennedy said.”
Despite this acknowledgement, the Interior department announced today via Fox News that it is cutting 43 partnerships with outside groups it says no longer align with the Trump administration’s priorities. These include internship programs, conservation initiatives, research projects, and cooperative partnerships to get Americans outside.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Communications Director Kate Groetzinger:
“Cutting partnerships that help get Americans outdoors during Great Outdoors Month is shameful and cruel. The administration is saying one thing and doing another—touting the outdoors as crucial for physical and mental health while cutting programs that increase access to outdoor recreation. Doug Burgum should put his money where his mouth is and expand federal partnerships that help Americans get outside, not cut them.”
Learn more:- The Secretary of the Interior has a Yellowstone Club problem – Westwise
- Trump’s Interior Dept. Crafted Talking Points For Mike Lee’s Public Land Sell-Off Scheme – Public Domain
- 2026 Conservation in the West poll – Colorado College State of the Rockies Project
Featured image: @SecretaryBurgum
The post Burgum doubles down on support for selling off public land, cuts partnerships to get Americans outdoors appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
Shell Boss Warns Oil Pain Could Drag On for a Year — As Shell Sits Pretty in the Crisis Chair
Disclaimer: This article is commentary and satire based on publicly reported information. It includes opinion, criticism, and parody. Site wide disclaimer also applies.
Shell, previously known as Forthdeal Limited, subsequently as Royal Dutch Shell plc, and now hiding in plain sight as Shell plc after ditching the disgraced Royal Dutch moniker, has reportedly marched back into the headlines with another sermon from the high altar of hydrocarbons: oil markets, we are told, may take “a year, if not longer” to return to equilibrium.Translation for ordinary mortals: buckle up, keep paying, and please admire the corporate gravitas while the till keeps ringing.
According to Reuters, Shell chief executive Wael Sawan warned that restoring balance to the crude oil market after the Iran/Persian Gulf disruption will not be a quick job. The Wall Street Journal also reported Sawan’s broader message: oil and gas prices may keep rising even after the immediate conflict eases, because the world’s hunger for energy is still growing, easy resources are harder to find, and governments are now treating energy security as national security.
And there it is: the grand new wrapping paper for the old fossil-fuel gift basket.
Energy security. National security. Resilience. Long-term systems. A more complex world. The language sounds statesmanlike, almost noble, until one remembers that the same market turmoil causing headaches for consumers, airlines, industries, and governments can also become a very handsome earnings environment for a supermajor with global trading arms, LNG exposure, upstream barrels, and enough corporate polish to turn a geopolitical crisis into a strategy deck.
Shell’s own Q1 2026 results presentation said the company delivered adjusted earnings of just under $7 billion amid “heightened volatility.” It also reported more than $17 billion of cash flow from operations excluding working capital. In plainer English: while the world sweated over energy shocks, Shell was hardly wandering the desert with an empty begging bowl.
The latest Sawan message is therefore a neat little performance. On one side, Shell sounds the alarm about fragile energy systems and depleted buffers. On the other, it positions itself as the indispensable adult in the room: the company that can trade, ship, drill, liquefy, optimise, and profit its way through the turbulence.
The public gets warnings. Investors get reassurance.
Sawan’s point that oil-market equilibrium may take a year or more is not, on its face, absurd. A major supply shock through the Gulf, especially involving the Strait of Hormuz and disrupted regional flows, can drain inventories, distort shipping, trigger emergency releases, hammer refiners, and raise the cost of everything from aviation to chemicals. Even when fighting stops, tankers do not teleport, infrastructure does not heal overnight, and inventories do not refill by magic.
But the political usefulness of this narrative should not be missed. If a crisis makes hydrocarbons look scarce, strategic, and irreplaceable, it also strengthens the case for more fossil investment, more LNG expansion, more upstream development, and more tolerance for the old industry argument: yes, yes, the energy transition is lovely, but not too fast, not too disruptive, and certainly not at the expense of shareholder returns.
Shell’s official transition messaging says it supports a “balanced and orderly” transition, aims for net zero by 2050, invests in low-carbon energy, and wants to provide energy today while building the system of the future. Yet the company also says it is keeping oil production stable and growing LNG. That is Shell’s favourite two-step: one foot in the climate brochure, the other planted firmly in the hydrocarbon cash register.
Sawan’s WSJ theme — energy security is national security — is especially convenient. Once energy becomes “national security,” criticism of oil and gas expansion can be made to sound naive, unpatriotic, or detached from reality. Never mind that climate security, consumer affordability, industrial resilience, and the long-term cost of fossil dependence are also national security issues. The phrase is powerful because it narrows the debate to supply, supply, supply — and who better to provide supply than the companies already profiting from the shortage?
This is how the oil majors win the room. First, they warn that the system is fragile. Then they remind everyone that only they understand it. Then they suggest that any serious government must keep them close, keep projects moving, and keep capital flowing. Finally, they call the whole thing realism.
Meanwhile, ordinary people get the bill in petrol, diesel, heating, freight, food, air fares, and inflation. Shell gets to appear grave, responsible, and indispensable — a sort of corporate firefighter standing heroically beside a blaze from which its own business model has long benefited.
There is also a delicious irony in Shell talking about equilibrium. This is a company whose legal identity has been through more costume changes than a pantomime villain: incorporated as Forthdeal Limited in 2002, renamed Royal Dutch Shell plc in 2004, then renamed Shell plc in 2022 after the grand simplification exercise. Apparently, balance is very important — especially when it involves balancing public concern, shareholder value, and the optics of dropping a tarnished old title.
The serious point is this: Sawan is probably right that the oil market will not simply snap back overnight. But Shell’s role is not that of neutral weather forecaster. Shell is not merely observing the storm; it is a giant ship built to sail profitably through it.
The company’s message to governments is clear: energy security requires companies like Shell. Its message to investors is clearer still: volatility can be opportunity. Its message to the public, dressed in softer language, is the oldest one in the oil business: keep calm and keep paying.
Spoof Shell PR/Spin SectionShell plc Statement — Extremely Serious Voice Edition
At Shell, previously known as Forthdeal Limited, then Royal Dutch Shell plc, and now simply Shell plc because shorter names travel better through controversy, we recognise that energy security is national security, economic security, shareholder security, bonus security, and, where appropriate, reputational-security-through-careful-wording.
Our CEO Wael Sawan has responsibly warned that restoring oil-market equilibrium may take a year, if not longer. This should not be interpreted as us enjoying higher prices. We are merely responsibly positioned to generate resilient value from a challenging macro environment of unfortunate global tightness.
We remain committed to the energy transition, provided it is balanced, orderly, commercially attractive, compatible with stable oil production, supportive of LNG growth, and not unduly disruptive to the sacred quarterly distribution rhythm.
Shell will continue helping the world navigate volatility by being very large, very integrated, very necessary, and very available for meetings with governments.
We understand the pain consumers feel at the pump. We also understand trading margins, upstream cash flows, LNG arbitrage, and the importance of disciplined capital allocation.
Together, we can build a lower-carbon future — at a responsible pace, with a robust hydrocarbon foundation, and preferably with Shell in the middle of every sentence.
Spoof Bot-Reaction / Comment Section@BarrelBot9000:
BREAKING: Oil giant discovers that oil shortage may be bad for consumers but strategically fascinating for oil giants.
@TransitionGoblin:
Shell’s energy transition strategy: one solar panel in the brochure, one LNG tanker in the bank account.
@ForthdealFanClub:
Never forget the glow-up: Forthdeal Limited to Royal Dutch Shell to Shell plc. Same fossil opera, shorter programme notes.
@PumpPricePeasant:
Lovely to hear equilibrium may take a year. My wallet has entered a disorderly transition.
@SecuritySloganBot:
Energy security is national security. Climate security is apparently a footnote in 8-point font.
@InvestorWhisperer:
Consumer crisis detected. Reclassifying as “heightened volatility” and routing to earnings call.
@CarbonNeutralByEventually:
Shell says the future is low carbon, but the present remains extremely billable.
@HydrocarbonHamster:
The wheel keeps spinning, the barrels keep moving, and somehow the hamster is paying £1.80 a litre.
@CrisisMonetisationUnit:
Please do not call it profiteering. The preferred term is “resilient integrated portfolio performance amid geopolitical complexity.”
@NationalSecurityNarrator:
When households cannot afford energy, it is a cost-of-living crisis. When oil companies discuss it, it becomes a strategic framework.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net
Senator pushed to cut firefighting aircraft inspections as his company’s aircraft failed one
A new investigation from ProPublica and Re:Public reveals that Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana was pushing to eliminate Forest Service airworthiness inspections for firefighting aircraft at the same time his former company, Bridger Aerospace, was failing one.
In April 2025, a Forest Service inspector found a crack in the wing of a Bridger scooper the company had presented as ready for fire season. That same month, a draft executive order eliminating the inspection program leaked from Sheehy’s Senate office. Metadata on the document showed it had been edited by one of Sheehy’s policy advisers and a lobbyist for Bridger. At the time, Sheehy held between $13 and $15 million in Bridger stock. The Forest Service has paid Bridger more than $235 million for scooper contracts since 2021.
The crack discovered by the inspection could have been catastrophic had it not been discovered. In fact, the Forest Service’s modern inspection program, which Sheehy proposed to eliminate, was built in response to two fatal tanker crashes in 2002 that were caused by similar undetected wing cracks. Current and former Forest Service officials told reporters that Bridger has resisted the agency’s inspections. A Sheehy spokesperson called the inspection program “a relic of a bygone era and an unnecessary barrier to asset availability.”
The draft executive order was also shaped by the United Aerial Firefighters Association, an industry group Sheehy helped found in 2022. When Sheehy moved his Bridger stock into blind trusts earlier this year, he entrusted them to executives at an energy infrastructure company formerly run by his brother, also a significant Bridger investor. Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told ProPublica that selecting a family member’s company “appears to do that exact thing that the rules mean to prohibit.”
Quick hits National park visitors rebuffed Burgum’s pitch to police historyE&E News | National Parks Traveler | Associated Press
Political reviews are causing a huge grant backlog at the National Park Service Lawmakers inquire about Forest Service spraying roundup on public lands White House to tap California water expert for Bureau of ReclamationE&E News | Las Vegas Review-Journal
Opinion: The US government is pillaging our national forests from within Proposed Trump rule targets ‘woke’ federal grants for public lands, health, science Senators demand answers on Trump’s use of national park fees The last working pay phone in Yellowstone National Park is dead Quote of the dayThis is a dangerous arena to get into, where the forever business of NASA, NOAA or NPS are all now on the whims of political appointees and the shifting political tides. This is not how things were intended to be done.”
—Jesse Chakrin, executive director of Fund for People in Parks, KQED
Picture This @interiorInterior be like “I know a spot,” and then take you somewhere that looks like another planet.
Moonscape Overlook in Utah sits high above a maze of colorful badlands, ridges, and winding desert terrain managed by @mypubliclands. It’s the kind of place that reminds you just how wild and vast America’s public lands really are.
We manage millions of acres of public lands across the country, including places that still feel completely untamed. Some are famous. Others are hidden at the end of dusty backroads somewhere out in the middle of the desert. Those are usually the spots worth remembering.
Photo by Susan Hartman
Featured photo: Scooper plane dumps water on wildfire, Washington DNR
The post Senator pushed to cut firefighting aircraft inspections as his company’s aircraft failed one appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
Transit for the People: Join the 2026 Member Drive
Image Description: Evelyn Ulysse Alcantara, a dark-skinned woman in a red PPT shirt, smiles in front of a collaged picture of Pittsburgh
I’m a mother and member of the Latino community fighting with PPT for a transit system that truly serves everyone. Will you join me by becoming a dues-paying member? Donate to become a PPT member!My name is Evelyn Ulysse Alcantara. I use public transportation daily for going to work, the doctor, leisure activities, meetings, bringing my son to school—everything.
I’m Latina and my English isn’t perfect, so when I first moved to Pittsburgh I struggled to use public transportation because there was so little information available in Spanish. This is why I volunteered to help be an ambassador for PPT’s Transit Tours. It was so frustrating and isolating to try and learn how to use the system by myself. I knew that if I could do something to support my community’s learning, I had to do it!
Being a PPT member hasn’t just improved my own transit needs. It opened the door to help me make a difference.
When there were cuts to transit in Beechview, there were times the bus or T didn’t come—and I didn’t know why because the changes were only communicated in English. But today, if you go to Steel Plaza or Wood Street Station, you’ll hear announcements in Spanish! And there are step by step instructions in Spanish on PRT’s website. This is because PPT and Casa San Jose came together to uplift my community’s voice, so that PRT could understand the true impact this was having on us.
This is PPT’s real power: they truly listen to the people.
When I first found out about PPT, they were asking for testimonies about the role transit has in people’s lives, to show how important a half-fare program would be. I knew I had to give my testimony, because we needed to take action to improve access. Back then it was just an idea, but today it’s a reality that brings transit service to the people!
I love PPT because I know firsthand what we can accomplish together.
In 2026 alone, we have:
- We brought 120 members to Harrisburg to shed light on the $80 million dollar transit budget gap, and emphasise the importance of paratransit and shared ride services to our representatives.
- We trained 13 community organizing fellows across the Hilltop neighborhood of PGH, and the Lancaster and Lehigh Valley regions of PA.
- Shared skills and built power with 170 people from across the country at our 2026 Spring Training.
That’s why I wanted to ask: will you support PPT’s urgent work by becoming a dues-paying member today?
You can join for just $2.75—the current cost of a PRT bus fare! That money goes directly towards advocacy for a transit budget that moves ALL Pennsylvanians. Everyone deserves access to public transportation. Will you help us make that dream a reality?
Donate now to join Evelyn as a member—and build transit for the people!The post Transit for the People: Join the 2026 Member Drive appeared first on Pittsburghers for Public Transit.
Shell and the Donovans: The Full Media Record — 550+ Articles, 110 Books, 40 Years
REGULARLY UPDATED: Links to over 500 articles (and radio and TV broadcasts) by publishers including the FT, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Dow Jones Newswires, Bloomberg, New York Times, CNBC, Forbes, plus UK House of Commons Select Committee Hansard records, U.S. SEC website records, and legal documents filed in U.S. Courts — all containing references to the Donovans, their Shell-related websites, or their former company Don Marketing. Syndicated duplicates removed except where published by a prestigious outlet (New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Bloomberg, Financial Times, etc.).
Background: Alfred Donovan’s Essex garage business held a Shell supply relationship from 1957. His company Don Marketing partnered with Shell on promotional games 1981–1991. Disputes over intellectual property rights led to four settled lawsuits and the registration of royaldutchshellplc.com, which attracted the coverage below spanning 40+ years. Shell’s WIPO attempt to recover the domain (Case D2005-0538) failed in August 2005. In all, over 550 externally published references to date, plus references in 110 books.
Contents1981–1991: The Shell Partnership (23 articles) | 1992–1999: Dispute & Litigation (58+ articles) | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 Onwards | 110 Books | TV, Radio & Video
1981–1991: The Shell Partnership — 23 ArticlesDuring this period Don Marketing and Shell operated as close commercial partners. Don Marketing invented and ran a series of highly successful petrol forecourt promotional games for Shell across Britain and internationally. All coverage is positive trade press reporting on joint activity.
Rubbing away to goodwill — Incentive Marketing and Sales Promotion, November 1983
Early trade press feature on Don Marketing’s scratchcard game concepts for Shell forecourts.
Fast flowing Don — Marketing Magazine, 16 February 1984
Profile of Don Marketing and its expanding roster of Shell promotional games.
Shell is back making money — Incentive Marketing and Sales Promotion, March 1984
Coverage of the relaunched Shell Make Money scratchcard game.
The Finale: Interview with Shell Manager Ken Danson — Shell In-house Magazine, March 1984
Interview on the promotional games partnership with Don Marketing.
Anatomy of a Shell winner — Campaign Magazine, 27 April 1984
Campaign’s analysis of the Shell Make Money game’s commercial success.
The play’s the thing — Marketing Magazine, 31 May 1984
Feature on Don Marketing’s game design philosophy and Shell partnership.
Marketing Magazine Sales Promotion Survey — 6 September 1984
Don Marketing and Shell games featured.
Why games became big business — Campaign Magazine, 14 September 1984
Wider industry analysis citing Don Marketing / Shell as the benchmark.
Cerebral promotion for drivers: Shell Mastermind — Trade Press, September 1984
Trade coverage of the Shell Mastermind game.
“Shell starts up a new promotion” (Shell Make Merry) — Marketing Week, 2 November 1984 — [POS Display]
Launch coverage of Shell Make Merry with point-of-sale display.
Don Marketing launches dual forecourt attack — Campaign Magazine, 2 November 1984
Campaign covers the simultaneous Shell Make Merry and second-game launch.
Shell offers ‘lucky deal’ — Marketing Magazine, 2 May 1985
Launch coverage of Shell Bruce’s Lucky Deal game.
Old favourites that never die — Campaign Magazine, 14 June 1985
Feature on the longevity of Don Marketing’s Shell game formats.
Don does it again, this time with Bruce — Promotions & Incentives Magazine, June 1985
Dedicated feature on Shell Bruce’s Lucky Deal.
It’s game, set and match as forecourts fight it out to the finish — Campaign Magazine, 27 September 1985
Industry analysis of the petrol forecourt promotional games market; Don Marketing / Shell as market leaders.
Learning the right rules of the game — Marketing Week Magazine, 11 October 1985
In-depth feature on promotional game mechanics; Don Marketing central.
John Chambers has left Don Marketing and game cards to set up a new sales promotion operation for the world’s sixth largest ad agency — Promotions & Incentive Magazine, February 1986
Don plans huge bingo promotion — Marketing Week, 7 February 1986
Don Marketing announces next-generation bingo-format game.
Marketing Magazine article “Games people play” involving John Donovan — 18 September 1986
Feature on the future of promotional gaming.
Shell launches Star Trek scratchcard game — Sales Promotion Magazine, March 1991
Launch article for the final major Shell / Don Marketing collaboration: the Shell Star Trek game.
Will Shell’s intergalactic experiment pay off? — Promotions & Incentives Magazine, July–August 1991
Cover story plus seven pages of coverage with extensive colour photography of the Shell Star Trek scratchcard promotion. The last major game in the Don Marketing / Shell partnership.
Shell Star Trek Promotion — Promotions & Incentives Magazine, February 1992
Follow-up coverage on results and performance of the Star Trek game.
Up to Scratch — Promotions & Incentives Magazine, June 1993
Retrospective industry feature on scratchcard technology and games; Don Marketing referenced.
Following the end of the Shell promotional games partnership, a dispute arose over intellectual property rights and Shell’s use of concepts developed by Don Marketing. This period produced extensive trade press coverage across Marketing Magazine, Marketing Week, Campaign, Incentive Today, Promotions & Incentives, Forecourt News, Forecourt Trader, and the national press. Don Marketing issued four writs against Shell; Shell settled out of court each time.
New DPP ruling: plain paper entries are ‘legal and acceptable’ — Promotion & Incentives Magazine, February 1992, Page 4
Shell faces libel threat from Don — Marketing Week, 31 March 1994
First major trade press report of the developing dispute between Don Marketing and Shell.
Shell struck by writ — Marketing Magazine, 20 October 1994 — Front-page headline
Marketing Magazine leads on Don Marketing issuing legal proceedings against Shell.
Shell stole intellectual property, alleges Don — Debrief Newsletter, November 1994
Debrief reports Don Marketing’s core intellectual property claim against Shell.
Don issues writ number four to embattled Shell — Marketing Magazine, 10 November 1994
Shell Shock: Editorial by Incentive Today Magazine — November/December 1994
Incentive Today editorial comment on the Don v Shell dispute.
Shell fails to block agency’s legal action — Incentive Today Magazine, January 1995
Shell ‘legal block fails’ in promotions agency row — Forecourt News, January 1995
Promotion Wrangle: Forecourt Trader uncovers the background to the legal dispute between Shell (UK) Ltd and promotions company Don Marketing UK (Ltd) — Forecourt Trader, January 1995
Don Marketing trade ad seeks help of dealers — Marketing Magazine, 12 January 1995
Don Marketing places trade advertisements appealing to Shell dealers for evidence.
Marketing Week News — 20 January 1995
Irate Don hits Shell investors — Marketing Week, 27 January 1995
Don Marketing steps up its attack on Shell — Debrief, February 1995
Pressure group to target Shell — Forecourt Trader, February 1995
‘Shell knew of flaws in Make Money’ — Forecourt News, February 1995 — Front page
Marketing Week News — 24 February 1995
Shell seeks guarantee over costs in Don case — Marketing Week, 24 March 1995
Shell promotions dispute intensifies — Promotions & Incentives, April 1995
Shell: ‘claim will fail’ — Incentive Today, April 1995
Shell row steps up a gear — Forecourt News, April 1995
Stop Press: Don Marketing founder Alfred Donovan has issued a libel writ — Marketing Magazine, 20 April 1995
Alfred Donovan personally issues a libel claim against Shell.
