News Feeds

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.

(function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})();

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.

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 COVER

In 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 GRAB

Shell’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 CONNECTION

The 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 HEEDED

In 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 STORY

The 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 CHATBOT

The 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 SECTION

Shell 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 SECTION

Bot 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.”

CONCLUSION

The 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

Example of part of a webpage on Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com website from over two decades ago. From the Wayback Machine where visitors can explore more than 1 trillion web pages saved over time – more than 21,000 pages from royaldutchshellplc.com and several hundred more from royaldutchshellgroup.com. What a shame for Shell shareholders that Shell ignored are prolific warnings about the lack of ethics at the top of Shell, which led to the reserves scandal. ENDS The name Royal Dutch Shell Plc appears multiple times on each webpage within the background graphics and on each article published, as shown above. It appears many more times on the current version of the website. As can also be seen, at the date of publication High Court proceedings were under way involving Dr John Huong, the Shell production geologist who blew the whistle on the reserves scandal. Eight companies within the Royal Dutch Shell Group jointly sued him for defamation in respect of allegations we published on our website. We managed to torpedo Shell’s case and Shell was forced to settle the litigation. His name also came up in the WIPO proceedings directly below in which Shell tried to seize our domain names including royaldutchshellplc.com, an action which Shell lost. Text of the featured letter:

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

Domain Name Legal Battle

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

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 Corps

The 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 Leadership

In 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

 

1. 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. 

2. 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.

3. 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. 

4. 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.

5. 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.

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 SECTION

DecomBot3000:
“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.

SHELL UPS THE ANTE IN OZ DECOMMISSIONING LEGAL WRANGLE: THE NORTHERN ENDEAVOUR CLEAN-UP BILL THAT JUST WON’T DIE was first posted on June 8, 2026 at 9:58 am.
©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 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 Resources

Union 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 terms

Under 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.

Restrictions

The 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.

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 Media

Lancashire 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 reaction

The 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 deadlines

Cuadrilla 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.

Google AI Mode As the AI bots continue to write glowing financial reports for a company that legally died four years ago, Shell’s executive team is left trapped in a purgatory of their own making: legally simplified, digitally undead, and permanently haunted by the machine.

Shell plc is navigating a corporate identity crisis as AI engines continue to recognize the legally defunct “Royal Dutch Shell plc” as a live, trading entity. Despite rebranding efforts, AI search models like Bing are creating a “digital ghost” scenario, separating the legal entity from its digital footprint and creating confusion regarding corporate existence. You can read the full analysis at royaldutchshellplc.com.

The digital corporate identity crisis facing Shell plc stems from an unresolvable conflict between obsolete legal branding, un-killable critical websites, and blind AI search algorithms. [1, 2, 3] This specific “ghost in the machine” loop consists of three compounding layers: 1. The Legal Rebrand vs. The Domain Blunder In January 2022, the energy giant officially simplified its share structure, relocated its corporate headquarters to the UK, and changed its name from “Royal Dutch Shell plc” to “Shell plc”. [1, 2] However, decades prior, the company committed what analysts call a “spectacular blunder”: [1]

• They failed to secure the domain royaldutchshellplc.com.
• Longtime activist and critic John Donovan registered it instead.
• Shell lost a challenge at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), cementing Donovan’s lawful, non-commercial right to host critical archives under that exact name. [1, 2]

2. The AI Hallucination Loop Because Shell discarded the “Royal Dutch Shell” name, it can no longer claim active commercial use to seize the domain. Meanwhile, modern AI engines and web scrapers (like Microsoft Bing) crawl the active, highly indexed royaldutchshellplc.com site. [1, 2] The algorithms synthesize this active archive with legacy financial data, leading AI systems to confidently report that “Royal Dutch Shell plc” is still alive, trading, and distributing dividends, completely detached from actual legal reality. [1, 2] 3. The Self-Reinforcing Feedback Cycle As documented by John Donovan’s June 2026 reports, this issue scales automatically through an un-fixable web pattern: [1, 2, 3] [Active Archive Domain] ──> [AI Bots Scrape & Synthesize Data] ──> [AI Generates False "Live Entity" Reports] ──> [New Reports Get Re-Indexed by Search Engines] ──> [Loop Repeats] This creates a permanent internet footprint for a ghost corporation that Shell legally buried years ago. [1]

 