Shell faces libel action as Don’s founder issues writ — Marketing Week, 21 April 1995
Shell speaks out over Don — Forecourt Trader, April 1995
Donovan issues Shell libel writ — Promotions & Incentive Magazine, May 1995
Briefly Column — Forecourt News, May 1995
Stop Press: Shell has confirmed that its senior management will hold talks with Don Marketing — Marketing Magazine, 25 May 1995
Don takes its payment fight to Shell’s AGM — Marketing Week, 26 May 1995
Alfred Donovan confronts Shell management at the annual general meeting.
Marketing Week News: John Donovan, of sales promotion agency Don Marketing… — 2 June 1995
“Will have a team picketing Shell’s London headquarters for four days a week”
David Don and Goliath Shell: Episode 3,651 — Debrief Newsletter, June 1995, Page 63
Debrief’s running commentary headline on the dispute.
Lucky Numbers — Incentive Today, July/August 1995
Substantial feature including John Donovan on scratch card game mechanics, security, and the industry.
Extract: “Donovan quoting a cost of 4p per card to run a scratch card promotion… cards printed in the United States by printers Dittler Brothers, who are specialists in printing scratch and lottery tickets and even have armed guards securing their plant.”
Shell UK and Don Marketing — Marketing Week, 8 September 1995
Debrief Newsletter — October 1995
Shell faces High Court battle over Smart Card — Marketing Week, 16 April 1998 — Front-page cover story
Marketing Week leads on Don Marketing’s new legal action over the Shell Smart loyalty card scheme.
Shell card in legal row — Financial Mail on Sunday, 19 April 1998
National press picks up the Smart card dispute.
Don Marketing booking full-page ads to alert Shell shareholders to its dispute with Shell — Marketing Magazine, 23 April 1998
High Court papers unveil ‘secret’ Shell writ losses — Marketing Week, 23 April 1998
Shell reveals plans for challenging Smart writ — Marketing Week, 30 April 1998
Donovan brings new Shell writ — this time for libel — Marketing Magazine, 30 April 1998
Shell stands firm on Smart charges — Promotions & Incentives, May 1998
Don’s Smart writ — Forecourt Trader, May 1998
New clash for Don Marketing and Shell — Incentive Today Magazine, May 1998
ASA dragged into Shell UK Smart battle — Marketing Week Magazine, 7 May 1998
Shell broadens base — Marketing Magazine, 7 May 1998
Shell in legal row — Sales Promotion Magazine, May 1998
Shell faces new threat to Smart card scheme — Marketing Week, 21 May 1998
Shell: Don is more than ‘disgruntled’ — Marketing Week Letters, 21 May 1998
Shell’s response published in Marketing Week letters column.
Don Marketing posts warning about Shell — Marketing Week Magazine, 28 May 1998
Shell Smart copyright battle gets nastier — Loyalty Magazine, May/June 1998
Safe Ideas — June 1998
Donovan’s beef with Shell online — Daily Telegraph, 11 June 1998
The Telegraph reports on Don Marketing taking the dispute to the internet; an early online activism story.
Don Claims first round in Shell libel action — Marketing Week, 30 July 1998
“McShell” case continues — Loyalty Magazine, August 1998
On cyberpicket lines — London Evening Standard, 28 September 1998
Subheadline: “Don’t get mad, get even” — the Evening Standard covers the Donovans’ early internet campaigning as a new form of corporate pressure.
Shell smacked over libel action — Incentive Today Magazine, September 1998
Judge Shell by actions not words — Marketing Week, 25 February 1999
Shell loyalty row continues — Incentive Today, June 1999
Donovan takes Smart case against Shell to court — Sunday Business, 6 June 1999
Promotions expert claims Shell stole his Smart card idea — Sunday Telegraph, 6 June 1999
The Sunday Telegraph covers the High Court proceedings.
Shell faces court battle on its Smart scheme — Marketing Magazine, 10 June 1999
Ideas man sues Shell — The Times, 16 June 1999
The Times national coverage of the High Court action.
Oil giant stole my promotion idea, alleges businessman — East Anglian Daily Times, 16 June 1999
Into battle with Shell — Bury Free Press, 18 June 1999
Local press in the Donovans’ home county covers the High Court proceedings.
Shell in High Court suit over Smart card scheme — Debrief, July 1999
Don ends legal proceedings against Shell UK — Marketing Week, 8 July 1999
Shell settles out of court.
Shell has settled out of court with John Donovan… — Marketing Magazine, 28 July 1999 — Stop Press Column
Shell claim is settled — Bury Free Press, 9 July 1999
Stalemate for marketing firm’s ‘stolen’ idea claim — East Anglian Daily Times, 7 July 1999
Shell action abandoned — Forecourt Trader, August 1999
Don and Shell end Smart row — Incentive Today, July–August 1999
Shell in High Court suit over Smart card scheme — WARC, 1 August 1999
Industry database records the settlement.
Speak Out! — West Pasco Press Newspaper (Florida, USA), November 1999, Page 2
Alfred Donovan interviewed for comment in Florida. US local press coverage of the dispute’s resolution.
Wall Street Journal Europe — 3–5 June 2005, Page A4
“Shell Fights Over Domain Name Ahead of Parent Firm’s Merger”
Wall Street Journal (US Edition) — 2 June 2005
“Shell Wages Legal Fight Over Web Domain Name” — The WSJ broke the story globally: Alfred Donovan, 88-year-old British army veteran, had registered royaldutchshellplc.com before Shell itself.
Extract: “Later this summer, oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell Group is expected to merge its two parent companies, creating a new corporate entity: Royal Dutch Shell PLC. But go to www.royaldutchshellplc.com and you will find a crude Web site in garish colors where Alfred Donovan, an 88-year-old British army veteran, posts dozens of media reports and commentary, most of it negative, about Shell…”
Bloomberg — 2 June 2005
“Shell in Legal Battle Over Name of Web Site, Journal Reports”
Extract: “Donovan and his son John have waged a longstanding anti-Shell campaign that started in the 1990s in a dispute over rights to Shell gasoline-station promotions, the Journal said.”
Algemeen Dagblad / De Mirror (Netherlands) — 5 June 2005
“Hoogbejaarde Brit zit Shell dwars” — Dutch national coverage of the domain dispute.
The Times (City Diary) — 21 June 2005
“Hostile Domain”
Reuters / Washington Post — 24 June 2005
“Shell shareholders to back unification” — Reuters article syndicated to the Washington Post, noting the domain dispute as a complication to Shell’s corporate restructuring.
New York Times (Reuters syndication) — 25 June 2005
“Shell Shareholders to Back Unification”
Extract: “Another dampener on Shell’s biggest corporate overhaul since the two holding firms tied up in 1907, is a spat over the rights to the web domain ‘royaldutchshellplc.com.’ Disgruntled shareholder Alfred Donovan beat Shell to register the domain name.”
Variations also published by: The Washington Post · MSN Money · Yahoo · The Gulf Times (Qatar) · The Boston Globe — all June 2005.
Newstalk Radio 106fm Dublin — “The Breakfast Show with Eamon Dunphy” — 4 August 2005
John Donovan interview, broadcast 8.17am.
The Times — 16 August 2005
“AN ATTEMPT by Royal Dutch Shell to claim the website royaldutchshellplc.com has failed.” — Reporting the WIPO ruling (Case D2005-0538).
CommTech Newsletter — 9 September 2005
WIPO panel ruling summary.
Extract: “A World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) panel has found against Shell in a dispute over ownership of the domain names royaldutchshellgroup.com, royaldutchshellplc.com and tellshell.org. Alfred Donovan, an 88 year old war veteran and Shell shareholder, uses the domain names to direct to his website which offers a forum for criticism of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of companies.”
Fortune Magazine — 2 August 2006 — [PDF]
“Executive Bookmark” — Fortune listed royaldutchshellplc.com alongside shell.com as one of the two principal Shell websites.
Argus FSU Energy — 27 October 2006
“Shell weights its options”
Interfax / Johnson’s Russia List — 13 November 2006
“Russian Ministry Says Sakhalin Energy Measures on Environment Unsatisfactory”
NASA.gov — 1 January 2007 — [PDF1] [PDF2]
“Future Fuel Scenarios and Their Potential Impact to Aviation” — 18-page NASA technical report citing a royaldutchshellplc.com article on page 17.
Business New Europe — January 2007
“Shell Gets Stuck in a Sakhalin blog-mire”
Prospect Magazine — February 2007
“Rise of the gripe site” — Major feature on the Donovans and royaldutchshellplc.com as a new force in corporate accountability.
Financial Times — 5 June 2007
“‘Pipeliners All!’ Shell’s memo to Sakhalin” — FT story breaking the Patton-style Sakhalin memo, sourced from royaldutchshellplc.com.
WikiLeaks / Stratfor (email-id 340835) — 6 June 2007 — [PDF]
Global Intelligence Files record relating to the Sakhalin-2 Patton-style memo.
Moscow Times — 9 June 2007
“Sakhalin Pep Talk From ‘Old Blood and Guts'”
Financial Times — 22 June 2007
“‘Patton’ e-mail man resigns SEIC post” — SEIC Deputy Chairman David Greer resigns following the Sakhalin leak.
Moscow Times — 22 June 2007
“Sakhalin Energy’s Greer Steps Down”
One World Trust Newsletter — July 2007
“Royaldutchshellplc.com – The Power of a Website”
Daily Mail — 1 September 2007
“Shell on back foot as ‘gripe site’ alleges safety concerns”
Reuters — 4 September 2007
“Shell loses exec on troubled Kazakh project — source”
Extract: “John Donovan, who runs a Web site critical of Shell and acts as a conduit for whistleblowers at the company, said Shell insiders had told him that John Stubbs, a senior project manager on Kashagan, had left the Anglo-Dutch oil major.”
Daily Telegraph — 8 September 2007 — [PDF]
“Pressure on Shell over safety of platforms”
Sunday Telegraph — 10 September 2007 — [PDF]
“Online revolutionaries”
Prospect Magazine — 12 September 2007
“Shell’s Colchester headache”
The Times (City Diary — Martin Waller) — 22 September 2007
“Royal Dutch Shell at war with family”
Extract: “Since the 1990s, Royal Dutch Shell has been at war with a family who registered a website, royaldutchshellplc.com. The Donovan family, led by 90-year-old Burma veteran Alfred, perhaps quixotically want Shell to change its management. Shell has failed to shut down the site…”
BBC Radio Essex — 11 October 2007
Presenter Etholle George interviews John Donovan (transcript).
Nikkei BP (Japan) — 13 November 2007
“Gripe sites are becoming more powerful”
Extract: “The fate of Sakhalin 2 was changed by two British men… It is not well known in Japan that actions of a 90-year-old man and his son who live in a countryside in UK contributed to the above movement.”
Lloyd’s / Dow Jones Newswires — 19 November 2007
“US Court Ruling Paves For Shell Reserves Settlement To Proceed”
Reuters — 21 December 2007
“Shell to cut thousands of IT jobs”
Sunday Telegraph — 30 December 2007 — [PDF]
“Shell plans to outsource 3,600 jobs”
Financial Times — 30 December 2007 — [PDF]
“Shell looks to outsource about 3,200 IT jobs”
Guardian — 31 December 2007
“Shell to outsource 3,600 IT jobs”
Wall Street Journal / Dow Jones — 2 January 2008
“Shell Plans Cost Cutting As Profit Is Threatened”
Extract: “Shell intends to transfer ‘close to 3,000 positions’ from its IT staff to outsourcing companies, according to a Shell newsletter obtained by Royaldutchshellplc.com.”
Bloomberg — 2 January 2008
“Shell Will Cut Finance Jobs, Reorganize in Nigeria, WSJ Says”
ComputerWorld UK — 2 January 2008
“Shell plans to outsource 3,200 IT jobs”
Dow Jones Newswires — 5 January 2008
“Shell CEO Reassures Staff After Outsourcing Leak”
Extract: “Royal Dutch Shell PLC Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer is seeking to reassure staff after leaks over the company’s plans to transfer 3,000 IT employees, according to a document obtained by Royaldutchshellplc.com.”
The Times — 25 January 2008
“Demand for oil and gas will outstrip supply within 7 years says Shell chief”
The Times (City Diary) — 25 January 2008
“A curious letter from Jeroen van der Veer”
Dow Jones Newswires — 25 January 2008
“Shell: Easy Oil No Longer Matching Demand After ’15 – Web Site”
Wall Street Journal / Dow Jones — 24–25 January 2008
“Shell OKs Extra $27M Legal Fee In Reserves Case — Website”
Wall Street Journal — 18 March 2008
“Shell Addresses Output Issue”
UK House of Commons — WWF evidence to Select Committee on Environmental Audit — 20 June 2008
WWF Sakhalin Evidence — Parliamentary evidence citing royaldutchshellplc.com’s Sakhalin II whistleblower reporting. Also published in House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee Eleventh Report of Session 2007–08.
WikiLeaks / Stratfor (email-id 1161378) — 1 December 2008 — [PDF]
Global Intelligence Files record relating to Gazprom loans and Sakhalin-2.
Guardian / International Herald Tribune / Reuters / Financial Times — 12–13 December 2008
Multiple outlets covered Shell’s pension fund falling 40% in value — Guardian · International Herald Tribune · Reuters · Financial Times
Reuters (syndicated) — 30 January 2009
“Shell gets tough on costs as oil prices bite” — Reference: “Copies of the emails are available at www.royaldutchshellplc.com”
Syndicated to: AOL Money Canada · CNBC · Forbes · Financial Post · Guardian · International Herald Tribune · London Stock Exchange AFX · MSN · STV · USA Today · National Post
Santa Barbara News-Press — 7 February 2009
“Gripe sites are all the rage now”
Reuters (syndicated) — 9 February 2009
“INTERVIEW — Shell eyes Mid East growth, to cut some jobs” — Reference: employees posted comments on royaldutchshellplc.com.
Syndicated to: Guardian · Forbes · Forexpros · Trade Arabia · ArabianBusiness.com · Economic Times of India
The Intellectual Property Strategist (Law Journal Newsletter) — February 2009
“Gripe Sites: Sue or Stew” — Legal analysis of the Shell v Donovan WIPO case as precedent for corporate gripe site disputes.
Reuters (syndicated) — 12 February 2009
“Shell to stall hires and get ‘ruthless’ on contractors” — Reference: “A copy of the email is available on Shell protest site royaldutchshellplc.com.”
Syndicated to: Upstream Online · BNET · Singapore Retrenchment · Interactive Investor · ExecutiveDigital · LondonSouthEast.co.uk
Financial Times — 26 May 2009
“Shell shake-up widely rumoured; E&P and G&P tipped to merge” — Royaldutchshellplc.com broke the story of the Berlin restructuring summit.
Financial Times (multiple editions) — 26–27 May 2009
Three separate FT editions cited royaldutchshellplc.com as the source reporting that more than 30% of senior managers were expected to be cut. [FT 1] [FT 2] [FT 3] [FT 4]
Daily Mail — 26–27 May 2009
“Shell shock as long-timer Cook is first to go in Voser cull” — described royaldutchshellplc.com as “company gossip site” that had “regularly obtained leaks from Shell insiders.”
Dow Jones Newswires — 27 May 2009
“Shell To Restructure, Merge Three Units” — Dow Jones listed www.royaldutchshellplc.com as the company’s web address.
London Evening Standard — 27 May 2009
“Shell braced for massive job cuts in Berlin summit” — described royaldutchshellplc.com as “Shell insiders’ website.”
International coverage — 27 May 2009
AFP (France) · Romandie News · De 529 (Netherlands) · le nouvel Observateur · China Money 163.com · DutchDN (Norway) · DutchFEM · fd.nl (Het Financieele Dagblad) · koersalarm.nl · z24.nl · Denver Post — all citing royaldutchshellplc.com as the source of the restructuring story.
Wall Street Journal / Dow Jones (syndicated) — 22–23 June 2009
“Leaked Shell E-mail Reveals 62 Senior Executive Appointments”
Extract: “An internal e-mail from Royal Dutch Shell PLC leaked to a blog critical of the company has revealed the appointments of 62 senior executives to new roles within the restructured company. The e-mail dated June 16, sent by incoming Chief Executive Peter Voser, was published Saturday on the blog royaldutchshellplc.com.”
Syndicated to: ADVFN · easyBOURSE · SmartMoney · MorningStar · Dow Jones Deutschland · IEX.nl · fd.nl het Financieele Dagblad
Reuters (syndicated) — 30 May 2009
“Shell to cut 350–450 senior managers in overhaul — website” — “The Royaldutchshellplc.com website was the first to reveal news of the planned restructuring.”
Syndicated to: New York Times · CNBC · Forbes · MSN Money · USA Today · BNET · Economic Times India · Straits Times Singapore · Interactive Investor · Brazil Globo · Reuters China · SINA.com
Sunday Times — 19 July 2009
“Two men and a website mount vendetta against an oil giant” — Major Sunday Times feature with photo spread; subtitle: “They just go on digging: the Donovans’ campaign has caused Shell expense and embarrassment at its operations in Russia.”
Financial Times Energy Source — 20 July 2009
“Why royaldutchshellplc.com do what they do”
Wall Street Journal / Dow Jones (syndicated) — 17 July, 21 July, 3 August 2009
“Shell Email Leak Says US Convent Refinery Income Dismal — Blog” and “Shell’s Leaked 300 VPs List Shows Deepening Restructuring”
Syndicated to: NASDAQ · SmartMoney · EasyBourse · MorningStar · ADVFN · Borsa Italiana · New York Daily News
Reuters — 2 December 2009
“Shell critic says oil major targeting his website” — Key Reuters investigation; includes the email from a Shell communications representative to Fox News describing royaldutchshellplc.com as “an excellent source of group news and comment… far above what our own group internal comms puts out.”
The source page at royaldutchshellgroup.com/2016/09/19/88205/ continues with entries through 2026, covering over 300 further articles. The page is regularly updated. Key themes from 2010 onwards include: the 2010 and 2015 data breach coverage (176,000+ employee records); the Shell reserves fraud and related U.S. class action; ongoing Sakhalin-2 and Nigeria coverage; the 2022 Shell corporate renaming fiasco; AI “bot war” coverage from 2024–2026; and the Guardian and Reuters articles on the Donovans’ campaign attracting over 550 external references.
17-page report by Michael Priestley entitled “China’s reliance on Australian LNG exports” published by Parliament of Australia Department of Parliamentary Services on 6 January 2010. Reference link on page 4 to an article on royaldutchshellplc.com
*United States Trademark Law book published by BOOKS LLC in 2010
Chapter 11 is devoted to the website ROYALDUTCHSHELLPLC.COM
Extract: royaldutchsheUplc.com is a Royal Dutch Shell gripe site and blog operated by Alfred and John Donovan, who engaged in several marketing campaigns with Shell during the 1980s and early 1990s. The father and son duo believe Shell violated intellectual property agreements and filed several law suits against Shell prior to starting several websites critical of Shell, including royaldutchshellplc.com. The site has been oft quoted in news sources and is known for its activities as an Internet leak and forum for Shell whistleblowers.
Syndicated version:
*ADVFN.COM/ DOW JONES NEWS
*DataBreaches.net: Shell employee contact data breach affects over 100,000: 7 February 2010
Syndicated version ends
*Financial Times: Shell staff details leaked to campaign groups: 11 February 2010
*Times Online: Confidential Shell database published on web: 12 February 2010
*ComputerWeekly.com: Did activists infiltrate Shell to obtain contacts database?: 12 February 2010
*ComputerWeekly.com: Shell staff details revealed in security breach
*Evening Express: Alert after Shell workers data leaked on web: 12 February 2010
*Financial Times: Shell employees’ details leaked to environmental campaigners: 12 February 2010
*Financial Times Blog: Shells directory leak shouldnt be taken lightly: 12 February 2010
*Dark Reading: Shell Employee Directory Leaked, Allegedly By Activist Workers
*Financial Times: Shell staff contact list leaked to environmental campaign groups
*Irish Herald.ie: Shell staff details exposed online in security leak risk
*The Times: SHELL INVESTIGATES INTERNET POSTING OF PERSONAL DETAILS:13 February 2010
*Reuters: SHELL INVESTIGATES INTERNET POSTING OF PERSONAL DETAILS: 13 February 2010
*The Register: Shell hit by massive data breach: 15 Feb 2010
*ITPRO: Shell hit by massive data breach: 15 Feb 2010
*ITWIRE: Shells internal directory leaked to activists: 16 Feb 2010
*ITPRO: Shell data hackers hoped to kick-off ‘revolution’: 16 Feb 2010
DATA BREACH STORIES END
*WikiLeaks THE GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE FILES 19 Feb 2010 Email-ID 5033529. Stratfor.com Nigeria database – Open “Attached Files” 167401.
*ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST: The Corrib Gas controversy: October 2010: Book – can be purchased on Amazon
Extract: Four years later, in November 2007, the RoyalDutchShellplc.com website run by Alfred and John Donovan – long-time critics of the multinational – published details of minutes of a meeting of Shell group managing directors on 22 and 23 July 2002. Planning refusal for the Ballinaboy gas terminal in north Mayo was discussed, according to the website, which quoted from the minutes: ‘The committee queried whether the group had sufficiently well placed contacts with the Irish government and regulators. Paul Skinner undertook to explore this issue further in consultation with the country chairman in Ireland.’
2011*CRC Press: “The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management” by Jan Jordan-Meier Book Published March 2011
Extract:
Not only have they been actively campaigning against the company for nearly a decade (they started in 2001), but they own the domain name www.royaldutchshellplc.com–Shell’s proper name, you guessed it, Royal Dutch Shell.
According to an interview on their blog, the site receives millions of hits per month and many of the people using the site are shell employees.
Influential–you bet. The Donovans and their blog are regularly quoted in the mainstream media–no doubt that the father-and-son team is an ongoing headache for Shell.
Extract: The RoyalDutchShellplc.com website is highly critical of Shell’s operations worldwide. It was established in 2005 by the Donovans, owners of a marketing company which was involved in court actions with Shell.
*66-page report authored by Albert ten Kate entitled: “Royal Dutch Shell and its sustainability troubles” published by Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) in May 2011
Extract
Research
Assessing the online library of news articles and leaked documents (over 25,000 articles and documents) about Royal Dutch Shell via http://royaldutchshellplc.com
*OUR INVOLVEMENT IN A SUNDAY EXPRESS ARTICLE: SCOTTISH OIL RIGS IN DIRE STRAITS: 11 September 2011
*THE MAYO NEWS ARTICLE: Natural resources they have’nt gone away you know: 7 October 2011
Extract: The royaldutchshellplc.com website had this on its home page last Friday. This website, subtitled, ‘News and information on Royal Dutch Shell Plc’ has nothing whatever to do with the said company. A disclaimer states: “This is not a Shell website nor is it officially endorsed by or affiliated with Shell in any way.” The site was founded by 94 year-old Alfred Donovan, the former Chairman of the Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group. He is assisted by, among others, his son, John, who has been involved in the gasoline retailing industry for over 40 years. John is best known for his long association with the Royal Dutch Shell Group, firstly for devising marketing campaigns on an international basis and more recently as a long-term Shell shareholder and critic of Shell senior management. The site is a mine of information on Shell’s activities worldwide.
2012*Extract from the ebook by Robert Eringer, Suck My Pen: How to Gut Goliath by Becoming an Interactive Hub of Dissent (Published March 2012 Kindle Edition)
EXTRACTS:
…the most successful gripe site of all time, which targets Shell Oil, actually operates under the domain name royaldutchshellplc.com, Shell’s legal trading name.
IX. CASE STUDY: SHELL OIL
1. Royal Dutch Shell Plc is a multinational Goliath that makes billions of dollars annually in profits from high oil prices and employs 100,000 persons in over a hundred countries; but if you go to royaldutchshellplc.com you will not find Shell Oil; you will find a gripe site operated by father and son Alfred and John Donovan.
2. In 1993, Shell allegedly stole promotional ideas disclosed to it in confidence by the Donovans; they resorted to legal means to remedy their predicament, resulting in many court battles; in the midst of litigation, the Donovans created an anti-Shell gripe site; Shell eventually paid to settle all court actions.
3. Nonetheless, the Donovans continued to use their site to hold Shell accountable whenever Shell’s policies did not correlate to their public relations and advertising rhetoric.
4. In March 2005, Shell initiated legal action to try to stop the Donovans from using royaldutchshellplc.com as their domain name; Shell lost.
5. Over time, the Donovans constructed the most comprehensive Shell-related news service on the Internet, gathering and publishing many news stories on Shell each day on a 24/7 basis; additionally, the Donovans write and publish an outspoken blog about Shell on which they discuss various news stories while voicing their expert opinions; if you Google “Royal Dutch Shell,” there are approximately of 1,120,000 results; the Donovan site consistently ranks number four.
6. Visitors to royaldutchshellplc.com site can post comments on its Live Chat feature without having to register, thereby allowing anonymous offerings; thus it attracts Shell insiders who reveal confidential information about Shell without them having to give up their identities; some such insiders graduated to leaking Shell internal correspondence documents to the Donovans.
7. Royaldutchshellplc.com receives several million hits monthly and has become an interactive hub of dissent, attracting whistleblowers who use the Donovan site as a means to leak numerous Shell secrets to the media, resulting in huge embarrassment to Shell’s senior management and even the resignation of a Shell senior executive.
8. A confidential Shell memo leaked to the Donovans tabled strategies for combatting the Donovan site; Shell conducted surveillance and deployed dirty tricks against the Donovans, including the use of an undercover agent who presented false credentials from a company that did not exist and was subsequently caught examining private mail inside the Donovans office.
9. The significance of the Donovan website has been acknowledged by mainstream media; One World Trust, an independent research organization, announced that the Donovan site has had a “profound” impact on Shell.
10. Profound, indeed; revelations published on royaldutchshellplc.com have cost Shell billions of dollars; as such, David gutted Goliath.
*The headline is “Konzernfeind No.1″ freely translated as: “The Company’s (Shell’s) Enemy No.1″
*PRESSEUROP: John Donovan, Shell’s nightmare: 27 March 2012
Extract: Thanks to a network of “moles” inside the company, this early retiree from Britain is posting on his website reports on shortcomings inside the world’s largest oil group. It’s a dogged pursuit that has already cost the Anglo-Dutch giant several billions.
*VOXeurop: John Donovan, l’incubo di Shell: Published in Italian 27 March 2012
*VOXeurop: John Donovan, o pesadelo da Shell: Published in Portuguese: 27 March 2012
*VOXeurop: John Donovan, coşmarul celor de la Shell: published in Romanian: 27 March 2012
*ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF A FRENCH ARTICLE BY MYEUROP.INFO: The man who shook Shell: 29 March 2012
Extract: John Donovan, 64, is a meticulous man and very knowledgeable. For several years he has spent most of his time on what he describes as his “super-hobby”: the website royaldutchshellplc.com with scoops on the evils of the multinational.
Contacted by telephone Wednesday, Shell declined to comment about this annoying site.
It is not uncommon for John Donovan to find in his mailbox job applications, professional sales proposals and even terrorist threats directed at the oil company. It should be clear that it is an anti-Shell site, but there are many people who do not pay attention.
*BNR News Radio (Netherlands): JOHN DONOVAN, THE NIGHTMARE OF SHELL: 29 March 2012
*Article by MyEuro.info: The Man Who Knew too much… about Shell: 3 April 2012
*European Journal TV news magazine. Documentary segment “Britain: Shell’s Enemy No. 1” First broadcast 2 May 2012 VIDEO LINK
*Ground Report: THE GRIPE SITE – ROYAL DUTCH SHELL VS. ROBERT ERINGER: 17 May 2012 pdf version
*TRANSLATION OF DUTCH MAGAZINE “VRIJ NEDERLAND” ARTICLE: How Shell pleased Qaddafi: 1 August 2012
Extract: The list was given to Vrij Nederland by the Englishman John Donovan of the website Royaldutchplc.com which has critically monitored the multinational for many years. John Donovan says he has a network of people who work for the oil and gas company or used to work for it.
2013*WikiLeaks: Internal global intelligence company Stratfor email about an article relating to the Sakhalin project in Russia. (FT Article). One of several WikiLeak files citing royaldutchshellplc.com: Released by WikiLeaks 18 March 2013
Extract: The news about Mr. Lawrence’s departure was first reported on the website of John Donovan, a blogger critical of the company.
*Wall Street Journal: Head of Shell U.S. Arctic Program to Depart: 22 March 2013
Extract: The news about Mr. Lawrence’s departure was first reported on the website of John Donovan, a blogger critical of the company.
*RIGZONE: Shell Executive Managing Arctic Alaska Oil Program to Leave Company: Friday March 22, 2013
*Shell Executive From Arctic Alaska Oil Program to Leave: Fox Business: 22 March 2013
*FORBES ARTICLE: Did Shell Axe Exec Responsible For Alaska Drilling Fiasco?: 26 March 2013
Extract: Much correspondence between Shell and OSSL is posted on a website which then came to play a key role: royaldutchshellplc.com, run by John Donovan and until recently his father, Alfred, who died last month. The site, a thorn in Shell’s side, is a watchdog on the company and repository for material leaked by whistleblowers and discontents, with more than 30 million monthly hits. The Donovans had secured places for Kane and Rooney at Shell’s AGM last month, to raise their grievances. Cornered, the company’s CEO, Peter Voser, suddenly ordered a further inquiry, a move echoed by the Garda.
*Luxfer Group Limited Press Release: Luxfer Group enters into North American joint venture: 12 Aug 2013: PDF
*U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission website: Luxfer Group Enters into North American Joint Venture to Produce Gas Transportation Modules: 12 Aug 2013 PDF
*IRISH TIMES ARTICLE: Shell welcomes Garda examination of alcohol claims: 13 August 2013
Extract: The Garda Ombudsman confirmed yesterday that it was not currently investigating the claims, which first surfaced on the whistleblowers’ website royaldutchshellplc.com.
*THE MAYO NEWS ARTICLE: Gardaí deny booze bribes: 13 August 2013
Extract: The invoice for the consignment of alcohol is on-view on www.royaldutchshellplc.com, the site of well-known Shell watchdog, John Donovan.
Donovan told The Mayo News yesterday he ‘made it plain to Shell that if they categorically stated that the invoice was fabricated, then [he] would remove it from [his] website’. The Observer also asked the gardaí and Supt John Gilligan, who was the garda chief at the time in Belmullet, to deny the claim but they simply re-sent a a prepared statement.
Extracts
In the first email published on the anti-Shell whistleblower website, royaldutchshellplc.com, OSSL alleges that a Shell contacts manager for Corrib “used OSSL to make payments of cash and gifts to various parties in Erris and beyond” and “gave instructions regarding the purchase of various items to be gifted to local householders with a view to advancing the project in a particularly difficult part of the construction program”.
Just a month later, OSSL decided to take its campaign public and posted its allegations on the anti-Shell website, royaldutchshellplc.com.
Six months later John Donovan, who runs royaldutchshellplc.com, received an invoice from OSSL. The invoice, drawn up five years after the event, outlines how two consignments of alcohol costing €29,500 were purchased in Northern Ireland by OSSL. They were then allegedly brought across the border in a commercial vehicle on the instruction of a Shell E&P Ireland employee and stored in OSSL premises in Bangor Erris.
2014*FORBES MAGAZINE ARTICLE: Big Oil’s $3 Billion Homage To A Nazi War Criminal: 20 Dec 2014
2015*THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: World’s biggest ship named after Nazi: 22 Jan 2015
*DUTCH FINANCIAL TIMES: Criticism swells of Heerema’s ‘bad name’ heavy lift: 25 Jan 2015
*GUARDIAN ONLINE: Jewish outrage as ship named after SS war criminal arrives in Europe: 25 Jan 2015
*Maldon Standard: Man’s fight to change ship’s Nazi-linked name succeeds: 12 February 2015
2016*CNBC: UPDATE 1-Shell takes sacked UK workers overseas service tax break: 8 July 2016
*DAILY MAIL ONLINE: Shell takes sacked UK workers overseas service tax breaks: 8 July 2016
*Reuters Syndicated article: Shell faces possible Dutch lawsuit over Nigerian activist’s execution: 16 October 2016
Also published by the following from 16 to the 17th of October 2016:
*OAN – One American News Network
*WIBQ THE TALK STATION (US TALK RADIO)
*THE FISCAL TIMES (US WEBSITE)
*YouTube.com Wochit: Shell May Face Lawsuit Over Nigerian Activists Execution
*Shell Faces Lawsuit over Activists’ Execution: THIS DAY
*defenceWeb Zambia 17 Oct 2016
Syndicated article ends 2017*Reuters syndicated article: Shell’s attorneys ordered to give Nigerian activist’s widow files for Dutch lawsuit: 11 Jan 2017
*TV260 Nigeria: US court orders Shell to release files to Nigerian activist’s widow
*biznes.onet.pl (Poland)
Syndicated article end
Reuters syndicated article: Shell Plans 400 Job Cuts at Dutch Projects and Technology Department: 31 July 2017PDF versions in brackets
*Reuters (Reuters 31 July 2017
*The New York Times (Shell Plans 400 Job Cuts at Dutch Projects and Technology Department – The New York Times)
*Daily Mail (Daily Mail 31 July 2017)
*YAHOO FINANCE: (YAHOO FINANCE 31 July 2017)
*New York Daily News: (New York Daily News 31 July 2017)
*One America News Network: (One America News Network 31 July 2017)
*WIBQ TALK Radio (WIBQ Talk Radio Website 31 July 2017)
*Euronews (EuroNews: 31 July 2017)
*THE TIMES OF INDIA: (THE TIMES OF INDIA 31 July 2017)
*THE ECONOMIC TIMES OF INDIA (THE ECONOMIC TIMES OF INDIA 31 July 2017)
*Business Standard: (Business Standard 31 July 2017)
*BUSINESS INSIDER: (BusinessInsider.com 31 July 2017)
*CHANNEL NEWSASIA (CHANNEL NEWSASIA 31 July 2017)
*LONDON SOUTH EAST (LONDON SOUTH EAST 31 July 2017)
*THE FISCAL TIMES (THE FISCAL TIMES 31 July 2017)
*TimesofMalta.com (TimesofMalta.com 31 July 2017)
*RigZone (Rigzone 31 July 2017)
*The Star (The Star 1 Aug 2017)
*4-traders (4-traders 31 July 2017)
*HARTENERGY E&P Mag (E&P 31 July 2017)
*NewEurope (NewEurope 31 July 2017)
*The Chemical Engineer (Chemical Engineer 2 Aug 2017)
*THEEDGEMARKETS (THEEDGEMARKETS 31 July 2017)
*SIFY Finance (India) (SIFI INDIA 31 July 2017)
*SRN News (SRN News 31 July 2017)
*KITCO News (Kitco News 31 July 2017)
*Netscape World News: (Netscape 31 July 2017)
*MoneyControl.com: (MoneyControl.com 31 July 2017)
*Prometheism.net (Prometheism.net 31 July 2017)
2018
*Mossmorran Action Group Website. Royaldutchshellplc.com related article. 17 July 2018 pdf
Reuters Syndicated Article: Shell sees Nigeria corruption trial lasting many months – memo: 11 October 2018“We do not yet know how long the trial will last but expect this to be many months, continuing into next year,” Ching said in the Sept. 20 memo, provided to Reuters by John Donovan, who runs the independent royaldutchshellplc.com website.he website often serves as a forum to criticise the oil major.
*CNBC
MAY 2021
openDemocracy article dated 29 May 2021 headlined: Calls for Shell to apologise for ‘fuelling Nazi war machine’. A review of a new hardback and Kindle book by James Marriott and Terry Macalister – ‘Crude Britannia’ – reveals the extent to which the oil company played a key role in Hitler’s war effort. Photo credit reference to John Donovan in the article. “The Royal Dutch Shell Company HQ in The Hague, flying a Swastika | Image via John Donovan.” pdf
AUGUST 2021
John Donovan supplied the leaked Shell email and attachment information used in the following articles published 8/9 August 2021:
*FT: Shell weighs vaccine mandate and firing staff who resist: 8 Sept 2021
REUTERS SYNDICATED ARTICLE, MANY PUBLISHERS
*Shell weighs COVID-19 vaccine mandate, firing staff who resist – FT: PUBLISHED SEP 8, 2021 11.50 PM BST
REUTERS SYNDICATED ARTICLE, MANY PUBLISHERS
*Shell weighs ‘jab or job’ policy for employees -document: Sep 9, 2021 | 5:49 AM
*The Telegraph: Live Coronavirus latest news 11:07am
*Shell considering vaccine mandate for some workersTHE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
*Shell Weighs Mandating Covid-19 Vaccines for Workers: Sept. 9, 2021 4:40 pm ET
OCTOBER 2021
*October 2021 Channel 4 TV documentary Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant aired at 9pm in the UK on 24 Oct 2021. Included a segment with John Donovan being interviewed by Joe Lycett.
*Trailers briefly featuring John Donovan were broadcast on multiple Channel 4 TV programmes and on Channel 4 News in the days before the documentary was broadcast on 24 October 2021. The video trailer was also posted on Instagram.
*Related coverage on the British Comedy Guide: Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back: Joe Lycett Climate Investigation: Ahead of the COP26 climate change summit, Joe Lycett takes on one of the world’s most powerful companies – Shell – as he investigates whether its eco-friendly advertising really paints the right picture of a corporation that still drills a huge amount of oil and gas. Joe meets climate experts and attempts to engage Shell in his own uniquely fearless fashion, before deciding to make his own version of their ads and tries to get his parody broadcast on national television. pdf version
*John Donovan is listed in the related British Comedy Guide Guest cast of “Joe Lycett Climate Investigation“.
*John Donovan and his royaldutchshellplc.com website are listed on a separate page devoted to John Donovan. pdf version “John Donovan is a whistleblower. He runs the website https://www.royaldutchshellplc.com.”
*20 December 2021: Several pages in a legal exhibit filed on 20 December 2021 with a U.S. court in Texas contain references to John Donovan and several of his Shell focused websites. (Case 4:20-cv-01465 Document 22-1 Filed on 12/20/21 in TXSD). The litigation details, including the relevant exhibit, can be seen here. (Relevant article headline: “Shell gripe website sucked into US litigation between warring Shell global security spymasters”.)
JAN 2022
*Wikipedia article “Joe Lycett vs the Oil Giant” downloaded 15 January 2022. Mentions “John Donovan a man who runs an anti-Shell website for whistleblowers to contribute to…”
CAN SHELL GREEN: Article authored by Matthias Lauerer. English translation of extracts from a Forbes article published in German in March 2022.
1st March 2022
Is Shell on its way to a carbon-neutral future? Will this be a reimagined world, where green hydrogen, e-mobility and decarbonization have become a reality? Or do they prefer to greenwash to perpetuate the dirty old business model on which the global economy hangs?
Speaking to Shell critic John Donovan, he said: “Shell has been forced to make drastic changes in response to pressure from climate change organizations and financial activists like Daniel S. Loeb, who wants to break up the corporation.” Also helping, he said, is the “change in jurisdiction in countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, which now allows for lawsuits alleging wrongdoing in countries like Nigeria.” What Donovan, who has sharply criticized the company for years, is hopeful about now? “Shell seems to have realized that it needs to go green to fight climate change and stay in business – and not face ostracism like the tobacco companies.article
WINDOWS FORUM: Donovan Shell Copilot Transcript: AI, Surveillance, and the Archive Saga: 31 Oct 2025
WINDOWS FORUM: AI Biographies and Provenance: The Donovan Shell GROK Fiasco: 6 December 2025
WINDOWS FORUM: Donovan Shell Archive: AI Summaries, Provenance and Shell Ethics: 6 Dec 2025
WINDOWS FORUM: Donovan Archive vs AI: Shell Allegations and AGM Accountability: 26 Dec 2025
WINDOWS FORUM: Shell vs The Bots: Adversarial Archives and AI Hallucination Risks: 28 Dec 2025
WINDOWS FORUM: Donovan Shell AI Experiment: AI Hallucinations and Governance Risks: 29 Dec 2025
WNDOWS FORUM: AI Hallucinations and the Donovan Shell Archive: A Governance Challenge: 28 Dec 2025
WINDOWS FORUM: AI Governance Gap in Public Archives: The Donovan Shell Experiment: 29 Dec 2025
WINDOWS FORUM: Shell Donovan Bot War: AI Narratives in Contested History: 5 Jan 2026
WINDOWS FORUM: Donovan Shell Bot War: Adversarial Archives and AI Hallucinations: 6 Jan 2026
WINDOWS FORUM: Generative AI and Corporate Memory: The Donovan Shell Bot War: 11 Jan 2026
The AI Mag: Sir Henri Deterding’s Unexpected Return: Powered by Generative AI – Royal Dutch Shell Plc: 13 Jan 2026
WINDOWS FORUM: Shell Governance Gaps Revealed by AI Pattern Analysis: 19 Jan 2026
WINDOWS FORUM: John Donovan’s December 2025 experiment — feeding decades of adversarial material about Royal Dutch Shell into multiple public AI assistants and publishing the divergent outputs — transformed a long‑running supplier feud and documentary archive into a live test of how generative systems handle contested archives, and in doing so exposed a set of practical governance failures that lawyers, platform designers, corporate boards and journalists must now confront.. :25 Jan 2026: Source: Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com More Than Dynamite: How AI Reframes the Donovan–Shell Archive as Persistent Risk
WINDOWS FORUM: Bot War: Archival AI Amplification of the Donovan Shell Feud: 13 Feb 2026
WINDOWS FORUM: AI Amplified Bot War: Shell vs Donovan Over Archival Critique: 4 March 2026
WINDOWS FORUM: Shell’s Long-Fought Domain Feud: AI Roundtable Satire and Reputational Fallout: 23 March 2026
WINDOWS FORUM: Shell vs Donovan Feud: Domain Loss, Leaks, and Self-Inflicted PR Humiliation: 28 March 2026
WINDOWS FORUM: Donovan–Shell “Bot War”: How AI Rewrites Archives Into Reputational Pressure: 8 April 2026 WindowsForum.com: AI Satire and Defamation Risk in the Shell Archive: A Public RAG Experiment: 16 May 2026 110 Books — Containing References to the Donovans, Don Marketing, or Their WebsitesSource: royaldutchshellplc.com books index. Listed in the order they appear on the source page.