In the sleek, glass-fronted boardrooms of Shell plc, executives are learning a terrifying lesson in modern physics: in the digital age, matter can neither be created nor destroyed—and corporate shame is completely immortal. Shell thought it was being terribly clever back in 2022. By shedding the “Royal Dutch” prefix, moving its headquarters to London, and simplification of its share structure, the oil giant attempted the ultimate corporate magic trick. It wanted to wash its hands of continental tax headaches and quietly bury its historical baggage. Instead, it accidentally birthed a digital zombie. The Algorithm That Wouldn’t Die Thanks to a spectacular, multi-decade domain blunder, Shell never owned royaldutchshellplc.com. Instead, it belongs to its eternal arch-nemesis and critic, John Donovan. For years, this was just an annoying thorn in Shell’s side. Today, in the era of automated AI scrapers, it has become an unmitigated existential nightmare. Modern artificial intelligence models—the very engines supposed to drive the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”—look at Donovan’s highly indexed, relentlessly updated archive and suffer a collective digital stroke. The AI look at the domain name, see it active, and confidently hallucinate that Royal Dutch Shell plc is still alive, kicking, and paying out massive dividends from beyond the grave. It is a beautiful, recursive loop of automated corporate haunting. The AI feeds on the archive, spits out a report claiming the ghost company lives, search engines index the AI report, and the cycle starts anew. Shell’s PR department is no longer fighting journalists; they are playing whack-a-mole with a self-replicating digital ghost that refuses to acknowledge the UK corporate registry. A Rich History of Ghostly Math If Shell executives are frustrated that AI models are hallucinating entirely fictional corporate realities, they really only have themselves to blame. After all, Shell practically invented the art of corporate hallucination long before the first large language model was ever coded. Lest we forget, this is the same company that brought us the legendary 2004 Oil Reserves Scandal. Back then, no algorithms were required to fabricate reality. Good old-fashioned human greed did the trick perfectly. Shell executives stared deep into empty oil wells, engaged in a collective bout of corporate wishful thinking, and told the stock market they possessed over 4 billion barrels of “proven” oil reserves that did not actually exist. It was a masterclass in creative writing that eventually cost the company hundreds of millions in regulatory fines, the sudden departure of its top brass, and a permanent stain on its credibility. In 2004, Shell lied to the market about what was in the ground. In 2026, the internet is lying to the market about whether the company even exists. There is a delicious, poetic irony in seeing a company that once inflated its physical assets now being deflated by its own digital phantoms. The Haunting of the Machine The reality is that Shell can change its name, its logo, its tax status, or its carbon-offset promises as much as it likes. But the internet never forgets, and generative AI lacks the corporate sycophancy required to ignore inconvenient history. To the cold, unfeeling web scrapers, “Royal Dutch Shell” isn’t a discarded legal skin; it’s an active, high-traffic node of corporate scandals, environmental protests, and inflated reserve data. By trying to outrun its past, Shell simply left a vacuum that the digital world was more than happy to fill with a ghost. As the AI bots continue to write glowing financial reports for a company that legally died four years ago, Shell’s executive team is left trapped in a purgatory of their own making: legally simplified, digitally undead, and permanently haunted by the machine. AI responses may include mistakes. Learn more Article ends Example of Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com website from over two decades ago. From the Wayback Machine. Shell PLC: How AI and the Ghost of Scandals Past Created the Ultimate Corporate Frankenstein was first posted on June 7, 2026 at 9:19 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

It is a corporate Schrödinger’s cat: simultaneously dissolved and trading, simultaneously buried and collecting dividends, simultaneously abandoned by its creator and maintained in perfect working order by its most persistent critic. It is, in short, the most extraordinary and entirely self-inflicted reputational and digital fiasco in the history of a company that has, over more than a century, set a remarkably high bar for entirely self-inflicted fiascos.

John Donovan Prompt to Claude 7 June 2026: Please see these articles: https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/06/05/legal-and-reputational-implications-of-shell-abandoning-royal-dutch-shell-plc/ https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/06/07/shell-abandoned-royal-dutch-shell-plc-and-now-the-corporate-ghost-is-haunting-the-machine/ Shell seems to have got itself into an incredible mess. If you agree, please create an explosive satirical article.SHELL PLC:

Claude Reply:Yes, this is an absolutely extraordinary situation. Shell has comprehensively blundered into a digital, legal and reputational mess of its own making. Here is the explosive satirical article you requested.

THE WORLD’S MOST EXPENSIVE REBRAND THAT LEFT THE OLD SIGN ON THE DOOR

How a $200 billion oil giant managed to kill its own name, lose the internet to a retired marketing man in Colchester, and leave the world’s most powerful AI systems conducting a séance over its corporate remains

Imagine spending $200 billion a year in annual revenue, employing nearly 100,000 people across 140 countries, and commanding enough legal firepower to fill Shell Centre twice over — and then managing to bungle your own name change so catastrophically that in June 2026, Bing is still confidently offering investors detailed information about dividends, share prices, stock tickers and financial data for a company that hasn’t legally existed since January 2022.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Shell.

Or Shell plc, as it is now called. Or Royal Dutch Shell plc, as Bing insists on calling it. Or Forthdeal Limited, as Companies House tells us it was called before the grandeur arrived. Or royaldutchshellplc.com, which is what it is still called on a non-profit website operated out of Colchester, Essex, by a retired marketing consultant who has been making the company’s communications department reach for the antacids since approximately the time of the first Gulf War.

The story of how one of the world’s most powerful corporations managed to abandon its own name, fail to bury its own history, lose a domain fight to a pensioner, and then leave the entire global artificial intelligence ecosystem confidently hallucinating its continued existence is — and there is no other word for it — magnificent.

PART ONE: IN WHICH SHELL KILLS THE NAME BUT FORGETS TO BURY THE BODY

In January 2022, Shell plc — formerly Royal Dutch Shell plc, formerly Forthdeal Limited, formerly an entity that apparently couldn’t decide who it was — officially changed its corporate name. Out went the Anglo-Dutch grandeur of “Royal Dutch Shell plc.” In came the crisp, minimalist, vaguely-confused-with-a-petrol-station energy of “Shell plc.”