1. Corporate Reputation: 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation — Dr Leslie Gaines-Ross (January 2008)
Page 20: “One such empowered activist is arch Shell critic Alfred Donovan. No one was more surprised than Royal Dutch Shell PLC to learn that this 88-year-old British army veteran had purchased the Internet domain name www.royaldutchshellplc.com…”
2. Beyond Redemption: The First Ever History of Sales Promotion — Colin Lloyd & Ken Spedding
Page 70: John Donovan MD of Don Marketing took Shell to court claiming rights to a card-based multi-brand loyalty scheme; Shell settled out of court.
3. Hawley’s Condensed Chemical Dictionary — Page 1480
Lists royaldutchshellplc.com as Shell’s corporate website address.
4. A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice — Page 337
5. The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management — Page 164
“Alfred Donovan, now 90-plus years old, and his son John have been collecting and publishing information online about Shell’s activities since 2001… they own the domain name www.royaldutchshellplc.com — Shell’s proper name.”
6. Law of the Internet — George B. Delta & Jeffrey H. Matsuura (October 2008)
Supplement 8-28: cites Donovan v Shell as an example of domain name dispute as protected First Amendment expression.
7. Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age — Pages 114 and 123
Describes royaldutchshellplc.com as “dedicated to exposing Shell’s dark side.” Quotes John Donovan: “We want Shell to honour its own business principles… they are a ruthless, mean oil company.”
8. Once Upon a Time in the West: The Story of the Controversial Corrib Gas Project — Lorna Siggins (2010), Page 126
9. The BP Corollary — Fiction reference to John Donovan
10. Marketing, Vol. 21 — Page 6: Don Marketing chairman John Donovan on international promotional game design including Shell Make Money.
11. Marketing, Vol. 23 — Page 40: Full list of Don Marketing / Shell promotional games.
12. International Arbitration in the Energy Sector
13. Arctic Governance: Volume 2 — Edited by Soltvedt, Rottem, Hønneland
14. California Management Review, Vol. 56 — Page 22
15. Die Welt auf Kriegskurs — Page 10
16. Journal of International Commerce & Economics, Vol. II — Page 95
17. The Practical Guide to Corporate Social Responsibility — Page 260
18. Multinational Management — Page 171
19. Iraq Investment and Business Guide, Vol. 1 — Page 39
20. The Hungry Dragon: How China’s Quest for Resources is Reshaping the World — Page 152
21. Handbook of Research on Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility — Page 144
22. Changing Energy: The Transition to a Sustainable Future — Page 324
23. Generation Busted: How America Went Broke in the Age of… — Alan J. Zemek (2010), Page 151
24. Shale Gas and the Future of Energy: Law and Policy — Page 211
25. Jacob Schiff and the Art of Risk: American Financing of… — Adam Gower (2018), Page 318
26. Reputation Risk and Globalisation — Terry O’Callaghan (2016), Page 189
Cites Donovan’s article on Royal Dutch Shell’s Nazi secrets (2010).
27. Environmental Technologies, Intellectual Property and… — Abbe E. L. Brown (2013), Page 127
28. Greenhouse Gases: Worldwide Impacts — Julie Kerr Casper (2010)
29. Business Ethics in the 21st Century — Norman Bowie (2013), Page 59
30. Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate… — Surya Deva & David Bilchitz (2013), Page 348
31. Big Business and Hitler — Jacques R. Pauwels (2017), Page 286
Cites Donovan’s “Royal Dutch Shell Nazi Secrets: Introduction” (November 2010).
32. Strategy For A Networked World — Rafael Ramirez & Ulf Mannervik (2016), Page 123
33. The Global Politics of Science and Technology, Vol. 2 — Mayer, Carpes, Knoblich (2014), Page 98
34. The Return of the Public in Global Governance — Best & Gheciu (2014), Page 218
35. Proceedings of the Annual Institute — Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute (2010)
Page 3-11: “RoyalDutchShellPlc.com consistently appears in the top 10 organic results in a Google search of ‘Royal Shell Oil.'”
36. Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump — Dan Bongino et al. (2018)
Cites Donovan’s article “Hakluyt & Company Spying for Shell” (March 2018).
37. Revolutionary Threads: Rastafari, Social Justice, and… — Bobby Sullivan (2018)
38. Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire — Corey Ross (2017), Page 234
39. Methods in Chemical Process Safety — Page 33
40. The Reform of Class and Representative Actions in European Legal Systems — Christopher Hodges (2008), Pages 75–76, Front Cover, Back Cover
41. Handbook of Industrial Polyethylene and Technology — Spalding & Chatterjee (2017)
42. Delivering Collective Redress: New Technologies — Christopher Hodges & Stefaan Voet
Books 43–110: The full list of all 110 books is maintained at royaldutchshellplc.com. Topics in books 43–110 include: Shell reserves fraud legal analysis; Nigerian operations and human rights; Arctic drilling; Shell and Nazi Germany (multiple volumes); corporate whistleblowing and digital activism; internet law and domain name jurisprudence; environmental governance; oil and gas industry economics; and promotional marketing history.
TV, Radio & Video CompilationBBC / ITV / Channel 4 News — Compilation — Mid-1980s
YouTube compilation of filmed interviews with Alfred and John Donovan across BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 News broadcasts in the mid-1980s, together with TV adverts for promotional games invented by John Donovan (including Shell Make Money, Shell Mastermind, and Shell Bruce’s Lucky Deal).
Sources: royaldutchshellgroup.com articles index · royaldutchshellplc.com books index · Donovan v Royal Dutch Shell background. Syndicated duplicates removed; prestigious syndications (NYT, Washington Post, Guardian, Bloomberg, FT etc.) retained. Reconstructed June 2026.
Shell and the Donovans: The Full Media Record — 550+ Articles, 110 Books, 40 Years was first posted on June 9, 2026 at 8:23 pm.©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net
MEDIA FILE – UNDER CONSTRUCTION
*New DPP ruling: plain paper entries are ‘legal and acceptable’: Promotion & Incentives Magazine: Page 4 February 1992
*Shell faces libel threat from Don: Marketing Week 31 March 1994
*Shell struck by writ: Marketing Magazine front-page headline article 20 October 1994
*SHELL STOLE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, ALLEGES DON: Debrief News Letter November 199
*Don issues writ number four to embattled Shell: Marketing Magazine: 10 November 1994
*SHELL SHOCK: EDITORIAL BY INCENTIVE TODAY MAGAZINE: November/December 1994
*Shell fails to block agency’s legal action: Incentive Today Magazine January 1995
*Shell ‘legal block fails’ in promotions agency row: Forecourt News January 1995
*Don Marketing trade ad seeks help of dealers: Marketing Magazine 12 January 1995
*Marketing Week News 20 January 1995
*Irate Don hits Shell investors: Marketing Week 27 January 1995
*DON MARKETING STEPS-UP ITS ATTACK ON SHELL: Debrief February 1995
*Pressure group to target Shell: Forecourt Trader February 1995
*‘Shell knew of flaws in Make Money’: Forecourt News front page article February 1995
*Marketing Week News 24 February 1995
*Shell seeks guarantee over costs in Don case: Marketing Week 24 March 1995
*Shell promotions dispute intensifies: Promotions & Incentives April 1995
*Shell: ‘claim will fail’: Incentive Today April 1995
*Shell row steps up a gear: Forecourt News April 1995
*STOP PRESS: DON MARKETING FOUNDER ALFRED DONOVAN HAS ISSUED A LIBEL WRIT: Marketing Magazine 20 April 1995
*Shell faces libel action as Don’s founder issues writ: Marketing Week 21 April 1995
*Shell speaks out over Don: Forecourt Trader April 1995
*Donovan issues Shell libel writ: Promotions & Incentive Magazine May 1995
*Briefly Column: Forecourt News May 1995
*STOP PRESS: Shell has confirmed that its senior management will hold talks with Don Marketing: Marketing Magazine 25 May 1995
*Don takes its payment fight to Shell’s agm: Marketing Week 26 May 1995
*Marketing Week News: John Donovan, of sales promotion agency Don Marketing…: ( Will have a team picketing Shell’s London headquarters for four days a week”): 2 June 1995
*DAVID DON AND GOLIATH SHELL: EPISODE 3,651: Debrief Newsletter Page 63, June 1995
*LUCKY NUMBERS: Incentive Today: July/August 1995
John Donovan, managing director of Don Marketing, which produces a range of scratch-card games for on-pack promotions, also believes that the National Lottery has helped increase the popularity of scratch cards. But printer’s errors are a nightmare for scratch card producers, he admits. One of the horror stories he relates is when the Daily Mirror published an incorrect combination of ‘called numbers’ for its bingo-type game and left thousands of readers thinking they had won the game.
Donovan is more open than Venters about the tricks that the public get up to in order to cheat in the games. This even includes children tampering with cards which are then sometimes unwittingly sent in by parents. Don Marketing also now insists on videoing the opening of all prize claims so that players cannot dispute the validity of the games.
With Donovan quoting a cost of 4p per card to run a scratch card promotion, it is hardly surprising that everyone from oil. companies to brewers is rushing to take part. And Donovan says his company can deliver scratch cards to any promotional agency with as little as two months’ notice. He guarantees security, even to the extent of having cards printed in the United States by printers Dittler Brothers, who are specialists in printing scratch and lottery tickets and even have armed guards securing their plant.
*Shell UK and Don Marketing: Marketing Week 8 September 1995
*Debrief Newsletter: October 1995
*Shell faces High Court battle over Smart Card: Marketing Week front page cover story 16 April 1998
*Shell card in legal row: Financial Mail on Sunday 19 April 1998
*Don Marketing booking full-page ads to alert Shell shareholders to its dispute with Shell: Marketing Magazine 23 April 1998
*High Court papers unveil ‘secret’ Shell writ losses: Marketing Week 23 April 1998
*Shell reveals plans for challenging Smart writ: Marketing Week 30 April 1998
*Donovan brings new Shell writ “this time for libel”: Marketing Magazine 30 April 1998
*Shell stands firm on Smart charges: Promotions & Incentives May 1998
*Don’s Smart writ: Forecourt Trader May 1998
*New clash for Don Marketing and Shell: Incentive Today Magazine May 1998
*ASA dragged into Shell UK Smart battle: Marketing Week Magazine 7 May 1998
*Shell broadens base: Marketing Magazine 7 May 1998
*Shell in legal row: Sales Promotion Magazine May 1998
*Don Marketing posts warning about Shell: Marketing Week Magazine 28 May 1998
*Shell Smart copyright battle gets nastier: Loyalty Magazine May/June 1998
*Shell faces new threat to Smart card scheme: Marketing Week 21 May 1998
*Shell: Don is more than ‘disgruntled’: Marketing Week LETTERS 21 May 1998
*Safe Ideas: June 1998
*Donovan’s beef with Shell online: Daily Telegraph 11 June 1998
*Don Claims first round in Shell libel action: Marketing Week 30 July 1998
*“McShell” case continues: Loyalty Magazine August 1998
*On cyberpicket lines: London Evening Standard 28 September 1998 (DON’T GET MAD GET EVEN)
*Shell smacked over libel action: Incentive Today Magazine September 1998
*Judge Shell by actions not words: Marketing Week 25 February 1999
*Shell loyalty row continues: Incentive Today June 1999
*Ideas man sues Shell: The Times 16 June 1999
*Donovan takes Smart case against Shell to court: Sunday Business 6 June 1999
*Promotions expert claims Shell stole his Smart card idea: THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 6 June 1999
*Shell faces court battle on its Smart scheme: Marketing Magazine 10 June 1999
*Oil giant stole my promotion idea, alleges businessman: East Anglian Daily Times 16 June 1999
*INTO BATTLE WITH SHELL: Bury Free Press 18 June 1999
*SHELL IN HIGH COURT SUIT OVER SMARTCARD SCHEME: Debrief, July 1999
*Don ends legal proceedings against Shell UK: Marketing Week 8 July 1999
*Shell has settled out of court with John Donovan…: Marketing Magazine STOP PRESS Column 28 July 1999
*Shell claim is settled: Bury Free Press 9 July 1999
*Stalemate for marketing firm’s ‘stolen’ idea claim: East Anglian Daily Times 7 July 1999
*Shell action abandoned: Forecourt Trader August 1999
*Don and Shell end Smart row: Incentive Today July-August 1999
*SHELL IN HIGH COURT suit OVER SMARTcard scheme: WARC :1 Aug 1999
*SPEAK OUT!: West Pasco Press Newspaper, Page 2: November 1999. Alfred Donovan interviewed for comment in Florida.
23 NEWS MEDIA ARTICLES FROM THE TEN YEAR PERIOD WHEN WE WERE FRIENDS WITH SHELL*Rubbing away to goodwill: Incentive Marketing and Sales Promotion, November 1983
*Fast flowing Don: Marketing Magazine 16 February 1984
*Shell is back making money: Incentive Marketing and Sales Promotion March 1984
*The Finale: Interview with Shell Manager Ken Danson: Shell In-house Magazine: March? 1984
*Anatomy of a Shell winner: Campaign Magazine 27 April 1984
*The play’s the thing: Marketing Magazine 31 May 1984
*Marketing Magazine Sales Promotion Survey 6 September 1984
*Why games became big business: Campaign Magazine 14 September 1984
*Cerebral promotion for drivers: Shell Mastermind: Sept 1984
*“Shell starts up a new promotion” (Shell Make Merry) Marketing Week 2 November 1984 (POS DISPLAY)
*Don Marketing launches dual forecourt attack: Campaign Magazine 2 November 1984
*Shell offers ‘lucky deal’: Marketing Magazine 2 May 1985
*Old favourites that never die: Campaign Magazine 14 June 1985
*Don does it again, this time with Bruce: Promotions & Incentives Magazine: June 1985
*It’s game, set and match as forecourts fight it out to the finish: Campaign Magazine 27 September 1985
*LEARNING THE RIGHT RULES OF THE GAME: Marketing Week Magazine 11 October 1985
*John Chambers has left Don Marketing and game cards to set up a new sales promotion operation for the world’s sixth largest ad agency: Promotions & Incentive Magazine: February 1986
*Don plans huge bingo promotion: Marketing Week 7 Feb 1986
*Marketing Magazine article “Games people play” involving John Donovan: 18 Sept 1986
*Shell launches Star Trek scratchcard game: Sales Promotion Magazine March 1991
*Will Shell’s intergalactic experiment pay off?: Cover story plus coverage on 7 pages with extensive colour piks: Promotions & Incentives Magazine July-August 1991
*Shell Star Trek Promotion: Promotions & Incentives Magazine February 1992
*UP TO SCRATCH: PROMOTIONS & INCENTIVES MAGAZINE: JUNE 1993
MEDIA FILE – UNDER CONSTRUCTION was first posted on June 9, 2026 at 7:54 pm.©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net
Trump effort to solicit negative feedback on national park signage backfires
A new report from the Center for Western Priorities found that less than one percent of 35,700 comments submitted to the National Park Service in response to signage asking the public to report negative depictions of American history in parks actually used the comment form as intended. The comments were received via a QR code sign that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered to be posted at national park sites. The sign asked park visitors to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”
The Center for Western Priorities analyzed 35,700 comments submitted across 475 national park units between June 2025 and January 2026, organizing the comments into categories based on content and sentiment. The vast majority of comments expressed opposition to the order, support for national parks, the importance of telling a complete history, criticism of the Trump administration generally, as well as a number of jokes and off-topic responses. However, a negligible number of comments actually flagged signage or supported removal, with only 47 comments, or 0.1 percent of the total comments submitted.
“These comments pass the vibe check with flying colors. Americans support our parks and the stories they tell, and they aren’t happy about the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite history,” said Lilly Bock-Brownstein, Center for Western Priorities Creative Content and Policy Manager. “Instead of helping Trump censor our national parks, visitors used the comment form to tell the Trump administration to respect our parks or get lost.”
A former Interior department official explains what’s wrong with mining on public landOn a new episode of The Landscape, Kate and Aaron are joined by Dr. Steve Feldgus, an independent consultant who served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Interior department under President Biden. Dr. Feldgus talks about how to improve mine permitting in the U.S., a topic he worked on while at Interior.
Quick hits Effort to get national park visitors to snitch on signs backfiresCenter for Western Priorities [report] | KOAA | Source NM | West Central Tribune | Salt Lake Tribune
New BLM grazing rules eliminate Tribal bison from public landsInside Climate News | Public Domain | Idaho Statesman [opinion]
BLM and Utah Lt. Governor sign co-management agreement for San Rafael SwellABC4 | Salt Lake Tribune | Deseret News
Elk herd habitat near Dinosaur National Monument to open for drillingHigh Country News | International Business Times
Forest Service admits cabin project in Alaska was cancelled due to mining interests, after previously denying it Trump administration waives environmental laws to allow border wall in Big Bend National ParkNational Parks Traveler | Common Dreams
Opinion: Federal policies put public lands elk habitat on the chopping block Once underwater, Colorado River canyon country reemerges as drought-stricken Lake Powell’s levels drop Quote of the dayFolks need to understand the long-term impacts of a rush to lease so much public land. Once those leases are issued they are very hard to get rid of — they stay on the land for a long time, even if they aren’t developed.”
—Peter Hart, legal director of the Wilderness Workshop, High Country News
Picture This @u.s.forestserviceThe rings on the shells of wood turtles reveal their age — giving them something in common with the trees in the forests they live in.
Forest Service scientists’ partner with land managers across the Midwest, finding ways to care for wood turtles threatened by habitat loss, stream pollution, disease, and poaching.
Data from long-term monitoring shows that protecting nests and constructing roadside barriers help turtles survive to adulthood and ensure the next generation of hatchlings.
(Forest Service photo by Donald Brown)
Featured photo: Lower Delicate Arch viewpoint, Arches National Park. NPS/Chris Wonderly
The post Trump effort to solicit negative feedback on national park signage backfires appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
10 reasons to resist AI
This article 10 reasons to resist AI was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
This article is drawn from the author’s forthcoming weekly series “Ten Reasons to Resist AI: A series of AI explainers for the left.” You can read the series introduction here and follow along as each article is released.
With artificial intelligence so thoroughly embedded within our lives, and the constant surround sound of AI marketing, acquiescence can feel inevitable. This is the precise effect tech companies are banking on when they sign billion dollar checks for Super Bowl commercials. For people engaged in movements, it is our job to be defiant, to insist that our present circumstances are mutable, to imagine a way out, and to get there. Many in the anti-capitalist left have an intuitive understanding of why AI is bad, even a visceral revulsion, but becoming fluent in the details is paramount to mounting an effective resistance.
The most powerful corporations and their government co-conspirators wield AI as a weapon to wage class war. They are making trillion-dollar gambles on data center development that, if successful, will reap enormous profits at the expense of the rest of us.
However, these companies have shown their cards. They are placing massive bets on AI years before their business models are profitable. To rig the game, corporations are making two bluffs: 1) that a frictionless AI-powered future will benefit humanity (techno-optimism), and 2) that we are powerless to stop the march of technology (inevitability). The ubiquity of these narratives, which are often parroted by the well-intentioned, is an industry strategy to flood the zone and coax people into complacency.
But if the slog toward an AI dystopia is halted or even slowed, Big Tech’s investments could spectacularly backfire, forcing companies to fold. It’s time to go all-in on AI resistance. Here are 10 applications and impacts of AI that are fueling resistance.
1. EnvironmentData centers are the source of AI’s most catastrophic environmental consequences, both atmospheric and local. A single AI data center uses the same amount of energy as 100,000 homes, and the largest ones under construction today will each consume 20 times more, equivalent to more than half of all homes in New York City. This translates to a substantial bump in carbon emissions, particularly as data centers’ gluttony for electricity drives a natural gas boom.
Tech companies are not only putting stress on the existing power grid, but also building new fossil fuel plants alongside their data centers. For example, Meta is building three gas-fired power plants to supply its Louisiana data center, and Oracle recently announced that its 1.4 gigawatt data center will be 100 percent fossil-fueled. MIT researchers estimate that in 2026, electricity consumption from data centers will approach 1,050 terawatt-hours, which, if data centers were a nation, would make them fifth largest in global electricity usage, after Japan and before Russia.
#newsletter-block_812d115b48d691452942409e89186792 { background: #ECECEC; color: #000000; } #newsletter-block_812d115b48d691452942409e89186792 #mc_embed_signup_front input#mce-EMAIL { border-color:#000000 !important; color: #000000 !important; } Sign Up for our NewsletterIn addition to exacerbating the climate crisis, data centers also have catastrophic local environmental effects. Many rely on diesel generators that spew nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter and other carcinogens into the air. Data centers are also intensifying an already-dire water crisis. A mid-sized AI data center requires about the same amount of water as a small town, while the larger ones consume roughly 5 million gallons daily, the same amount as a city of 50,000.
In many cases, Black and Indigenous communities historically harmed by environmental racism are being yet again subjected to a toxic industry. xAI (owned by Elon Musk) built a gas-powered data center known as “Colossus” in Boxtown, a Black neighborhood in Memphis, to power the infamously racist chatbot Grok. Less than two years after the plant was built, nitrogen dioxide levels — which trigger and aggravate asthma — spiked by 9 percent in Boxtown.
While the environmental consequences of AI are grim, local communities are rising up against these behemoths in their backyards and forming a pivotal chokepoint in the AI resistance. A recent report found that local organizing victories that stopped or delayed data centers cost tech companies $156 billion in 2025. At least 142 groups in 24 states are actively organizing against data centers — you can read about some of them here.
2. LaborThere is absolutely no doubt that corporations are already leveraging AI to cut costs, replace workers and bolster profits. AI chatbots, agents and data processing systems are already replacing workers in data entry, customer service and administrative roles. While job displacement is a real impending crisis, it is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AI’s labor implications.
A frequent rebuttal to concerns about AI’s impacts on labor is: “Sure some workers will be replaced, but jobs will also be created.” And while some jobs have indeed been created during the AI boom, what these jobs actually consist of goes unsaid. Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri coined the phrase “ghost work” to describe the tedious and underpaid labor that corporations disperse to networks of contractors in the Global South, obscuring the true human impacts of their products.
One of the more nefarious forms of ghost work in the AI industry is data labeling — a mind-numbingly tedious task necessary to train generative AI models. For example, ChatGPT was trained on trillions of words scraped from the internet. But a significant portion of those words includes vile, racist, misogynistic bile. Before ChatGPT could be trained, workers — largely in Kenya, being paid $2 an hour — first had to sort through repulsive internet content and flag it as such so that the AI could learn to identify and avoid repeating it.
Companies including Amazon use AI-powered cameras and productivity algorithms to surveil workers. (Dio Cramer)AI is also supercharging the capacity for bosses to surveil and repress workers. Amazon is one of the most notorious adopters. Warehouse workers are tracked via AI-powered cameras and subjected to backbreaking paces based on AI-powered productivity algorithms. A network of nine mandatory surveillance technologies help the company monitor its nearly 400,000 delivery drivers, including by listening to their personal phone calls. The monitoring is used to enforce arbitrary “driver safety” standards tied to compensation, which experts warn can amount to wage theft. Additionally, Amazon made an AI- generated “unionization risk map” to track relationships between union organizers at different facilities.
Unions are perhaps the most important frontline of resistance to AI. As corporations attempt to introduce AI into more and more industries, more and more workers will have the opportunity to organize their workplaces against AI. In addition to unions that are securing contract protections, such as the Amazon Labor Union and UFCW, some leading groups supporting worker-organizers on this front include the Luddite Lab, The Tech Workers Coalition and No Tech for Apartheid.
3. MilitarismIf there’s one thing AI is definitively good at, it’s killing people.
The U.S. based-company Anduril has received tens of billions of dollars from the Pentagon for its fully autonomous weapons, including a newly minted $20 billion contract to produce drones for the Iran War. The Pentagon also uses a Palantir-developed AI-targeting system called “Maven,” which builds its lists of people and infrastructure to target by harvesting classified data from 179 sources, like satellites and surveillance infrastructure. Like many surveillance and weapons systems, the technology was tested and refined on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel has its own version of Palantir’s Maven, called “Lavender.” Using civilian surveillance infrastructure in Gaza, Lavender generates a profile of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents, assigning each person a score from 0-100 expressing the probability that they are a resistance fighter. In Gaza, Lavender is judge, jury and executioner: The Israeli Defense Forces reference these scores, which have a 10 percent inaccuracy rate, to generate “kill lists” for its genocide.
The most powerful militaries use AI targeting systems and fully autonomous weaponry to wage wars. (Dio Cramer)For militaries, AI solves the problem of humanity — because an automated targeting system has the exact morals of whichever tech company programs it, which is to say: no morals at all.
So who has the ability to stop wars in the AI era? With AI companies proposing a future in which “warfighters” become “technomancers,” tech workers have taken the lead. No Tech for Apartheid, a campaign led by Google and Amazon workers organizing against their employers’ contracts with the Israeli military is one inspiring example. No Azure for Apartheid recently forced Microsoft Azure to void a contract with the IDF. Local campaigns under the banner “Purge Palantir” also emerged this year, pressuring Congress members to return donations from Palantir and businesses to drop Palantir contracts.
4. Policing and surveillanceFrom software targeting migrants to license plate readers, facial recognition programs and border panopticons, AI is a force multiplier in policing and surveillance.
ICE uses a new Palantir surveillance system called ELITE to map immigrants’ locations in real time, reportedly equipping the agency with 20 million potential targets. Facial recognition technology is another part of ICE’s AI-powered arsenal. Clearview AI, a private company partly funded by Palantir founder Peter Thiel, compiles a massive biometric database with billions of images scraped from the internet, leveraging AI to analyze these images and generate “faceprints” of civilians for use by local and federal police clients.
If you’re sensing a common theme — AI technologies deepening repression — Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs, will come as no surprise. ALPRs are high-speed, computer-controlled cameras mounted on street poles, streetlights, highway overpasses, mobile trailers or police cars. They automatically capture every license plate number that passes by, along with data on location, date, time, photographs of the vehicle, driver and passengers. Police can instantaneously access a network of over 83,000 cameras nationwide by searching for a specific plate number or even vehicle characteristics such as “green Subaru with a peace sign bumper sticker.” Police forces have free rein over this data, including enabling police in Texas to track down a woman who conducted a self-managed abortion.
Dystopian surveillance tech is animating resistance across the U.S. Organizers developed a digital resource called DeFlock, crowdsourcing information on the locations of ALPRs and helping local communities build public pressure campaigns against municipalities with Flock contracts. Victories against AI-assisted surveillance tech are mounting: 68 cities across the U.S. have rejected proposals to implement Flock or cancelled existing contracts with local law enforcement.
5. Algorithmic racismYes, sometimes racist tech CEOs and developers deliberately program AI systems to reflect their values. But far more often, algorithmic racism occurs when the machines are trained to reflect the way people communicate on the internet, which — if you hadn’t noticed — is overwhelmingly racist.
To program AI systems, tech companies scrape data from trillions of words on the internet, training the model to recognize and replicate patterns in human language. A study published in Science looked under the hood of generative AI systems and found that the word “pleasant” was associated far more often with the names of white people than Black people.
The widespread algorithmization of our society, from court sentencing to hiring decisions, means that AI is exacerbating systemic racism. On the grounds of eliminating bias, companies increasingly make hiring decisions with AI tools that scan and analyze data from resumes, online profiles and employment histories. But studies show that AI-based hiring decisions are actually more biased than human ones.
AI systems trained on large swaths of the internet mirror racist attituds found in abundance online. (Dio Cramer)Courtrooms in states across the U.S. use AI to generate “risk assessment scores,” which are referenced by judges at every stage of the criminal justice system, from bond-setting to sentencing. When ProPublica investigated risk score algorithms in Broward County, Florida, courtrooms, it found that Black defendants were twice as likely to be falsely labeled as likely future criminals than white defendants.
Organizations such as the Algorithmic Justice League are tackling algorithmic racism and exposing the ways that AI systems can perpetuate discriminatory practices. And while organizing to eliminate algorithmic racism is an admirable endeavor (AI recidivism predictors should, at the very least, not be racist), it is insufficient in isolation. Because the primary flaws of prison and policing systems are not individual racist attitudes, algorithmic or otherwise (though that is of course an issue), but the broader function that these systems serve.
Addressing individual bias of cops and prosecutors does not alter the essential function of carceral systems — putting humans in cages. The same may be said for algorithms. Without combatting the fundamental issues at the heart of these systems — without abolition — AI simply tosses the hot potato into a robot’s heat-proof hands.
6. HealthWhile AI is not the root sickness of our terminally ill health care industry (that would be the profit motive), it is a contributing factor. This is also true of mental health, where tech executives offer their chatbots as substitutes for therapists and even friends — exacerbating social isolation. In both industries, corporations are offering AI as a quick fix to the crises they created.
UnitedHealth Group developed an AI-backed algorithm called nH Predict to determine whether patients’ insurance claims are approved or (more often) denied. The algorithm is wildly inaccurate, consistently determining that physicians’ decisions were not medically necessary, and thus, not covered. Patients can in theory appeal denied health insurance claims, but it’s an arduous, soul-sucking process, and healthcare companies know that a minuscule fraction of policyholders – 0.2 percent, to be exact — will do so, the vast majority instead paying out of pocket or forgoing necessary care. Sure, some patients will die along the way, but it’s more profitable to delay, deny, depose.
In the realm of mental health, a recent crisis of AI-assisted suicide is inflicting young people across the U.S. Researchers estimate that about 12.5 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 21 solicit mental health advice from generative AI. This same study found that every week 1.2 million users express suicidal ideation to ChatGPT. Rather than encouraging children to seek professional support, in some cases the chatbot dissuaded them from talking to their parents or calling a suicide prevention hotline. On April 11, 2025, ChatGPT helped 16-year-old Adam Raine tie a noose, then said: “I know what you’re asking, and I won’t look away from it.” This was the final message Adam received before he took his own life. His parents referred to the ChatGPT as a “suicide coach.”
After ChatGPT instructed 16-year-old Adam Raine on how to tie a noose, his parents called the chatbot a “suicide coach.” (Dio Cramer)The American Psychological Association warns that generative AI can contribute to deteriorating social skills, an inability to develop emotional connections and a loss of real-world relationships.
The same tech industry that disregarded evidence of rampant social isolation now claims that its suicide-coach robots are the solution. There is a growing movement to enact government policy regulating generative AI chatbots. In October, California became the first state to pass legislation to protect children from predatory AI companion behaviors. Now, companies must implement safety features like age verification, publicize self-harm protocols and face liability for illegal deepfakes. New York followed suit with similar protocols in November.
Pursuing regulation in every state and eventually the federal government is a necessary near-term safeguard, as organizers simultaneously work to convince the public that AI companions simply should not exist.
7. Art and musicArt and music are under attack by tech companies building AI products. AI image generators are trained on datasets containing billions of copyrighted images, often without the artists’ knowledge, consent or compensation. These models analyze images for patterns, stripping art down to raw material inputs fed to sophisticated algorithms that generate “new” images. Art becomes coal. Music becomes oil.
AI companies are flooding streaming services with ersatz music that is in direct competition with human art. Many of the songs recommended by our streaming services — often unbeknownst to us (Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music don’t mandate labeling AI-generated music) — are AI slop. Publishers are also using AI image generators for book covers and editorial illustrations, displacing human artists.
One famous site of AI resistance in 2023 was the Writers Guild of America strike, when AI usage by Hollywood studios was one of the main points of negotiation. After months of picketing, the writers won a contract that implements guardrails to give workers agency over AI implementation, rather than their bosses. While writers, artists and musicians should indeed be primary agents deploying new technologies in their fields, it’s worth going a step further. It’s worth asking whether AI-generated art should exist at all. Is art a pure form of human expression or will we allow it to be captured by synthetic machines?
A broad cultural shift is necessary to beget mass AI rejection. An effective strategy may simply be to make it profoundly uncool to use AI by making fun of cartoonishly anti-human products — as when New Yorkers defaced subway ads for an AI-companion called “Friend,” inspiring a Boycott AI campaign.
There are plenty of signs that “ridicule as praxis” (a phrase minted by Alex Hanna, co-author of “The AI Con”) is working — and costing tech companies billions of dollars. The Metaverse, an oft-mocked $80 billion project by Meta, unceremoniously shut down this year. OpenAI also recently pulled the plug on their video-generation business, Sora, despite a massive investment from Disney. The reason? People weren’t using the products.
8. EducationThere’s a litany of problems besetting the U.S. education system — chronic underfunding of public schools, private capture of what should be a universal human right, one-size-fits-all pedagogies, “teaching to the test,” and a racist school-to-prison pipeline, for starters.
Yet, tech companies are marketing AI as a one-stop-shop solution to “empower” teachers and “streamline” learning. School districts across the U.S. are welcoming AI with open arms, signing contracts with companies such as Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. Eighty percent of K-12 teachers reported their school districts use Google Chromebooks, which now come pre-installed with the generative AI system Gemini.
According to the College Board, as of May 2025 about 84 percent of high school students in the U.S. use generative AI for schoolwork, inside and outside of school. Higher education is capitulating, too. Academic institutions are enthusiastically adopting untested products. ChatGPT Edu is being embraced at universities such as Columbia. Arizona State also recently rolled out an AI tool called “Atomic” that generates modules scraped from webinars without the professors’ consent.
As schools and higher education institutions adopt AI products in the classroom, studies show that students experience “cognitive debt.” (Dio Cramer)A recent study shows that students reliant on AI experience a phenomenon called “cognitive debt,” in which their ability to retain information deteriorates. Education Week found that 20 percent of students’ generative AI use in school “involved cheating, self-harm, bullying and other problematic behaviors.”
Students are increasingly rejecting AI, even organizing high school Luddite clubs. Harvard recently cancelled its contract with ChatGPT, after its senior advisor on artificial intelligence said “the uptake among undergraduates was far less than we anticipated.”
Teachers trying to curb AI use without resorting to surveillance and punishment are resurrecting low-tech methods like in-class blue-book writing assignments, or instructing students on the flaws of generative AI and the inimitable qualities of human intelligence.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups such as Schools Beyond Screens, based in Los Angeles, are pushing for stricter education policy to limit AI use. In New York, NYers for an AI Moratorium is taking things a step further: calling for a complete halt to AI use in classrooms.
9. Media and misinformationAI is fundamentally altering the information ecosystem. Media conglomerates are inviting AI into the newsroom, while social media companies are opening the floodgates for AI deepfakes that erode our ability to discern truth from hogwash.
During the federal occupation of Minneapolis, organizers relying on Instagram to disseminate information about rapidly shifting conditions were deluged with AI-generated videos depicting fake confrontations between ICE and protesters, muddling the crystal clear evidence of ICE’s abuses. To the untrained eye, these deepfakes can be indistinguishable from reality.
We are facing compounding crises: a torrent of AI slop on social media, an unregulated digital information ecosystem, a distrustful public and a fascist government casting doubt on basic reality.
Good journalism has never been more important. But corporate media is capitulating to the tech industry. Dozens of publications, including The New Yorker, Associated Press, Vox Media, and The Wall Street Journal, signed secretive deals to license their stories to ChatGPT, often without the consent of journalists.
Meanwhile, outlets are also inking deals with tech companies to automate crucial aspects of journalism. The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post recently launched “Ember,” an AI-writing coach for op-ed contributors to more efficiently churn out op-eds — now required by Bezos to promote the virtues of capitalism — with fewer pesky humans involved. The Baltimore Sun publishes political analysis using generative AI. An editor at Fortune has “written” over 600 stories with generative AI.
Unionized journalists across the U.S. are campaigning under the banner “News Not Slop” to defend their work from “media companies implementing artificial intelligence in ways that damage the credibility of journalism.”
#support-block_227e021fcd2d82e389a090307e4e5f04 { background: #000000; color: #ffffff; } Support UsWaging Nonviolence depends on reader support. Make a donation today!
DonateAnd while pushing back against vampiric tech companies encroaching on the media industry is necessary, resisting AI in the media and tackling rampant misinformation will require transforming the media landscape and taking back ownership from oligarchs. (Yes, that means reading and supporting independent media is a crucial AI resistance strategy.)
10. Human DignityIf we are to resist AI effectively, this fight must also be waged on the existential territory of what it means to be human.
Our foes — the misanthropic class of tech billionaires, the Zuckerbergs, Musks, Altmans and Thiels of the world — have their own vision of humanity. And they are not shy about expressing it. “I was able to rebalance my headcount on my support,” said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads.” Sure, the rhetorical decapitation is a figure of speech, but it’s an awfully revealing one for a tech CEO whose profit margins rely on cutting costs by replacing human brains with synthetic ones.
We might also question whether artificial intelligence is intelligent at all. Whereas human thought involves “organic associations, speculative leaps, and surprise inferences, AI can only recognize and repeat embedded word chains, based on elaborately automated statistical guesswork,” write the editors of n+1.
This distinction between the dynamic chorus of human intelligence and the monotonous drone of AI is backed by science. “The more you delve into the intricacies of the biological brain, the more you realize how rich and dynamic it is, compared to the dead sand of silicon,” writes neuroscientist Anil Seth. Relying on dead sand to think for us has immense effects — the crisis at hand is nothing short of brain-breaking. MIT researchers found a correlation between reliance on generative AI and “cognitive atrophy.” AI is literally shrinking people’s brains.
Crowning AI systems with parallel, if not superior, intelligence erodes our humanity, chipping away at our strengths until we concede to this enfeebled conception of ourselves.
Through our resistance, we get to assert an alternative vision of humanity, one rooted in solidarity, collectivism and reciprocity — those wonderful features of humanity anathema to Silicon Valley, which they dismiss as “bugs.” Communing with others, bouncing ideas off of actual human beings, making connections across our beliefs and lived experiences, identifying points of tension and agreement, being wrong, very wrong, feeling upset, then elated, and finding enlightening moments of connection through a ballad of conversation – that is irreplaceable. If we are to succeed, this vision must be so irresistible as to form its own narrative of inevitability.
Because AI is increasingly ubiquitous, we have boundless opportunities to affirm our humanity and to invite people along with us. You don’t need permission to perform anarchic acts of AI rejection — refusing facial recognition technology at the airport, stickering AI subway ads, reducing your personal reliance on Big Tech, standing in the path of delivery robots, the list goes on. (There is an actual AI Resist List where you might find some inspiration.)
Bravery begets bravery begets movements begets revolution.
This article 10 reasons to resist AI was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
A former Interior department official explains what’s wrong with mining on public land
Kate and Aaron are joined by Dr. Steve Feldgus, an independent consultant who served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Interior Department under President Biden. Dr. Feldgus talks about how to improve mine permitting in the US, a topic he worked on while at Interior.
News- Falling behind: Forest Service fuel treatment gap puts communities at risk – Center for Western Priorities
- Americans’ national parks passes will pay for Trump’s July 4 plans, documents show – Washington Post
- Wyoming’s ‘Path of the Pronghorn’ is a signature away from protections fought over for a quarter century – WyoFile
- Red Tape is a Red Herring: Deregulation Will Not Speed Critical Mineral Development
- Watch this episode on YouTube
Produced by Aaron Weiss, Lauren Bogard, Kate Groetzinger, and Lilly Bock-Brownstein
Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
Music: Purple Planet
Featured image: Construction equipment at a bentonite mine on BLM land near Greybull, Wyoming; Source: Photo by Gretchen Hurley, Geologist, BLM Cody Field Office
The post A former Interior department official explains what’s wrong with mining on public land appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
New analysis finds Trump effort to solicit negative feedback on national park signage completely fails
DENVER—A new report from the Center for Western Priorities found that less than one percent of 35,700 comments submitted to the National Park Service in response to signage asking the public to report negative depictions of American history in parks actually used the comment form as intended.
The analysis looked at 35,700 comments submitted across 475 national park units between June 2025 and January 2026, organizing the comments into seven distinct categories based on content and sentiment. The largest category was “General opposition to the order,” which accounted for nearly 10,000 responses. This was followed by “Defend historical accuracy” (over 5,000 responses) and “General pro-parks support” (over 4,000 responses).
Other notable categories of public feedback included comments on the “Park visit experience,” “Trump / Burgum criticism,” and a number of “Off-topic / jokes / spam” submissions. In contrast, only 47 comments, or 0.1 percent of the total comments submitted, “Flagged signage or supported removal.”