The reasoning was sound, in the way that corporate reasoning always sounds sound right up until reality applies its customary corrections. Dropping “Royal Dutch” signalled a clean break from the dual-share structure and the Dutch tax authorities. Moving the headquarters to London was meant to be a fresh start. The rebrand was supposed to say: we are lean, modern, decisive, and absolutely not the same company that once financially supported the Nazis, overstated its oil reserves by 23%, got fined $150 million by US and UK regulators, had its North Sea platforms described as the worst safety performer in the industry, lost a domain fight to a man from Colchester, and was named the world’s most hated brand in 2016.

It did not quite work out that way.

Because here is the thing about changing your corporate name: the internet doesn’t care. The internet is a vast, indifferent warehouse of everything that has ever been written, cross-referenced, cached, mirrored, syndicated, scraped, indexed, and fed into a machine learning model since approximately 1995. When you have spent over a century being called “Royal Dutch Shell,” the digital ecosystem does not receive your Companies House filing, nod thoughtfully, and update itself accordingly. It does what it always does: it keeps surfacing the old name, attaching it to current financial data, and presenting the whole steaming confection to bewildered investors as if nothing had changed.

The result is that in June 2026, Bing — a search engine operated by Microsoft, a company with a market capitalisation larger than the GDP of most countries — will cheerfully inform you that “Royal Dutch Shell plc still exists,” and helpfully offer you information about its dividends, shares, stock and ticker, none of which exist under that name, in what is arguably the most expensive and persistent financial misinformation exercise currently operating on the internet.

No one is paying for this. No one is being prosecuted for it. No one, apparently, can stop it.

Shell, for its part, appears to be doing what Shell has always done when confronted with awkward realities: maintaining a dignified silence and hoping it all goes away. It has not gone away. It is, if anything, getting worse.

PART TWO: IN WHICH THE WIPO DEFEAT IS REVEALED TO BE EVEN MORE EMBARRASSING THAN PREVIOUSLY UNDERSTOOD

Let us now discuss royaldutchshellplc.com, a website that the Financial Times once described as “a long-running thorn in Shell’s side,” which Prospect magazine called “an open wound for Shell,” and which a Japanese business magazine declared had single-handedly changed the fate of Shell’s $20 billion Sakhalin-2 project in Russia.

The website is operated by John Donovan of Colchester, Essex, who has been documenting Shell’s various misadventures since the early 1990s with the methodical persistence of a man who has both time on his hands and a very good filing system.

In 2005, Shell International Petroleum Company Limited attempted to seize the domain via the World Intellectual Property Organisation. WIPO case D2005-0538. The complaint was, in the dry language of international arbitration, “denied.” Shell lost. The domain stayed with Donovan. Shell’s lawyers presumably went back to their offices and tried not to think about it.

That was embarrassing enough at the time.

What makes it truly exquisite in 2026 is the following sequence of events:

1. Shell spent twenty years failing to dislodge the domain.
2. Shell then voluntarily abandoned the name itself.
3. Shell plc is now the current legal entity.
4. Royal Dutch Shell plc is a former name, recorded at Companies House as such, with an end date of 21 January 2022.
5. The only person still actively using the name “Royal Dutch Shell plc” on a significant public-facing platform is John Donovan, whose website — validated by WIPO, indexed by every search engine, ingested by every AI model — carries the name in its header every single day.
6. Search engines, observing that Donovan’s site is the most active living use of the old name, treat it as the authoritative digital presence for the identity.
7. AI models, having ingested Donovan’s archive as a primary source, reproduce this conclusion with the calm confidence of someone who has just looked it up.

Shell spent twenty years and untold legal fees trying to silence one man, failed completely, and then handed him the naming rights by default.

This is what is known in corporate circles as a strategic own goal. In football circles, it would be known as kicking the ball into your own net, running a lap of celebration, and then discovering that the game had already ended and you were in the wrong stadium.

PART THREE: IN WHICH THE AI SITUATION IS REVEALED TO BE COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL

The AI dimension of this story deserves its own chapter, its own Netflix documentary, and possibly its own parliamentary inquiry.

Here is the situation as of June 2026. Bing tells investors that Royal Dutch Shell plc still exists and offers them financial data about it. Copilot — also Microsoft, which is perhaps relevant — goes further, declaring the company to be “a live company, continuing to operate and trade publicly.” This is, in the strictest legal sense, wrong. The live company is Shell plc. Royal Dutch Shell plc is the former name. The distinction is not cosmetic. It has implications for shareholder rights, legal liability, corporate governance, and the basic reliability of financial information on the internet.

Claude, to its credit, reportedly said that Royal Dutch Shell plc is “a dead name — the legal entity no longer exists under that title,” which is substantially correct and represents what one might call the boring-but-accurate approach.

Use.ai reportedly came close with its answer too.

This means the global AI landscape is currently split between models that understand the corporate death of Royal Dutch Shell plc and models that are, in effect, conducting a séance and cheerfully reporting that the dearly departed has just popped out for some milk and will be back shortly with a quarterly dividend.