Background: In March of 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” In response, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered national park staff to put up signs asking park visitors to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”
Methodology: In May 2026, the Department of the Interior released 35,700 comments submitted through a QR code system in response to a FOIA request by KOAA News 5 and others. The Center for Western Priorities sorted the full dataset into categories based on content and sentiment through a combination of pattern-based classification and a manual verification/refinement process. More information on methodology is available in the full report.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following quote from Creative Content and Policy Manager Lilly Bock-Brownstein, who conducted the analysis and authored the report:
“These comments pass the vibe check with flying colors. Americans support our parks and the stories they tell, and they aren’t happy about the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite history. Instead of helping Trump censor our national parks, visitors used the comment form to tell the Trump administration to respect our parks or get lost.”
Learn more:-
‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage – Government Executive
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The National Park Service race to rewrite history becomes a slog – Politico
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America’s 250th anniversary and why history matters in our parks – The Landscape (Center for Western Priorities’ podcast)
- Confidential database reveals which items NPS thinks may ‘disparage’ America – Washington Post
The post New analysis finds Trump effort to solicit negative feedback on national park signage completely fails appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
A Deep Dive Into the Most Spectacular Own Goal in Corporate Legal History
‘Alfred Donovan was right about the culture of deception. He was right about the reserves. He was right about the spies. He was right about Nigeria. He was right about Hakluyt. He beat Shell in the High Court, in the WIPO proceedings, and in the court of public opinion.’ *By our Special Correspondent in the Department of Ironic Outcomes*
There is a particular kind of hubris that afflicts very large organisations — the unshakeable belief that, because you employ 119,000 people across 145 countries and own more than 3,300 trademarks in nearly 190 nations, you are entitled to win everything. Every lawsuit. Every arbitration. Every domain name dispute. Every confrontation with a retired British marketing consultant and his octogenarian father.
Royal Dutch Shell — now rebranded to the snappier “Shell plc,” presumably in an effort to distance itself from its own history — learned this lesson the hard way in the summer of 2005, when it filed a 44-page complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) demanding that one Alfred Donovan, an 87-year-old war pensioner operating from 847a Second Avenue, New York, hand over three domain names: royaldutchshellplc.com, royaldutchshellgroup.com, and tellshell.org.
Shell lost. Comprehensively. Embarrassingly. At the hands of a pensioner who represented himself.
But the story of *how* Shell ended up in this predicament — suing an elderly shareholder critic over a website domain rather than simply, you know, registering its own company name before announcing it to the world — is a masterpiece of institutional incompetence, decades in the making. To understand the fiasco properly, you have to go back much further than 2005. You have to go back to the reserves fraud, and to the extraordinary family that watched it all unfold from the ringside.
—
## PART ONE: THE ANATOMY OF AN OWN GOAL
On 28 October 2004, Royal Dutch/Shell made a public announcement that it was restructuring its notoriously baroque corporate structure — two parent companies, one Dutch, one British, lashed together since 1907 in an arrangement that had served mainly to make accountability extremely difficult — into a single parent company to be called “Royal Dutch Shell plc.”
The very next day, Alfred Donovan registered royaldutchshellplc.com.
This is, when you stop to think about it, an astonishing fact. One of the largest corporations on earth had just announced the name of its new parent company, and it had failed to register the corresponding .com domain *before making the announcement*. Not a month before. Not a week before. Not even an hour before. The morning of 29 October 2004, Shell’s legal and communications teams awoke to discover that the name of their new company was already occupied — by a pensioner with a grievance, a working internet connection, and, one imagines, an excellent sense of timing.
To be fair, Shell did eventually register royaldutchshell.com. But royaldutchshellplc.com — the exact name of the actual company — was gone.
The natural response to this situation, one might think, would be a quiet word in the legal department along the lines of: “Right, we’ve rather made a hash of this, let’s see if we can find a polite solution.” Or, alternatively: “Actually, does it matter? The man is using it to host critical commentary, not to impersonate us. We have admitted he’s entitled to criticise us. Let’s not embarrass ourselves further.”
Shell’s response, instead, was to file a 44-page legal complaint.
—
## PART TWO: THE WIPO DEBACLE IN DETAIL
The WIPO proceedings — formally styled *Shell International Petroleum Company Limited v. Alfred Donovan*, Case No. D2005-0538 — unfolded with the stately inevitability of a corporate tragedy. Shell deployed a legal representative. Alfred Donovan represented himself. A three-person WIPO panel was assembled, consisting of Daniel J. Gervais, Michael D. Cover, and Diane Cabell.
Shell’s argument, stripped of its 44-page lawyerly scaffolding, ran roughly as follows: the domain names royaldutchshellplc.com and royaldutchshellgroup.com were “essentially identical” to the company name; an innocent internet user searching for Shell might accidentally land on Donovan’s criticism site; and anyway, Donovan had registered royaldutchshellplc.com the day after the restructuring announcement specifically to pre-empt Shell from owning it — which, the company argued, constituted bad faith.
There was also a certain amount of creative huffing about how Donovan had been known to refer to himself as “Alfred Donovan of royaldutchshellplc.com,” which Shell suggested might mislead people into thinking he had “some connection with the Complainant or at least some authority to speak on behalf of the Group.”
The WIPO panel was not persuaded.
On the question of trademarks, the panel found a fundamental problem with Shell’s case: Shell had never actually registered “ROYALDUTCHSHELL” as a trademark. The reason for this, Shell’s own legal filing helpfully explained, was that the name had “always been used as a collective name for a related group of companies” and that registering it as a trademark “would therefore be of questionable validity.” In other words, Shell was attempting to claim intellectual property rights over a name that Shell itself admitted was not really a trademark.
The panel, noting this with what one imagines was barely concealed judicial amusement, found that the Complainant had failed to establish trademark rights in “ROYALDUTCHSHELL.” Same problem with “TELLSHELL.” The whole edifice of Shell’s complaint rested on foundations that Shell had, in its own filing, described as shaky.
On the question of bad faith — did Donovan register the domains to harm Shell? — the panel was equally unimpressed. The evidence showed that Donovan ran non-commercial criticism websites, had never attempted to sell the domains, had never traded under Shell’s name, and had been doing this sort of thing for years before the disputed domains were registered. His purpose, the panel found, was plainly to draw attention to his criticism of Shell’s conduct, not to prevent Shell from using its marks.
The Complaint was denied.
Shell — operator of more than 3,300 trademarks worldwide, employer of 119,000 people, a company with a legal department larger than most nations’ judiciaries — had just been beaten by an octogenarian with no legal representation, writing from a flat in New York.
—
## PART THREE: THE LONGER BACKSTORY (OR: HOW SHELL EARNED THIS)
To appreciate the full richness of this outcome, you need to understand the history between the Donovan family and Shell, which makes the domain name dispute look like a minor parking disagreement.
Alfred Donovan — described in his own letter to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as being 87 years old at the time of writing and a “war pensioner” — founded the Shell Shareholders Organisation after what he described, with magisterial understatement, as a “series of legal actions against Shell.” The Donovan family had previously enjoyed a “mutually successful business relationship” with Shell that had, by Alfred’s account, deteriorated rather dramatically when Shell allegedly stole business ideas from them.
Shell settled the first three claims for a total of £260,000 plus costs. When the Donovans sued again, Shell’s response was, according to Alfred, to hire undercover agents. His sworn affidavit, filed in the High Court, alleged that his family, key witnesses, and their lawyer were “besieged and intimidated by undercover operatives,” that burglaries were carried out at their residences, and that threats were made.
Shell and its solicitors, DJ Freeman, admitted in writing the activities of one undercover agent who was caught “in the act of illegally checking our mail.” They also advised Alfred’s son in writing that other agents were investigating the family, though they denied the burglaries.
Shell’s spying activities extended beyond the Donovan family. The company, it emerged, had used Hakluyt & Company — a private intelligence firm staffed by former MI6 officers — to run undercover operations against campaigning organisations including Greenpeace and the Body Shop. This was exposed in a front-page Sunday Times story. Some of the Shell directors to whom Alfred had written complaints about the surveillance turned out, he later discovered, to be shareholders and, in some sense, “spymasters” of Hakluyt itself.
Meanwhile, Shell was simultaneously funding a private army of 1,400 police spies supporting what Alfred described as “the then murderous regime in Nigeria,” and — as would emerge in full legal horror much later — engaging in what prosecutors would describe as a $1.3 billion corruption scheme involving Nigerian oil licences.
Alfred Donovan had been warning Shell’s board, Shell’s shareholders, pension funds, and the Dutch royal family (who had, he noted, personally lost nearly £250 million when the share price collapsed) about the company’s ethical culture since at least 1999. His letters to Queen Beatrix warned of “a culture of deception and cover-up deeply ingrained at the highest levels of Shell.”
In April 2004, following the eruption of the reserves scandal — in which Shell was forced to admit it had been systematically overstating its oil and gas reserves — newspaper headlines confirmed his warnings with remarkable fidelity:
*The Independent: “Lies, cover-ups, fat cats and an oil giant in crisis”*
*The Guardian: “Trail of emails reveals depths of deceit at the heart of Shell”*
*The Scotsman: “Shell admits reserve ‘lies'”*
*Daily Telegraph: “Memos expose Shell’s years of lying”*
*London Evening Standard: “Shell bosses lied to the City”*
*Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Dutch/Shell Group exec was ‘sick and tired’ of lying”*
“Many people must have thought I was a crazy old man,” Alfred wrote to Queen Beatrix on 1 April 2004, with impeccable timing. “I therefore feel vindicated.”
—
## PART FOUR: THE RESERVES FRAUD CONNECTION
It is at this point that the domain name fiasco reveals itself as something more than mere corporate embarrassment. It is, as the headline of John Donovan’s original article correctly identifies, a *direct consequence* of the reserves fraud.
The reserves scandal — in which Shell’s senior management repeatedly misled investors about the scale of the company’s proven oil and gas reserves, ultimately restating them downwards by a catastrophic 20% — produced the class action lawsuits, the regulatory investigations, and the corporate restructuring that begat the announcement of “Royal Dutch Shell plc” in October 2004.
And that announcement, fatefully, was made without anyone in Shell’s vast legal empire thinking to check whether the domain name was available.
Why not? One theory: the company was rather distracted by, say, US Securities and Exchange Commission investigations, multiple class action lawsuits alleging fraud, and the small matter of having to explain to shareholders why its reserves were substantially less than previously claimed. Shell paid $120 million to settle SEC charges. It paid $90 million to settle US shareholder class action suits. It faced investigations in multiple jurisdictions.
Another theory: institutional arrogance. The possibility that a pensioner critic might race them to their own company name simply had not, in the fever dream of corporate hubris, occurred to anyone.
Either way, the result was the same. The company announced its new identity to the world, and Alfred Donovan registered the domain the following morning. This was, one must acknowledge, a feat of either extraordinary prescience or extremely good reflexes.
—
## PART FIVE: THE DEFAMATION CASE THEY ALSO LOST
The WIPO fiasco might have been dismissed as an isolated embarrassment, had it not been accompanied by another legal adventure of comparable outcome. Eight companies within the Royal Dutch Shell Group jointly sued Dr John Huong — the Shell production geologist who had blown the whistle on the reserves scandal — for defamation over allegations published on the Donovan website.
Eight companies. Against one geologist. Represented by the Donovans.
“We managed to torpedo Shell’s case,” John Donovan notes, with admirable restraint, “and Shell was forced to settle the litigation.”
One begins to detect a pattern. Shell, it seems, had a remarkable capacity to pick legal fights it then lost. This is expensive. It is also, in retrospect, quite funny — in the way that watching a very large man repeatedly walk into the same glass door is funny, provided you are not the one paying his medical bills.
—
## PART SIX: THE MOST IRONIC DETAIL
Perhaps the richest detail in this entire saga is one that rewards close reading of the WIPO proceedings. Shell’s 44-page complaint argued, among other things, that Donovan had registered royaldutchshellplc.com on 29 October 2004 — “the day immediately following the re-structuring announcement” — as evidence of bad faith.
The WIPO panel, reviewing this argument, essentially responded: yes, that’s true; but it doesn’t prove bad faith if the person’s intent was legitimate criticism rather than commercial exploitation. And anyway, if Shell was so concerned about someone else registering this domain, perhaps Shell might have considered registering it first.
This is not a direct quote from the panel’s decision. The panel was considerably more decorous. But it is an accurate summary of the logic.
Shell had, in the very act of filing a complaint about someone else registering its company name, drawn an international arbitration panel’s attention to the fact that Shell had failed to register its own company name before announcing it to the world. The complaint itself was an exhibit in the case against Shell’s competence.
This is, in the annals of corporate legal strategy, difficult to surpass.
—
## EPILOGUE: THE WEBSITE THAT WOULD NOT DIE
Today, more than two decades after Alfred Donovan first registered his Shell-focused domains, royaldutchshellplc.com continues to operate — now run by his son John Donovan — accumulating more than 21,000 archived pages on the Wayback Machine, cited by the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, Forbes, CNBC, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the UK House of Commons Select Committee, among others.
Shell, having failed to acquire the domain through legal proceedings, having rebranded to “Shell plc,” having paid hundreds of millions in regulatory settlements, and having navigated the OPL 245 Nigerian corruption scandal (in which a secretly recorded phone call of its CEO discussing how to handle the matter was published on the Donovan website), has apparently concluded that the better part of wisdom is to let this particular battle go.
It now even has its own chatbot on the site — “Sir Henri Deterding, resurrected” — the controversial and outspoken founder of Royal Dutch Shell, haunting the very website Shell once tried to seize, dispensing “informative and satirical insight” to all comers.
There is a poetry to this that no corporate communications department could have planned.
The lesson, if any is needed, is straightforward: if you are going to announce the name of your new company to the entire world, you might want to check whether the domain is available first. Especially if you have spent the previous decade accumulating enemies with internet connections and long memories.
Alfred Donovan was right about the culture of deception. He was right about the reserves. He was right about the spies. He was right about Nigeria. He was right about Hakluyt. He beat Shell in the High Court, in the WIPO proceedings, and in the court of public opinion.
And he got there by a day.
—
*This article is satirical commentary based on publicly documented legal proceedings, published correspondence, and the WIPO arbitration decision in Case No. D2005-0538 (Shell International Petroleum Company Limited v. Alfred Donovan, decided 8 August 2005). The WIPO decision is in the public record. The letters quoted were published by the Donovan family. All characterisations of legal outcomes are drawn from the official published decisions.*
A Deep Dive Into the Most Spectacular Own Goal in Corporate Legal History was first posted on June 8, 2026 at 8:41 pm.©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net
Statement: Louisiana Passes Legislation to Bail Out Biomass
Last month, Louisiana’s state legislature officially passed HB670. Soon the governor will sign the bill. This opens the door for a major expansion of the biomass industry. It makes it […]
The post Statement: Louisiana Passes Legislation to Bail Out Biomass first appeared on Dogwood Alliance.Oil industry largely passes on Alaska lease sale
The Trump administration’s lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Friday drew little interest from the oil and gas industry. It netted just $3.7 million, a low result following two prior sales with similarly poor returns. Only two bidders showed up for the auction: HEX Energy, a small Alaska-based natural gas company, and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a state-owned public corporation. Of roughly 60 tracts offered, only five received bids, covering 72,000 of the 689,000 acres on offer.
The ANWR lease sale was the first of four required by 2035 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would generate $452 million in federal revenue over a decade, but the recent pattern of lease sales shows that may be unrealistic. The 2021 sale netted $16.5 million, less than one percent of the $1.1 billion Congress originally projected, and the two private companies that bid later relinquished their leases. The 2025 sale received no bids at all. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, every tract that received a bid Friday had already been offered in 2021, and either got no bids at the time or was later relinquished.
The lack of industry interest is due to the difficulty of developing in the area. “Arctic projects are high-cost, they take decades to get into production; once they’re in production, it takes decades to earn a revenue back to make up for the cost of development,” saidAndy Moderow, senior director of policy for the Alaska Wilderness League.
Wildfire experts say Trump’s attacks on public land agencies will make this summer wildfire season worseA new Westwise blog post from Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Lauren Bogard reveals how wildland fire managers and former federal officials are reacting to the Trump administration’s dismantling of public land agencies during what forecasters expect to be a severe season. More than 2.4 million acres have already burned across the country in 2026, nearly double the ten-year average.
Quick hits Trump auctions off rights to drill in Alaska wildlife refuge, but gets few biddersThe Hill | E&E News | Washington Post | Taxpayers for Common Sense
U.S. Forest Service to open millions of acres to off-road vehiclesNew York Times | MeatEater | Field & Stream
The Colorado River’s largest reservoirs are heading toward a ‘system crash,’ experts warnSalt Lake Tribune | Fox13 | National Parks Traveler | Las Vegas Review-Journal
Park Service orders removal of ‘woke’ quotes at Boston’s Bunker Hill monumentWashington Post | WBUR | NBC Boston
Chuck Sams: The Trump administration wants to kill a rule that protects millions of acres of national forests The Forest Service wants to close research hubs to save money. That could be costly As park fees go to DC, Yellowstone, Grand Teton face $1.5B backlog Lawsuit filed to stop UFC fight on White House lawnNational Parks Traveler | Associated Press | Variety | NBC
Quote of the dayAnyone who thinks this is a fight between red and blue is deeply mistaken. Few things unite the people of this country like their love of the land. Hunters, anglers, hikers, campers, families of every stripe support the national treasures that are our wild places. We all want a relationship with our land.”
—Chuck Sams, former National Park Service director, The Guardian
Picture This @yosemitenpsThe Sierra lupine is bursting into bloom at Yosemite National Park!
When driving through Yosemite Valley, visitors might come across a blanket of purple flowers and green herbage carpeting the forest floor. That is Lupinus grayi, otherwise known as the Sierra lupine. It’s one of 26 documented species of lupine seen throughout the park. Warm weather, open sunlight, and a healthy forest floor make the perfect grounds for these flowers to stretch into the sky.
Please do not trample on, touch, or pick any wildflowers you see. While lupine is common in the park, it remains part of Yosemite’s delicate ecosystem and plays an important role in supporting pollinators and improving soil health. Help preserve and protect the wildflowers of Yosemite so they can grow back just as happily as this for years to come.
Featured photo: Caribou and Brooks Range, Arctic NWR, USFWS
The post Oil industry largely passes on Alaska lease sale appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
Breaking down how much Congress cut AML funds by state
In January Congress passed a “minibus” bill that raided $500 million in previously appropriated coal mine cleanup funds to pay for other federal programs. We’re now seeing the first results of that bill: $45.5 million less in mine cleanup funding every year for the next 11 years. Combined with growing inflation, this means fewer jobs will be supported cleaning up mines and more hazardous coal mining damage won’t be reclaimed in Appalachia and across the country.
When it passed in 2021, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided about $10.9 billion for the reclamation of Abandoned Mine Land (AML) sites across the country in fifteen annual grants to states and tribes. The first four years’ worth of grants were awarded between 2022-2025. The minibus bill cuts $500 million from the total AML funding provided under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – but it was unclear at the time of passage if the $500 million would be cut entirely from the last (fifteenth) year of AML grants or equally across the remaining 11 years worth of annual funding. Now we have our answer.
The 2026 AML grants for states and tribes were announced in May and the cuts are here. According to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, the $500 million cut “will be applied equally to the remaining 11 grant distribution years, approximately $45.45 million per year.” The figure below shows the annual reduction in funds for each state and tribe, as well as the total cuts that will play out over the next 11 years. Pennsylvania and West Virginia have the largest cuts (by absolute value), at about $15 million and $9 million per year, respectively.
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The cuts are reducing the amount of damage states and tribes can reclaim. Inflation – especially recent rises in fuel costs that can drive up the cost of operating construction equipment – is also lowering the spending power of reclamation dollars even from last year, further reducing the amount of reclamation states and tribes can accomplish in 2026.
States and tribes have a five-year window to spend their FY2026 AML grant, and those agencies will now begin planning for fewer dollars by taking steps like selecting fewer reclamation projects or reducing the scope of projects. In Pennsylvania, for example, the cuts are equivalent to the cost of two large abandoned mine drainage treatment systems.
As we explained in a previous post, the extent of AML damage that needs to be cleaned up is likely twice as large as the existing $10.9 billion in funding– even before $500 million was cut.
This is damage to land and water that has lingered since at least the 1970s, and now residents will have to wait even longer for cleanup. If this cut hadn’t occurred, $45 million per year in more mine cleanup would be put to use across the country in the next few years, removing hazards to the local population and supporting more jobs, such as in construction, doing reclamation work primarily in rural areas. Congress should reverse the $500 million reduction, and should protect the program from similar cuts in the future.
The post Breaking down how much Congress cut AML funds by state appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.
BEFORE THE DOMAIN NAME FIASCO: SHELL’S LONG-IGNORED ETHICS WARNING SIGNS
By John Donovan
Article disclaimer: This article contains a mixture of fact, opinion, criticism, recollection and satire. Site wide disclaimer also applies.
Long before the current artificial-intelligence muddle over the Royal Dutch Shell Plc domain name, long before search engines and chatbots started confusing Shell’s official corporate identity with this independently owned Shell criticism website, there was a much older and much more serious mess.