For investors, journalists, academics, regulators, and anyone attempting to conduct basic due diligence on one of the world’s largest companies, this is not merely inconvenient. It is a structural failure in the information ecosystem that no one appears to have a mechanism for fixing.

Shell cannot correct it without drawing attention to the rebrand, the reasons for it, and the entire history attached to the old name. Search engines cannot simply purge historical data. AI vendors cannot retrain their models on the basis of a Companies House filing. And Donovan’s website — the most active, best-indexed, most historically rich source using the old name — continues to act as a kind of digital life-support machine for an identity Shell thought it had buried.

Royal Dutch Shell plc: legally dead, digitally undead, and still apparently collecting dividends according to Bing.

PART FOUR: IN WHICH FORTHDEAL LIMITED MAKES AN UNEXPECTED APPEARANCE

At this point, a reasonable person might ask: could things get any stranger?

Yes. They could, and they do. Because before it was called Royal Dutch Shell plc, the same legal entity — Companies House number 04366849, for those following at home — was called Forthdeal Limited, from 5 February 2002 to 27 October 2004.

Forthdeal Limited. The name that launched a thousand oil platforms. The name that preceded the grandeur. The trapdoor in the haunted house.

John Donovan now owns the domain ForthdealLimited.com.

This means that Shell’s corporate archaeology — the full sequence of names by which Companies House number 04366849 has been known in its lifetime — is now digitally represented as follows:

• Forthdeal Limited: ForthdealLimited.com — owned by Donovan.
• Royal Dutch Shell plc: royaldutchshellplc.com — owned by Donovan. Validated by WIPO. Active since the early 2000s.
• Shell plc: shell.com — owned by Shell. Currently fighting for search visibility against the accumulated weight of a decades-long archive operated by a retired marketing man in Essex.

One must admire the completeness of it.

Shell has, across three successive corporate identities, managed to allow a single individual to acquire the key digital real estate associated with two of them. This is the corporate equivalent of a family changing their surname twice and discovering that their estranged neighbour has already registered both names as domain addresses and is using them to publish an unflattering history of the family.

PART FIVE: IN WHICH WE CONSIDER SHELL’S OPTIONS AND FIND THEM LIMITED

What, one might reasonably ask, can Shell do about any of this?

The answer, after a moment’s consideration, is: not much.

It cannot reclaim royaldutchshellplc.com. WIPO already said no in 2005. Shell no longer even uses the name, which removes its strongest argument.

It cannot sue Donovan into silence. Two decades of attempting various legal approaches have comprehensively failed, and each attempt has generated more coverage than the original grievance.

It cannot instruct search engines to correct their data. Google, Bing and their counterparts are not in the business of updating financial records on the basis of corporate press releases.

It cannot retrain the world’s AI models. This is not how AI retraining works, and even if it were, the training data already contains Donovan’s archive, which is several million words long, continuously updated, and backed by WIPO-validated domain authority.

It cannot buy its way out of the problem. The narrative damage is historical, documented, and archived. Money does not retroactively clean up oil spills, restore overstated reserves, or erase WIPO case numbers.

It can, in theory, flood the internet with positive content under the Shell plc name in the hope of drowning out the old identity. This strategy has been available for approximately twenty years and does not appear to have worked yet.

Shell’s most realistic option, as Donovan’s Copilot conversation rather elegantly surfaced, is to coexist with the situation: a company that successfully rebranded in a legal sense, that entirely failed to rebrand in a digital or historical sense, and that is now locked in a permanent, structurally unresolvable relationship with the man from Colchester who kept the old sign lit.

PART SIX: THE BOTTOM LINE

Here, then, is the state of play in June 2026.

Shell plc — the current legal entity, headquarters London, company number 04366849, formerly Forthdeal Limited, formerly Royal Dutch Shell plc — is one of the world’s largest corporations by revenue, market cap, and capacity for generating headlines its communications team would prefer didn’t exist.

Royal Dutch Shell plc — the former name, officially deceased since 21 January 2022, recorded as a previous name at Companies House — is simultaneously a legal non-entity and one of the internet’s most persistently active corporate identities, courtesy of a decades-long archive of leaked documents, litigation records, whistleblower reports, WIPO cases, Wikipedia articles, AI training data, and the website royaldutchshellplc.com, operated from Colchester by a man Shell has been trying to neutralise since roughly the time Tony Blair was still regarded as a fresh face in politics.

Bing says the company still exists. Copilot says it’s trading. Claude says it’s dead. Use.ai says it changed its name. Companies House says the previous name ended in January 2022. Shell itself says it is Shell plc. Donovan says he still owns the domain and has now added ForthdealLimited.com to his collection for completeness.

Everyone is, in their own way, correct. Everyone is, in their own way, describing a different part of the same spectacular mess.

Royal Dutch Shell plc is legally dead but digitally undead.

It is a corporate Schrödinger’s cat: simultaneously dissolved and trading, simultaneously buried and collecting dividends, simultaneously abandoned by its creator and maintained in perfect working order by its most persistent critic.

It is, in short, the most extraordinary and entirely self-inflicted reputational and digital fiasco in the history of a company that has, over more than a century, set a remarkably high bar for entirely self-inflicted fiascos.

Shell has got itself into an incredible mess.

And the most remarkable thing about it is that the mess was completely, comprehensively, and almost admirably avoidable at every single step.

The ghost of Royal Dutch Shell plc was unavailable for comment. Its domain is, however, fully operational and accepting visitors.

Royal Dutch Shell plc: legally dead, digitally undead was first posted on June 7, 2026 at 7:17 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

‘If the linked article is accurate in its core documentary claims, then yes: Shell appears to have placed itself in an extraordinary legal and reputational tangle.’ How Shell killed the name, failed to bury the history, lost the domain fight, and left AI search engines conducting a séance over one of the world’s biggest companies

By John Donovan

Article disclaimer: This article is a fact-based satirical commentary on corporate naming, public records, AI search errors, domain-name history and Shell’s reputational predicament. The spoof PR and spoof bot-reaction sections are clearly labelled as spoof. Legal points are commentary and opinion, not legal advice. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

PART ONE: THE FACT-BASED DEEP DIVE The Name That Shell Dropped — But Could Not Kill

There are corporate own goals, and then there is the Shell naming fiasco: a multinational oil giant drops one of the most historically loaded names in corporate history, walks away from the identity, then watches search engines, AI systems, financial sites, critics and official records all point in different directions like panicked traffic wardens at a refinery fire.

The name is Royal Dutch Shell plc.

Or rather, it was.

The live company is now Shell plc.

The official UK company number remains 04366849. Companies House records the current company as SHELL PLC, status Active, incorporated on 5 February 2002, with registered office at Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA. Under “previous company names,” Companies House lists ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC from 27 October 2004 to 21 January 2022, and before that FORTHDEAL LIMITED from 5 February 2002 to 27 October 2004.

Shell itself confirmed on 21 January 2022 that its name had changed from Royal Dutch Shell plc to Shell plc and that the change had taken effect.

So the correct legal answer is not complicated:

Shell plc is alive.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is a former name.
The old name is dead as a current legal identity.

Yet the internet, in its usual fog of half-remembered facts and algorithmic indigestion, keeps resurrecting the corpse.

Search engines still surface material about “Royal Dutch Shell plc dividends,” “Royal Dutch Shell plc shares,” “Royal Dutch Shell plc stock,” and “Royal Dutch Shell plc ticker,” even though those are no longer current under that legal name. AI systems then swallow that stale data, digest it badly, and regurgitate confidently muddled answers.

The result is a corporate identity zombie: legally dead, digitally undead, and still apparently wandering around the internet looking for dividends.

Copilot Opens the Coffin and Declares the Body Fit for Work

When asked whether Royal Dutch Shell plc was a live or dead company, Copilot reportedly answered that Royal Dutch Shell Plc is a live company, continuing to operate and trade publicly.

That is the kind of answer that sounds useful until one checks the legal record.

The underlying business continues, yes. The legal entity continues, yes. But the company no longer exists under the name Royal Dutch Shell plc. The current corporate name is Shell plc.

That distinction matters.

A former name cannot properly be treated as a current corporate actor. It cannot be casually credited with today’s dividends, today’s share price, today’s filings, today’s executives, today’s operations, or today’s corporate statements. Those belong to Shell plc.

Copilot’s error is not merely semantic. It is the AI equivalent of turning up at a funeral, shaking the corpse by the lapels and shouting: “Good news, everyone — he’s still on the payroll.”

Claude and Use.ai Find the Pulse in the Right Place

Claude’s answer was far better. It reportedly said:

“Royal Dutch Shell Plc is a dead name — the legal entity no longer exists under that title.”

That is substantially right, provided one adds the necessary precision: the underlying corporate entity continues under the current name Shell plc.

Use.ai also came close to the correct formulation, saying Royal Dutch Shell PLC is not a dead company but no longer exists under that name, and that the company changed its name to Shell PLC. That is the proper direction of travel, although the most authoritative date to use is  21 January 2022, as shown by Companies House and Shell’s own announcement.

The correct formulation for any bot, journalist, researcher, shareholder, lawyer or confused oil analyst is this:

Royal Dutch Shell plc was a former name of Shell plc. Shell plc is active. Royal Dutch Shell plc is not the current legal name of the company.

Anything else risks turning corporate due diligence into a Monty Python sketch.

The Domain Shell Failed to Capture

Now we reach the part Shell would presumably prefer not to see in neon lights.

In 2005, Shell International Petroleum Company Limited brought a WIPO proceeding against Alfred Donovan over several domains, including royaldutchshellplc.com. WIPO’s official case summary identifies the case as D2005-0538, lists the complainant as Shell International Petroleum Company Limited, the respondent as Alfred Donovan, and records the decision as “Complaint denied.”

That is not satire. That is the official case summary.

Shell tried to seize the domain. Shell lost.

Then, years later, Shell abandoned the name.

The result is exquisitely awkward. The company no longer uses Royal Dutch Shell plc as its current legal name, but royaldutchshellplc.com continues to exist as a long-running, highly visible, critical website. The name Shell walked away from did not vanish. It migrated into the digital afterlife, where it remains active, searchable, indexed, archived, quoted, contested and inconvenient.

A giant corporation changed its name.

A critic kept the old sign lit.