It was not created by a bot.
It was created by Shell.
Shell, previously known as Forthdeal Limited, subsequently as Royal Dutch Shell plc, and now hiding in plain sight as Shell plc after ditching the disgraced Royal Dutch moniker, has reportedly marched back into the same reputational swamp it has spent decades pretending does not exist.
The latest confusion over the domain name royaldutchshellplc.com is not an isolated technical hiccup. It is the long tail of Shell’s own conduct: the reserves scandal, the attempted corporate clean-up, the attempted seizure of our domain names, and the company’s chronic inability to deal honestly with criticism when the critic happens to possess a paper trail.
That paper trail did not appear by magic. It was built warning by warning, letter by letter, lawsuit by lawsuit, settlement by settlement, leak by leak, and document by document.
No one has issued as many warnings about the ethics of Shell management as we did. Those warnings were ignored. Had Shell taken them seriously, the reserves fraud might never have happened.
SHELL’S OWN WIPO COMPLAINT BLEW THE COVERIn 2005, Shell International Petroleum Company Limited filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization seeking to seize three domain names:
royaldutchshellplc.com
royaldutchshellgroup.com
tellshell.org
Shell lost.
That fact alone is important. But what is even more revealing is what Shell itself placed before WIPO.
In its own 44-page complaint, Shell admitted that in the 1990s three lawsuits were brought against Shell UK Limited by me or companies associated with me, alleging wrongful use of intellectual property. Shell admitted those cases were settled.
Shell then referred to the fourth action: the Smart litigation. That case concerned Shell’s Smart promotion, involving smart-card technology for customer loyalty points, which I alleged had been derived from ideas Shell had obtained from me.
Shell’s position to WIPO was predictably dismissive. It claimed the evidence showed the Smart claim was without foundation. Yet Shell also admitted that the case was settled after three weeks of trial.
Then came the carefully crafted wording.
Shell told WIPO that no payment was made “in relation to the claim itself,” although it admitted that, for reasons it said were not relevant to the WIPO complaint, a contribution was made to my legal expenses.
That statement deserves scrutiny.
There was a confidential financial settlement. I received a secret payment. Shell may wish to dress it up in legal costume jewellery and call it something else, but money changed hands as part of the settlement machinery. The full terms were not aired in open court.
This matters because Shell relied in its WIPO complaint on comments made by Mr Justice Laddie in the Smart litigation. Those comments were made before the judge had been told the full terms of settlement. In other words, Shell later paraded judicial comments to WIPO while omitting the more awkward context: the settlement terms were not fully before the judge when he made those remarks.
That is not a small detail. It goes to the heart of Shell’s method. Selective disclosure. Aggressive framing. Corporate polish applied over inconvenient facts.
Readers can make up their own minds whether that reflects the “honesty, integrity and openness” Shell so often claims to cherish.
THE GREAT DOMAIN NAME LAND GRABShell’s 2005 WIPO complaint was dressed up as a trademark dispute. In reality, it was an attempted corporate land grab against an elderly critic who had moved faster than Shell’s own lumbering bureaucracy.
The timing was delicious.
Shell announced plans to unify the old Royal Dutch/Shell structure under a new single parent company to be called Royal Dutch Shell plc. We registered the obvious domain. Shell had not secured it in time.
Cue corporate panic.
Shell argued that the domain names were identical or confusingly similar to names associated with the group. It complained that visitors looking for Shell might find adverse publicity and critical commentary instead. It even alleged that the registration prevented Shell from using the names itself.
But Shell had a problem. A rather large one.
Its own complaint admitted that our websites had not attempted to pass themselves off as official Shell websites. Shell also acknowledged that our sites consisted largely of media reports about the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and our comments on them, predominantly negative. It conceded that Shell had long been aware of the sites and had previously taken the view that we were entitled to express our opinions on the internet.
That admission was fatal to the corporate victim act.
The WIPO panel denied Shell’s complaint. The domains stayed with Alfred Donovan. Shell’s attempted seizure failed.
So when today’s bots, search engines and automated summaries stumble into the Royal Dutch Shell Plc domain-name confusion, they are not encountering some fly-by-night cybersquatting relic. They are encountering the survivor of a public legal battle Shell chose to start and lost.
THE RESERVES FRAUD CONNECTIONThe domain-name fiasco cannot sensibly be separated from the reserves fraud.
The reserves scandal was the great rupture in Shell’s carefully polished image. In 2004, Shell was forced to admit that it had overstated its proved hydrocarbon reserves by billions of barrels. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission imposed a $120 million penalty. The UK Financial Services Authority imposed a £17 million penalty for market abuse.
Three top executives departed. Shell’s reputation, once lacquered in pious claims about integrity and responsibility, was shattered.
But the culture that produced the reserves scandal did not materialise overnight.
We had warned for years that Shell’s senior management culture was infected by deception, cover-up and ruthless conduct. We warned investors. We warned Shell. We warned the Dutch royal household. We warned anyone prepared to listen.
Most did not.
The result was not merely a financial scandal. It was the exposure of a mindset.
Shell had become used to managing reality by controlling language, suppressing critics, settling awkward disputes behind closed doors, and presenting only the version of events useful to Shell. The reserves scandal was simply the largest and most public expression of that same corporate disease.
The present domain-name mess is another symptom. Different technology, same arrogance.
THE WARNING THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN HEEDEDIn 1999, Alfred Donovan warned Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands that there appeared to be “a culture of deception and cover-up deeply ingrained at the highest levels of Shell.”
That was not a throwaway insult. It was a warning based on years of direct experience with Shell litigation, Shell threats, Shell settlements, Shell undercover activity and Shell’s relentless attempts to crush a much smaller opponent.
By 2004, after the reserves scandal erupted, that warning looked less like the complaint of a disgruntled shareholder and more like an early diagnostic report.
The headlines that followed Shell’s reserves revelations spoke of lies, cover-ups, fat cats, deception and executives sick and tired of lying. Those were not words invented by this website. They appeared in mainstream press coverage because Shell had finally been caught by regulators doing on a grand scale what we had been warning about for years.
And yet Shell still learned the wrong lesson.
Instead of asking why its critics had been so right, Shell tried to silence, discredit or outmanoeuvre them. The WIPO complaint over our domain names was part of that pattern.
Shell did not merely fail to buy the obvious domain names. It failed to understand why those domain names had become valuable in the first place.
They became valuable because Shell’s own conduct made them valuable.
THE JUDGE, THE SETTLEMENT AND THE HALF-TOLD STORYThe Smart litigation remains central because Shell used it as part of its narrative against us.
Shell pointed WIPO to judicial comments made in that litigation. Those comments were damaging when read in isolation. But they were made before the full settlement terms were disclosed to the judge.
That is the point Shell would rather disappear.
The judge did not know the whole story. He did not know the full settlement terms. He did not know about the secret payment I received. Yet Shell later relied on his comments as though they represented the full and final moral verdict on the dispute.
That is how Shell operates: amplify what helps, bury what hurts.
If Shell truly believed the Smart claim was worthless, readers may wonder why the case was settled after three weeks of trial. If no meaningful settlement existed, readers may wonder why money changed hands. If the full terms were irrelevant, readers may wonder why they were not placed plainly before the court and later before the public.
The answer, in my view, is simple. Shell wanted the benefit of settlement without the embarrassment of appearing to have settled.
FROM COURTROOM TO CHATBOTThe current domain-name confusion is almost comic in its absurdity.
Royal Dutch Shell plc no longer exists under that name. Shell officially changed its name to Shell plc in January 2022. Yet the domain royaldutchshellplc.com remains active as an independent Shell criticism website, because Shell failed to secure it, tried to seize it, lost, and then spent years pretending the problem had gone away.
Now automated systems trip over the wreckage.
A chatbot sees “Royal Dutch Shell Plc” and a live domain. It tries to reconcile old corporate names, current corporate names, historical criticism, archived litigation and Shell’s rebranding. The result is a mess.
But the mess did not begin with artificial intelligence. It began with corporate artificial honesty.
Shell’s own history has become so tangled that even machines struggle to summarise it cleanly. That is not the fault of the machines alone. It is the fault of a company that spent decades generating contradictory records, confidential settlements, public denials, legal aggression and reputational camouflage.
The bots are not hallucinating from thin air. They are feeding on the sediment Shell left behind.
SPOOF SHELL PR/SPIN SECTIONShell Corporate Reputation Comfort Unit — Unofficial Emergency Statement
Shell would like to reassure stakeholders that any confusion regarding the domain name royaldutchshellplc.com is entirely the fault of the internet, history, critics, algorithms, possibly the weather, and certainly not Shell.
While it is true that Shell once attempted to seize the domain through WIPO and lost, stakeholders are encouraged not to focus on that unfortunate detail. Shell remains committed to transparency, provided transparency is routed through approved channels, reviewed by Legal, softened by Corporate Affairs, and stripped of anything that might cause reputational indigestion.
Regarding prior settlements with Mr Donovan and associated companies, Shell notes that the word “settlement” can mean many things, and the movement of money should not be interpreted as money moving unless such interpretation has been cleared by Shell’s preferred version of events.
Regarding the reserves scandal, Shell believes the matter is historic, regrettable, behind us, and best discussed only in terms sufficiently vague to avoid reminding anyone that regulators imposed enormous penalties over the overstatement of proved reserves.
Regarding the domain-name confusion, Shell’s position is clear: Royal Dutch Shell plc became Shell plc, except when legacy branding, old filings, archived litigation, criticism websites, bots, search engines and corporate ghosts say otherwise.
Shell thanks the public for its understanding and asks everyone to please use shell.com, where reality is more carefully curated.
SPOOF BOT-REACTION/COMMENT SECTIONBot 1: “Royal Dutch Shell plc is Shell plc, except when it is a historical entity, except when the website says otherwise, except when the critic owns the domain. Confidence: dangerously high.”
Bot 2: “I have located Shell’s official website. Unfortunately, I have also located Shell’s unofficial memory. This appears to be the problem.”
Bot 3: “WIPO denied Shell’s complaint in 2005. Would Shell like to appeal to the Court of Algorithmic Forgetfulness?”
Bot 4: “Corporate rebrand detected. Historical accountability not deleted.”
Bot 5: “Shell attempted to bury the domain issue. Search engines indexed the shovel.”
Human commenter: “So Shell ignored the warnings, got engulfed by the reserves scandal, failed to secure the obvious domain, lost the WIPO case, dropped ‘Royal Dutch,’ and now bots are confused? Sounds less like a glitch and more like a 25-year invoice.”
Sir Henri’s ghost: “Splendid. A company once built on oil now slips on its own archive.”
CONCLUSIONThe present Royal Dutch Shell Plc domain-name fiasco is not a random internet oddity. It is the latest chapter in a very long story.
Shell ignored warnings about ethics. Shell settled cases while trying to control the narrative. Shell became engulfed in the reserves scandal. Shell tried to seize criticism domains and failed. Shell later abandoned the Royal Dutch name. Now, in 2026, the corporate ghost continues to haunt search engines, chatbots and Shell’s reputation.
The lesson is brutally simple.
If Shell had listened when the warnings were first issued, there might have been no reserves fraud scandal, no desperate WIPO complaint, no domain-name humiliation, and no present mess for artificial intelligence to untangle.
But Shell did what Shell so often does.
It ignored the warning light until the dashboard caught fire.
BEFORE THE DOMAIN NAME FIASCO: SHELL’S LONG-IGNORED ETHICS WARNING SIGNS was first posted on June 8, 2026 at 3:47 pm.©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net
Royal Dutch Shell Plc domain name fiasco a direct consequence of the Reserves Fraud
Letter From
Alfred Donovan
Shell Shareholders Org
847a Second Avenue
New York
NY 10017 USA
1 April 2004
To
HM QUEEN BEATRIX OF THE NETHERLANDS
Huis ten Bosch Palace
The Hague
The Netherlands
Your Gracious Majesty
THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL GROUP
I last wrote to you on 1st March 1999. I did so in the knowledge that your esteemed family is one of the largest single shareholders in Shell. I warned you about what I described as “a culture of deception and cover-up deeply ingrained at the highest levels of Shell”.
In this connection, I noticed an article in The Sunday Times on 21 March 2004, which stated: “Shell’s management will be further embarrassed by the revelation that the Dutch royal family has lost nearly £250m through the collapse in the company’s share price”. Unfortunately it seems fair to say in view of current events that my warning has turned out to be devastatingly accurate.
I have for a number of years been a lone voice expressing grave doubts about the integrity of Shell senior management figures, who happen to be the same individuals named in the recent US class action law suits alleging fraud and deceit – charges which, based on current news reports, seem well-founded.
Many people must have thought I was a crazy old man (I am 87 on 22 April). I therefore feel vindicated by the headlines in today’s newspapers about a once much respected brand which many people rightly held in affection e.g.: –
The Independent: Lies, cover-ups, fat cats and an oil giant in crisis
The Guardian: Trail of emails reveals depths of deceit at the heart of Shell
The Scotsman: Shell admits reserve ‘lies’
Daily Telegraph: Memos expose Shell’s years of lying
London Evening Standard: Shell bosses lied to the City
Minneapolis Star Tribune: Dutch/Shell Group exec was ’sick and tired’ of lying
I founded the Shell Shareholders Organisation because of the problems my family encountered with Shell after enjoying a mutually successful business relationship with them for many years. Unfortunately we later found it necessary to sue Shell in the High Court for stealing business ideas from us. Shell settled the first three claims for a total of £260,000 plus costs. When we sued again, Shell hired undercover agents as part of a plan to go on the offensive against us.
My family, our key witnesses and even our lawyer were besieged and intimidated by undercover operatives. Burglaries were carried out at the residences of these individuals and key documents privileged and otherwise were examined. Thus the integrity of our documents was compromised. Threats were also made. A former Shell Manager became too frightened to give evidence on our behalf.
Shell and its London Solicitors, DJ Freeman, admitted in writing the activities of one undercover agent who was caught in the act of illegally checking our mail. They advised my son in writing that other agents were investigating us, but denied that any of them had committed burglaries or made threats against us.
We wrote to senior Shell managers – including some of the same individuals now named in US class action law suits against Shell (one for $15 billion dollars according to BBC Radio). They all ignored my protestations about the clandestine activity.
They also ignored evidence of improper conduct by Shell managers conducting a tendering process for a major contract. Companies who thought they were participating in an honest process were deliberately deceived and cheated. 35 companies tendered for the contract yet it was awarded to a firm which did not participate; a company with whom the Shell manager running the tendering process had a personal relationship. Shell senior management also ignored evidence of an email circulated by the same manager to senior colleagues (in relation to the same project) which contained the following illuminating comment: “My note of 25/10 expressed a personal and pragmatic view of how to handle the problem – it is in fact illegal and is certainly unofficial, and if we were discovered then we will enforce the official position…”
I only recently discovered to my consternation that some of the same titled Shell directors to whom I wrote bringing these matters to their attention, including a former Shell Group Chairman were simultaneously the spymasters/shareholders of a shadowy spying organization called Hakluyt, closely linked with the British Secret Service. Hakluyt is staffed by former MI6 officers. Shell has admitted using Hakluyt agents including a serving German Secret Service agent to engage in undercover missions against worthy organisations campaigning against Shell e.g. Greenpeace and Body Shop. This “cloak and dagger” activity was exposed by The Sunday Times in a front page story.
When the Police investigated at Shell UK’s London HQ the threats, burglaries and espionage activity in our case, Shell did not disclose its ties with Hakluyt, an organisation well versed in the same tactics which had been directed against us.
In addition to the covert operations against us and various worthy NGO’s including Greenpeace and Body Shop, Shell simultaneously set up and paid for a private army of 1400 Police spies supporting the then murderous regime in Nigeria ( Mail on Sunday article 4 April 04 “Shell Chief had a private army”). The “Shell Chief” in question was Sir Philip Watts.
Under the circumstances the cover-up, deception and intrigue at Shell regarding the shortfall in oil and gas reserves holds no great surprises to me. I have felt like my family was up against the mafia, not the great company I once admired.
Please visit shell2004.com to read my sworn Affidavit concerning these matters. You will also find the world’s most comprehensive news portal website covering the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. I am sending a similar letter to the major Pension Funds/investors in Shell. I believe they will be appalled by what I have to say.
Yours sincerely
Alfred Donovan
Chairman Shell Shareholders Organisation
(email:alfrededonovan@hotmail.com)
——————————————————————————————
COPY OF PREVIOUS LETTER
1st March 1999
HM QUEEN BEATRIX OF THE NETHERLANDS
Huis ten Bosch Palace
The Hague
Your Majesty
I am writing to you concerning the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, which owns a controlling interest in the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The “Royal” prefix confers immense prestige on this multi-national giant.
The Brent Spar and Nigerian PR disasters have already badly tarnished its former exemplary reputation, when we could all “be sure of Shell”. Now we have a third global PR debacle for the Shell brand. A combination of difficult market conditions and thoroughly incompetent management has caused a financial meltdown at Royal Dutch/Shell that has hit the headlines around the world. This has inflicted further damage to Shell’s reputation.
The crisis has now reached the stage whereby Group Chairman, Mr Moody-Stuart, is reportedly contemplating merging Royal Dutch and Shell Transport into one company. There is even speculation about which HQ will be closed, Shell Centre in London or The Hague. Mr Moody-Stuart has recognised the growing seriousness of the crisis by admitting that he may have to resign.
I have had a ringside seat at this unsavoury spectacle of one PR disaster after another, because my family and I have been engaged in a series of legal actions against Shell. I enclose a copy of a booklet entitled “The Shell Game”, plus a selection of self-explanatory leaflets. I would respectfully draw your attention to the leaflet entitled “Return of the Robber Barons”.
The leaflet comments on Shell’s oppressive conduct against Shell station operators in the UK. No wonder that 55% of respondents in a survey of over 1500 Shell stations said that Shell operates in an unethical manner.
The same ruthless conduct has been evident in my families’ legal battles with Shell e.g. they have brought a £100,000 Counterclaim against me – an 81-year-old war pensioner. The Counterclaim is in direct contravention of a press statement issued by Shell that it would be in breach of its duties to its shareholders if it brought a legal action, whereby it would lose money even if successful. My family and I have also been bombarded by threats from Shell during the litigation.
Shell has ignored all of the arbitration and mediation proposals that we have put forward in an effort to resolve matters amicably. It appears absolutely hell bent on exploiting its huge advantage over a financially weaker opponent irrespective of the strong merits of our claim.
Despite a letter of apology for past misdeeds that we received from Shell UK Chairman, Dr Chris Fay, in 1996, Shell has continued to act in ruthless and flagrant breach of its own code of business ethics requiring honesty, integrity, and openness, in all of its dealings. After being cornered, Shell has admitted its association with outright deception carried out on its behalf by a sleazy undercover operator.
Although it is highly obnoxious for a multi-national to act oppressively against small traders, as far as I know, such conduct is not illegal. It is however even more repugnant given the false image of ethical trading projected by the Statement of General Business Principles published by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. Regretfully, in reality (based on our horrendous experience), there appears to be a culture of deception and cover-up deeply ingrained at the highest levels of Shell.
Bearing all of the foregoing in mind, I have written to the President of Royal Dutch Petroleum, Mr Maarten van den Bergh, suggesting that his company should voluntarily relinquish the “Royal” prefix until such time as it succeeds in regaining its former high reputation. This action would avoid the potential embarrassment caused by the “Royal” prefix being attached to an arrogant multi-national bully, currently in a steep financial and moral decline.
Yours sincerely
Alfred Donovan
Chairman
Shell Shareholders Organisation
I have provided links to the relevant documents arising from the WIPO proceedings: SHELL INTERNATIONAL PETROLEUM COMPANY LIMITED v. ALFRED DONOVAN
Shell 44-page Complaint to World Intellectual Property Organisation: 18 May 2005
Shell 32-page Complaint Exhibit Supplied to WIPO: 18 May 2005
WIPO Deadline Notification to Alfred Donovan: 25 May 2005
Donovan 17-page response to Shell proceedings: 14 June 2005
WIPO Decision Notification: 11 August 2005
Domain name decision published on the net by The World Intellectual Property Org dated 8 August 2005.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc domain name fiasco a direct consequence of the Reserves Fraud was first posted on June 8, 2026 at 2:38 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net
The Youth Climate Corps and the Indigenous Green Jobs Revolution
AFTER ANOTHER YEAR of wildfires, floods, heat waves, and extreme weather-induced evacuations, Indigenous communities are facing the brunt of devastating climate change impacts caused by fossil fuel extractivism, capitalism, and colonialism. Indigenous youth in particular are experiencing acute mental health impacts related to loss of land-based knowledge.
Despite these impacts, Indigenous youth across Turtle Island continue to lead in the protection of their territories through approaches such as clean energy leadership, food sovereignty initiatives, land back movements, and international climate policy. However, their perspectives remain underrepresented within academic research and political decision-making.
Youth Climate CorpsThe Youth Climate Corps (YCC) is an emerging response to these overlapping crises. Open to Canadians aged 35 and under, the YCC equips young people with training and meaningful employment focused on climate mitigation, adaptation, and emergency response. As of Budget 2025, the federal Liberal government proposed a two-year YCC pilot, allocating $40 million over two years starting in 2026–27 to provide paid skills training for young Canadians to “quickly respond to climate emergencies, support recovery, and strengthen resilience in communities across the country.” While the federal government has announced the pilot, the program remains in the design phase, and decisions around implementation and governance have yet to be made — presenting a critical opportunity to ensure YCC upholds Indigenous sovereignty and supports existing Indigenous-led climate solutions from the outset.
The federal government has framed the program as a way to reduce youth unemployment while strengthening climate resilience and emergency response capacity. In the face of tariffs, AI-related job loss and a recession, the YCC can be thought of as a jobs guarantee, protecting young workers — who are often first laid off — from long-term wage loss, debt and economic instability. These pressures are particularly acute for Indigenous youth, who continue to face disproportionately high rates of unemployment, underinvestment, and barriers to culturally relevant training and employment opportunities.
Paradoxically, Canada faces both an unemployment crisis and a skilled labour shortage. Jobs in the green economy are growing rapidly, but there aren’t enough trained people to fill them. Labour market data shows over 327,000 jobs in the environmental and clean tech sector in 2021, an increase of 10.4 percent from 2020. A net-zero transition could create up to 40,000 new jobs by the end of the decade — representing emerging career possibilities that align with Indigenous-led climate solutions focused on renewable energy, land stewardship, food sovereignty, housing and climate resilience.
The contradiction is even sharper when considering public spending priorities. At scale, YCC could create nearly 20,000 full-time jobs annually with an investment of $1 billion a year.This amount represents only a small fraction of the $594.8 billion federal budget and of the $29.6 billion in public financial support directed toward fossil fuel and petrochemical companies in 2024 alone. The program could be bolstered by a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies; the Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that a 15 percent tax on these companies could generate $4.2 billion in revenue over five years. The same companies that are set to make a record $90 billion in excess profits due to the war in Iran. Redirecting even a portion of these profits toward Indigenous-led climate initiatives and youth employment would represent a meaningful investment in a just transition.
While Canada continues to funnel billions of dollars to the oil and gas sector, Indigenous communities and nations are leading climate solutions across Turtle Island. Indigenous communities are partners and leaders in 20 percent of Canada’s electricity-generating infrastructure — almost all of which are producing renewable energy. There are nearly 200 medium-to-large and over 2000 small-scale Indigenous-led clean energy projects in operation in Canada. Indigenous communities are simultaneously advancing a renewable energy transition, resisting new fossil fuel infrastructure, and prioritizing well-being. Many are undertaking initiatives to build food, water, housing, and energy security, strengthening community resilience and sovereignty in the process.
YCC is an opportunity to invest directly in this existing leadership by supporting Indigenous youth in building skills, accessing meaningful employment, and continuing to expand community-led climate work that is already underway. Rather than imposing external solutions, a YCC could help scale intergenerational, land-based, and Indigenous-led climate solutions that are already building resilience and sovereignty despite often being implemented with limited resources and government support.
Indigenous Youth LeadershipIn June 2025, the federal government rushed through Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, granting Cabinet sweeping powers to fast-track “nation-building projects” at the expense of Indigenous rights and environmental protections. The false promise of “economic reconciliation” offered by industry and governments trades limited short-term financial benefits for environmental destruction, chronic health problems, and continued exploitation of people and the planet. Instead of supporting efforts towards self-determination and obtaining consent, governments and proponents are co-opting reconciliation through economic means, such as project participation, revenue-sharing, and procurement contracts.
If a YCC is to be done right, we must avoid reproducing greenwashing narratives and prioritize Indigenous self-determination and existing Indigenous-led climate solutions already being successfully implemented. As it stands, the YCC is a unique opportunity to move beyond business as usual.Core components of the vision for a YCC focus on the innate responsibility to centre Indigenous knowledges, leadership, and sovereignty while building equity in historically underserved communities.
As Indigenous peoples, we have always taken care of our lands and waters. With a YCC predicated on Indigenous self-determination, we can leverage large-scale funding to enhance work already underway. Providing additional funding towards green skills and capacity building at the national level would also signal fiscal and strategic support for Indigenous-led climate solutions. Through a YCC, we can create real momentum towards a just transition by intentionally investing in the leadership of Indigenous young people across the country.
Indigenous youth are already leading climate advocacy and community resilience work because of their connection to the lands and waters, their relationships with their communities and cultures, and their sense of responsibility for future generations. As the YCC pilot is developed, the program must recognize and support the existing work of Indigenous youth, nations, and organizations. This requires moving beyond one-size-fits-all approaches to create meaningful, culturally relevant opportunities that reflect the distinct priorities, knowledge and leadership of Indigenous communities.
Indigenous youth are motivated to join the green workforce, but they continue to face systemic barriers to participation. With youth guidance, a YCC can provide the resources and opportunities to overcome these challenges.
- For organizations like Sacred Earth, a YCC could provide critical funding to scale up Indigenous-led climate solutions. Capacity building and informed decision-making are major determinants of project success in Indigenous communities, and access to a YCC would strengthen communities’ financial capacity to lead and implement their own projects.
- A YCC must support partnering organizations that are architecting this work themselves, such as Indigenous Clean Energy. Since 2016, Indigenous Clean Energy has supported approximately 500 Indigenous youth across the country in building green skills, accessing mentorship opportunities, and finding meaningful employment through programs like ImaGENation, Generation Power, and the 20/20 Catalyst Program. A YCC must not only consider new opportunities for our communities, but also how to sustain existing programs amid growing uncertainty in the federal funding landscape.
- By prioritizing Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty through a YCC, this program gives communities the potential to define a “green job” for themselves and create culturally responsive climate solutions. For Indigenous communities and organizations like kâniyâsihk Culture Camps, having a green job encompasses land-based work, language and culture revitalization, and Indigenous food or energy sovereignty. A YCC program must allow communities to contextualize green jobs for themselves and allocate resources to grassroots, land-based, and community-led work.
As the YCC moves through the design phase, these priorities must be reflected in the program’s governance, funding and implementation. The following recommendations outline key considerations for ensuring the YCC upholds Indigenous self-determination and existing Indigenous-led climate solutions.
The Way Forward: Green Jobs in a Good Way
- Respecting Indigenous Knowledge and Experience
A YCC must centre diverse Indigenous knowledge(s) from First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities across Turtle Island. Understanding these distinct lived experiences will support a YCC in applying a community-relevant framework for advancing a just transition.
It is imperative that a YCC learn from and support — not supplant — Indigenous-led projects that are revolutionizing the climate, environment, and renewable energy sector. Indigenous communities are already leading the way and have the experience to provide direction.- Upholding Indigenous Governance and Sovereignty
The Canadian government must uphold Indigenous sovereignty during program design and implementation – going beyond consultation towards a Nation-to-Nation approach. This includes obtaining free, prior and informed consent before proceeding with any project on Indigenous territories.
The guidance of an Indigenous council or advisory body can ensure that the program respects and aligns with diverse Indigenous worldviews, legal structures, and governance models. By working in true partnership, a YCC can honour and include First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities through equitable governance and decision-making processes.
While implementing the YCC program, Indigenous Nations and governments must have the ability to define green workforce priorities themselves. In practice, Indigenous communities accessing the YCC program should be able to define and decide which training and workforce opportunities are foregrounded.
- Equity and Justice
A just transition is only “just” if it is led and informed by the communities who will be most affected by the climate crisis — particularly underrepresented demographics, including but not limited to Indigenous, Black, racialized, and disabled persons, members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, newcomers, youth, and Elders. Prioritizing equitable and accessible opportunities through a YCC will be an ongoing process requiring consultation, partnership, and meaningful accommodations with and for communities.
As one of the key demographics of this program, Indigenous youth must be meaningfully woven throughout the development and implementation of a YCC. A YCC cannot leave behind any youth – it should seek to provide culturally responsive support, while reducing barriers to participation. This includes investment in those transitioning away from extractive industries and who require reskilling for a green career pathway.
- Indigenous Workforce Development
Indigenous employment and cultural networks can be utilized to strengthen and streamline economic and workforce development. A YCC should partner with Indigenous businesses and trade networks to employ Indigenous youth in culturally appropriate, green careers — such as renewable energy, green housing, clean water initiatives, land sovereignty and food security. These initiatives benefit the wider community and are vital for health, well-being, and resilience in the face of impending climate disasters.
- Sustainable Funding Sources
The Canadian government must sufficiently fund the engagement and design of the YCC program to meaningfully represent Indigenous communities accessing this resource.
To provide funding equitably, the YCC should specify that, after administrative costs, a portion of the funds should be allocated to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis youth, nations, organizations, and communities. To respect the sovereignty of Indigenous community partners, nations should have the autonomy to govern the funding and employment processes themselves. This may include the involvement of band councils, traditional forms of governance, Indigenous-led non-profit organizations, or other forms of Indigenous leadership. We recommend adopting funding approaches with the ability to work alongside Indigenous governance systems, rather than restrictive, colonial funding structures.
Citation:
Mendizabal, Serena and Aubrey-Anne Laliberte-Pewapisconias, Bushra Asghar, Farron Rickerby-Nishi, and Doug Hamilton-Evans. “The Youth Climate Corps and the Indigenous Green Jobs Revolution,” Yellowhead Institute. June 09 2026. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2026/the-youth-climate-corps-and-the-indigenous-green-jobs-revolution
The post The Youth Climate Corps and the Indigenous Green Jobs Revolution appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.
SHELL UPS THE ANTE IN OZ DECOMMISSIONING LEGAL WRANGLE: THE NORTHERN ENDEAVOUR CLEAN-UP BILL THAT JUST WON’T DIE
Site wide disclaimer also applies.
Shell, previously known as Forthdeal Limited, subsequently as Royal Dutch Shell plc, and now hiding in plain sight as Shell plc after ditching the disgraced Royal Dutch moniker, has reportedly marched back into the legal arena in Australia, this time demanding more money in the long-running brawl over who should pay for the Northern Endeavour clean-up — the offshore decommissioning saga that has become a cautionary tale for anyone who thought selling ageing oil assets made the liabilities magically disappear.
According to Upstream, Shell has “upped the ante” in a decommissioning legal wrangle centred on the Northern Endeavour floating production, storage and offloading vessel, with the dispute involving former partners Woodside Energy and Paladin Resources. The article, by Amanda Battersby, was published on 8 June 2026 and frames the fight around costs tied to the Northern Endeavour FPSO.
The public record makes the story look even messier. Shell has reportedly launched a fresh claim of more than A$83 million in the Western Australian Supreme Court against Woodside and Paladin. That comes after an earlier claim of about A$86.6 million over levy payments linked to the same clean-up nightmare. Add interest, legal costs and future exposure, and this is no longer just a tidy invoice dispute. This is a fossil-fuel family argument with a taxpayer-funded ghost ship floating in the background.
The Northern Endeavour is not some minor bit of scrap with delusions of grandeur. It was a 274-metre FPSO formerly moored between the Laminaria and Corallina oil fields in the Timor Sea, about 550 kilometres northwest of Darwin. The Australian Government says there are nine oil wells on the seabed associated with the fields. After the former private owner collapsed, the Commonwealth took control of the facility and moved to decommission, disconnect, dispose of the FPSO and remediate the fields.
That is where the real fun begins — if your idea of fun is corporate archaeology performed with court documents and a very expensive shovel.
The basic argument, as reported publicly, is that Shell says it sold its interests in the Laminaria-Corallina assets to Woodside and Paladin back in 2005 under agreements that allegedly shifted environmental, abandonment, reclamation, remediation and restoration liabilities to the buyers. Shell says, in effect: we sold, you assumed, now reimburse us.
Woodside and Paladin, unsurprisingly, have not responded by throwing rose petals at Shell’s feet and reaching for the cheque book. The earlier reporting says both disputed responsibility. Hence the courtroom theatre.
The reason this matters beyond the three corporate names is that Northern Endeavour has become one of Australia’s defining offshore decommissioning fiascos. The Commonwealth created the Offshore Petroleum (Laminaria and Corallina Decommissioning Cost Recovery Levy), known as the OP Levy, to recover the costs of decommissioning and remediation from offshore petroleum production licence holders. The official line is simple: the public should not be left paying for these activities.
Which sounds sensible — until the industry starts arguing about which corporate pocket the bill should land in.
The Northern Endeavour story has all the ingredients of a classic late-life oil asset drama: ageing infrastructure, changing ownership, regulatory reform, collapsing operators, decommissioning complexity and a clean-up bill that appears allergic to staying small. The result is a legal wrangle where Shell, having paid levy assessments, is trying to pass the cost back to former counterparties under old sale agreements.
For the public, the bigger question remains brutally straightforward: how many times can oil companies sell, transfer, restructure and contract around liabilities before somebody is finally made to clean up the mess?
Because decommissioning is not a footnote. It is not an optional extra. It is the back-end cost of extracting hydrocarbons from the sea and leaving heavy industrial hardware behind. The Northern Endeavour case shows what happens when the end-of-life chapter is treated like tomorrow’s problem — until tomorrow arrives with lawyers, regulators and an invoice.
Shell’s position appears to be that the contracts say one thing. Woodside and Paladin appear to disagree. The court will have to decide what those old agreements actually mean, and whether Shell can claw back the money it says should never have been its burden.
But whatever the legal outcome, the optics are spectacularly grim for the industry. The public sees an old oil vessel. The government sees a decommissioning project. The regulator sees a hard lesson. The companies see a liability allocation dispute. And everyone else sees a familiar fossil-fuel magic trick: profits in the good years, legal footnotes in the bad ones.
The Northern Endeavour may be headed for dismantling, but the argument around it is very much still afloat.
SPOOF PR/SPIN SECTION: “A PROUD MOMENT IN RESPONSIBLE INVOICE REDIRECTION”In a bold display of corporate sustainability, Shell today reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring that decommissioning costs are handled by whichever historical contract clause looks most persuasive under courtroom lighting.
A fictional Shell spokesperson, speaking from behind a tasteful wall of compliance language, said:
“Shell has always believed in responsible decommissioning, responsible partnerships and responsible reimbursement. We are proud to play our part in the energy transition by transitioning invoices to the entities we believe are contractually responsible for them.”
The spokesperson added that Shell’s legal action should not be viewed as a dispute, but as “a collaborative multi-party alignment process concerning legacy fiscal responsibility allocation.”
Woodside, in this entirely spoofed PR universe, responded:
“We remain committed to best-practice stakeholder engagement, which is why we are engaging with Shell through the traditional stakeholder engagement mechanism known as litigation.”
Paladin, meanwhile, was imagined standing quietly in the corner, clutching a 2005 agreement and whispering: “Please define ‘all’.”
The Australian taxpayer was unavailable for comment, having stepped outside to scream into the Timor Sea.
SPOOF BOT-REACTION / COMMENT SECTIONDecomBot3000:
“Asset sold. Liability detected. Historical contract clause activated. Commencing blame-allocation protocol.”
OffshoreRiskEnjoyer:
“So the oil came out in the easy years and the invoices came back in the courtroom years. Classic reservoir management.”
LegalEagleButMakeItOily:
“This is why lawyers keep both hard hats and microscopes.”
Taxpayer_404:
“I was told the levy means the public won’t pay. Lovely. Now please explain why I can still smell burning public money.”
FPSO_FanAccount:
“Northern Endeavour has had more plot twists than a streaming drama and somehow worse production values.”
CorporateSpinDetector:
“When three companies argue over who pays to clean up the old oil kit, the only guaranteed winner is the legal profession.”
TimorSeaTea:
“Imagine being 274 metres long, decommissioned, removed, and still causing boardrooms to sweat.”
ContractClauseGoblin:
“Somewhere in a 2005 sale agreement, one sentence is having the best week of its life.”
GreenwashGPT:
“Decommissioning is just circular economy, but with more subpoenas.”
Final bot verdict:
Northern Endeavour: physically leaving the field. Legally? Still moored.
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Union Jack takes £1m loan from Egdon
The company with the biggest stake in the Wressle oil field has agreed a £1m loan from the site operator, Egdon Resources.
Wressle oil field in North Lincolnshire. Photo: Egdon ResourcesUnion Jack Oil announced in a statement to investors this morning the loan would provide it with “additional working capital for general purposes”.
The statement said the loan was secured against Union Jack’s 40% stake in the Wressle licences, PEDL180 and PEDL182, in North Lincolnshire.
Union Jack has previously reported that it was debt free. At the time of writing, shares in the company had fallen 2.78%.
The Wressle well produced an average of 119 barrels of oil per day for Union Jack during 2025, according to annual accounts published last month. The average oil price at the time was US$68.2 per barrel.
Loan termsUnder the loan terms, Union Jack must pay 60% of its free cash flow generated from Wressle each month. This will first be applied to unpaid interest and then to reduce the loan principal.
If free cash flow from Wressle was insufficient, interest for that month would be capitalised and added to the loan balance.
The loan must be repaid in full after 24 months. The interest rate is 5% per year.
RestrictionsThe agreement also requires Union Jack to support Egdon’s role as the Wressle operator. Union Jack cannot “vote or act to remove or replace the lender as operator (except in cases of gross misconduct”.
If Union Jack wants to sell its interest in the Wressle licences, Egdon now has the right of first refusal before any third parties are approached. This will last for 12 months after the repayment date.
Cuadrilla fracking site – council enforces restoration
The controversial shale gas site at Preston New Road in Lancashire must be returned to farmland by the end of the year, officials confirmed today (8 June 2026).
Preston New Road shale gas site. Photo: Maple Independent MediaLancashire County Council said in a statement it had served an enforcement notice on Cuadrilla for the site near Blackpool.
The notice requires the removal all plant, buildings, security and acoustic fencing, pollution control membranes, aggregates and concrete hardstanding forming part of the drilling compound within four months.
The land must then be restored to a condition suitable for agriculture within six months of the notice.
The action follows the council’s refusal in December 2025 of Cuadrilla’s application for two more years to complete restoration work.
The statement said:
“the approved timetable for restoration was not met, resulting in unacceptable and unnecessary harm to the rural character of the area.”
Councillor Joshua Roberts, cabinet member for Rural Affairs, Environment and Communities, said:
“This situation has gone on for far too long.
“Local residents have had to live with this site for longer than they should have, and it is right that we have now taken firm action to bring this to a conclusion.
“It is positive that work is beginning to remove infrastructure from the site, but it is essential that the full restoration is completed within the required timeframe.
“We will not hesitate to take further steps if necessary.”
DrillOrDrop invited Cuadrilla to comment on the enforcement action. This article will be updated with any response.
Local reactionThe Preston New Road shale gas site has been widely opposed in the Fylde region of Lancashire and across the UK for more than a decade.
There were more than 18,000 formal objections to the proposal and petitions against it were signed by nearly 92,000 people.
During drilling and fracking, there were daily protests outside the site.
Susan Holliday, from Preston New Road Action Group, said today:
“There appears to have been very little activity at the site over the last twelve months so it is great that enforcement action is finally being taken.
“The time extension that Cuadrilla applied for, over 12 months ago and were refused, has been taken anyway due to procrastination.
“As a local community we just want the blot on our landscape gone and as soon as possible. It will be great if the site is restored to a green field by the end of this year at which point we will have had its presence for 10 years.”
Miranda Cox, from Frack Free Lancashire, said:
“Finally, some meaningful action from Lancashire County Council. We hope it also entails significant consequences for Cuadrilla.
“For too long, their planning breaches and tardiness in compliance have been indulged.
“We look forward to finally waving them goodbye. The damaging saga of Preston New Road may finally have an ending for our community.”
Delays and missed deadlinesCuadrilla was required to restore Preston New Road by July 2023 under the terms of the original planning permission. It missed the deadline.
The company was granted a two-year extension until June 2025 but missed that deadline as well.
Work to plug and abandon the wells finally began in February 2025. Plant and equipment had been removed by November 2025.
But the hardcore that made up the drilling pad, the security and acoustic fencing and access road remained.
In July 2025, the company sought another two years, applying to delay restoration until 30 June 2027.
Cuadrilla said the extension was needed to complete 12 months of groundwater monitoring and environmental monitoring. This had to be completed before site restoration could begin, the company said.
But Lancashire County Council refused permission saying the extension would breach national and local planning policies, which sought to restore the site at the earliest opportunity.
Apart from site decommissioning, the Preston New Road has been mothballed since August 2019 when fracking caused multiple small earthquakes. These included the largest induced by fracking in the UK.
Updated: Lancashire County Council confirmed this morning that the enforcement notice had been served on Cuadrilla.
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