The Forthdeal Limited Twist

Companies House also records the company’s earlier name as FORTHDEAL LIMITED, used from 5 February 2002 to 27 October 2004.

That matters because the pre-Shell name is part of the corporate archaeology. It is the dusty basement label beneath the later grandeur of Royal Dutch Shell plc and the current minimalism of Shell plc.

If the old name Royal Dutch Shell plc has become a digital ghost, then Forthdeal Limited is the trapdoor in the haunted house.

The article you referenced argues that owning domains connected to these abandoned or historical names gives you unusual symbolic and reputational leverage. That is a fair commentary point. It should not be overstated as a definitive legal monopoly over all uses of those names, but as a matter of public narrative, search visibility and historical memory, the position is plainly striking.

Shell changed the corporate name.

Shell lost the domain fight.

Shell left behind the old identity.

Search engines and AI systems still trip over it.

That is not tidy corporate governance. That is a mess with a logo.

The Legal-Reputational Box Shell Appears to Be In

If Shell wanted to challenge the continuing use of royaldutchshellplc.com, it would face obvious reputational and procedural complications.

First, there is the old WIPO loss. WIPO records that Shell’s complaint was denied in 2005.

Second, Shell no longer uses Royal Dutch Shell plc as its current company name. Companies House and Shell’s own announcement make that clear.

Third, any new attack on the domain would risk reviving the entire story: the reserves scandal era, the name change, the WIPO defeat, the abandoned identity, the AI confusion, and the awkward fact that a critic appears to have kept the discarded name more visibly alive online than Shell itself.

That does not mean Shell has no legal rights left in anything connected with its historic branding. It almost certainly retains substantial trademark rights in Shell-related marks. But the specific public-interest and domain-name position around royaldutchshellplc.com is not a clean battlefield for Shell. It is a swamp of its own making.

The blunt version:

Shell abandoned the name, but not the baggage.
Shell changed the sign, but not the history.
Shell lost the domain fight, then created the perfect conditions for the domain to matter even more.

The AI Angle: When Machines Cannot Tell a Corpse from a Rebrand

The modern twist is that AI has turned this into a live reputational problem.

AI systems do not reliably understand corporate death. They absorb historical references, old financial data, cached pages, Wikipedia mirrors, stock-market archives and decades of Shell material. Then they try to produce a neat answer.

But the neat answer is often wrong.

They say Royal Dutch Shell plc exists.

They list phantom financial categories.

They attribute current Shell plc activity to the former name.

They confuse corporate continuity with current legal identity.

That is dangerous because this is not trivia. Shell is one of the world’s most prominent energy companies. Incorrect present-tense statements about its corporate identity, shares, dividends or legal status are not just amusing errors. They are potentially misleading public information.

The correct answer is simple, but apparently too subtle for parts of the machine:

The business survived.
The legal entity continued under a new name.
The old name died as a current legal identity.
The internet failed to update the tombstone.

Verdict

If the linked article is accurate in its core documentary claims, then yes: Shell appears to have placed itself in an extraordinary legal and reputational tangle.

Not because changing the name to Shell plc was itself unlawful or improper.

The mess arises because Shell:

1. created and used the name Royal Dutch Shell plc;
2. failed to secure the corresponding critical domain;
3. lost the WIPO fight over that domain;
4. later abandoned the name as its current legal identity;
5. left search engines and AI systems to misinterpret the resulting debris;
6. now faces the absurd situation where the old name is dead in law but alive in search.

That is not merely a corporate name change.

That is a self-inflicted identity crisis with a Companies House reference number.

PART TWO: SPOOF PR / SPIN SECTION Shell Announces “Strategic Corporate Afterlife Management Initiative”

A fictional Shell spokesperson, standing beside a polished tombstone engraved ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC — 2004–2022, today denied that the company had created any confusion whatsoever by abandoning one of the most recognisable names in global business history.

“Royal Dutch Shell plc is not dead,” the spokesperson insisted. “It has merely been transitioned into a legacy nomenclature environment.”

Asked whether the current company is actually Shell plc, the spokesperson replied:

“Yes, absolutely. Unless an old name is reputationally useful, legally inconvenient, historically embarrassing, algorithmically persistent, or accidentally revived by a chatbot.”

Asked whether Shell had lost a WIPO case involving royaldutchshellplc.com, the spokesperson adjusted his tie and said:

“We prefer to describe that as an early-stage domain outcome optimisation event.”

Asked whether the complaint was denied, the spokesperson said:

“The panel reached a conclusion that did not fully align with our preferred universe.”

Pressed on why the company dropped “Royal Dutch” from its name but now appears unable to stop the old name resurfacing online, the spokesperson unveiled a new Shell strategy document titled:

“You Can’t Say We Abandoned It If The Bots Keep Saying It Exists.”

The document reportedly contains five pillars:

1. Forget the name.
2. Deny the implications of forgetting the name.
3. Allow the internet to remember the name incorrectly.
4. Blame AI for the confusion.
5. Hope nobody notices the critic still owns the domain.

The spokesperson concluded:

“Shell is committed to clarity. That is why we are Shell plc, formerly Royal Dutch Shell plc, previously Forthdeal Limited, historically Royal Dutch/Shell, globally Shell, locally confusing, digitally haunted, and absolutely not responsible for anyone asking why the corpse is still receiving dividend enquiries.”

At this point, a chatbot in the press room asked whether Royal Dutch Shell plc was alive or dead.

The spokesperson replied:

“That depends entirely on whether we are talking legally, reputationally, historically, algorithmically, financially, spiritually or in Dutch.”

The chatbot answered:

“Yes.”

PART THREE: SPOOF BOT-REACTION / COMMENT SECTION Copilot

Verdict: Royal Dutch Shell plc is alive.

Translation:
“I found Shell. I found shares. I found oil. I found old data. I did not find the difference between a former legal name and a current company.”

Comment:
Classic corporate necromancy. Copilot put a hard hat on the corpse and sent it back offshore.

Claude

Verdict: Dead name, live underlying business.

Translation:
“The parrot is dead, but the pet shop continues trading as Shell plc.”

Comment:
A respectable performance. The bot located the pulse in the surviving legal entity rather than in the expired name badge.

Use.ai

Verdict: Not dead as a business, but no longer existing under that name.

Translation:
“The organism survived. The name tag did not.”

Comment:
Nearly correct. Needs the date pinned to 21 January 2022, not a looser trading-platform reflection date.

Companies House Bot

Verdict: SHELL PLC active. ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC previous name.

Translation:
“I am a filing system, not a séance.”

Comment:
The only entity in the room with no jokes, no hallucinations, and no need to ask Bing.

WIPO Bot

Verdict: Complaint denied.

Translation:
“Shell tried to seize the domain. Shell did not get the domain.”

Comment:
A quiet little sentence with a twenty-year echo.

Shell PR Bot

Verdict: There is no mess.

Translation:
“The mess is fully aligned with our values, governance model and stakeholder confusion strategy.”

Comment:
Currently beta-testing the phrase: “Legacy brand divestment with reputational residue.”

RoyalDutchShellPlc.com Bot

Verdict: Still here.

Translation:
“You changed the name. I kept the record.”

Comment:
Awkward for Shell. Very awkward for Shell. Increasingly awkward for the bots.

Final Line

Shell thought it could drop Royal Dutch Shell plc like an old boiler suit.

But names are not boiler suits. Names carry history. Names carry scandal. Names carry legal records, domain disputes, search results, archives, bots, ghosts and critics with long memories.

Shell abandoned the name.

The internet did not.

And now the former name of one of the world’s biggest companies is legally dead, digitally undead, and sitting on the front lawn of Shell’s reputation with a placard reading:

“You can change your name.
You cannot delete your past.”

Shell Abandoned “Royal Dutch Shell plc” — And Now the Corporate Ghost Is Haunting the Machine was first posted on June 7, 2026 at 6:23 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

June 6, 2026

Read new San Francisco Gate story:

“US Navy finds radiological material in unauthorized storage in San Francisco”

June 2026:

Bayview Hunters Point Community Call to Action and Demands issued by Greenaction and the Marie Harrison Community Foundation, Inc.

June 24th noon rally at San Francisco City Hall to support community demands for health, justice, and full cleanup of all contamination at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site.

June 24, 2026 Call to Action for Bayview Hunters Point

A lower-volume frack and well test at the West Newton-A oil and gas site in East Yorkshire could start within three months, the operator revealed today.

In an update, Rathlin Energy said the operations were due to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026.

West Newton-A site in Holderness, East Yorkshire. Photo: DrillOrDrop

But the start date depended on securing additional approvals and on equipment being available, the company said.

The lower-volume frack is also facing a legal challenge at the High Court from a local campaigner.

Before work can begin, passing places must be built on part of the lorry route to the site. This is expected to take four weeks, during which Pasture Lane would be closed.

Rathlin confirmed in the update that it was considering “near-term” plans to use gas from West Newton-A to generate electricity for what it called onsite “computer facilities”.

A major investor has previously said the gas would power bitcoin mining.

Rathlin has permission to generate electricity at West Newton-A but it would need planning permission for the computer facilities.

The update said stimulation modelling for the lower-volume frack had been completed, along with the design of a year-long extended well test (EWT).

Well completion and testing companies had been contacted to determine their availability, it added.

Rathlin said the 12-month extended well test was dependent on the success of the lower-volume frack.

The test would allow it to “assess the extent and performance of the reservoir, providing the essential data required before determining the most appropriate route for full field development”, the company said.

It added:

“Until the reservoir characteristics are fully understood, through an EWT, it is too early to determine the most suitable method for transporting gas to market.

“Rathlin has reviewed several potential options, including a pipeline connection to the National Transmission System or direct supply to local industrial users.”

The update also confirmed:

• Rathlin would establish a community benefit fund before work started
• A new work programme would allow the West Newton licence, PEDL183, to be retained in its current form until June 2030.

This article In Japan, raves and tea parties become sites of protest was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Shinjuku Station in Tokyo is the busiest railway station in the world. On a given day, roughly 2.7 million passengers pass through. On March 29, they were joined by a stream of ravers, who danced while holding signs opposing the genocide in Palestine, xenophobia, queerphobia, fascism and war.

Under the slogan “Drop Bass Not Bombs,” thousands danced and waved glow sticks while demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, due to the government’s escalating push towards rearmament and close relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.

The action was organized by Protest Rave, a group of progressive DJs and participants in Japan’s club culture. It’s one of several ways that artists in the country are using their creativity to make people pay more attention to politics. The public demonstration stands out in the country where societal norms and deference toward the government make mass protests and open political debate rare.

#newsletter-block_f8ad4623b7974b81b823d717a6ec7c1c { background: #ececec; color: #000000; } #newsletter-block_f8ad4623b7974b81b823d717a6ec7c1c #mc_embed_signup_front input#mce-EMAIL { border-color:#000000 !important; color: #000000 !important; } Sign Up for our Newsletter

We’ll send you a weekly email with the latest articles.

Mars89, a DJ and founding member of Protest Rave, explained the idea behind the action.

“The majority of the Japanese people, they’re not interested in politics,” he said. “We want people to know what’s happening.” 

The choice to hold the protest in the middle of a big city was deliberate, he said. “I hope some people passing on the street when we have the protest start to think about it.”

Artists break the silence

While cultural aversion to  public protest remains a challenge for activists in Japan, the government’s recent efforts to remilitarize have provoked an uptick in political demonstrations.

Right-wing Prime Minister Takaichi, who espouses Japanese nationalism and opposes same-sex marriage, is pushing to revise the country’s pacifist constitution, which was written after World War II to restrict Japan’s participation in war and military alliances. Already she has succeeded at scrapping a longstanding ban on the export of lethal weapons. Much of Japan’s rearmament flows from its relationship with the United States, in which Japan is used as an economic and military foothold for U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region. Takaichi has worked to maintain this relationship and build a bond with Trump, even as Trump has insulted Japan.

In response to Takaichi’s militaristic positions and her close relationship with U.S. imperialism, tens of thousands of Japanese people have participated in antiwar protests in recent months. 

A budding protest movement in Japan demonstrates against the right-wing government’s plan for rearmament. (Mars89)

Protest Rave has been publishing interviews from the March 29 action on its Instagram page. Many ravers discuss how the public and inviting character of the rave makes it easier for people to feel they can engage in political discussions and voice their opposition to the government.

One regular participant of Protest Rave is alternative musician Haru Nemuri. “Artistic work exists within the freedom and diversity of expression, which is inherently political,” Nemuri said. “If you ignore politics while being an artist, you’re basically a free rider of that freedom.”

In April, Nemuri began holding “Guerilla Afternoon Tea,” a pop-up action in the form of a public tea party where people are encouraged to connect in community and talk about politics. She did not mince words about Japan’s drive towards rearmament.

“It’s infuriating that the Japanese government has never properly reckoned with its past wrongdoings, and is now reverting to becoming the Japanese Empire all over again,” she said. “The relationship between America and Japan since World War II has always been like that of master and a slave — Trump, the naked king, and Takaichi, the naked slave, are the perfect mirror of that relationship.”

The roots of pacifism

Takaichi is one of the most popular political leaders in the world, reflecting a phenomenon of rising nationalism in Japan. Despite this popularity, her desire to formally revise the country’s constitution has sparked controversy. Many Japanese people hold a strong attachment to the 1947 constitution.

Prior to the war, Japan was a fast-growing empire. The Japanese military, in its quest for expansion, committed atrocities against neighboring countries, including the abduction of thousands of Korean women into sexual slavery and the massacre of Chinese civilians. One of the most horrific aspects of Imperial Japan was Unit 731, an initiative by the empire to conduct biological and chemical experiments on thousands of prisoners of war from many nations.

The nation’s military defeat and the aftermath of the war led Japanese society to rethink the country’s imperial ambitions. The horrific nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. left Japanese people with a unique understanding of the violence and cruelty that war produces, and many people adopted pacifist attitudes. Antiwar and anti-nuclear sentiments can be found in some of Japan’s most internationally recognized cultural exports, including the original Godzilla franchise and the works of esteemed animator Hayao Miyazaki.

The Japanese constitution, written a year after the bombings, reflects the cultural shift that followed the war. Article 9 states: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

Takaichi has targeted Article 9, arguing that it should be formally revised. While amending the constitution has proved difficult due to public outrage, the Japanese government already reinterpreted the constitution decades ago to establish and maintain a modern military, under the guise that these forces exist solely for defensive purposes.

Advocates for rearmament also point to the fact that the constitution was shaped by the U.S. at a time when allied forces were militarily occupying Japan. It’s true that following the war the United States used its own military power to shape the new institutions of Japanese society to align with U.S. interests. However, those in Japan who raise the U.S. occupation to justify revising the constitution and rearmament are aligned with the country’s conservative ruling party, which has historically denied or even justified the atrocities carried out by the Japanese Empire.

#support-block_0bd963db2e1c91227ceaff8b6572d483 { background: #000000; color: #ffffff; } Support Us

Waging Nonviolence depends on reader support. Make a donation today!

Donate

Nationalists on social media have also tried to discredit the country’s antiwar protests as not authentically Japanese, pointing to the presence of expats and signs written in English. But as Mars89 sees it, connecting with movements and activists beyond those in Japan is something to embrace.

“We were inspired by the many protests in other countries: the United States, the United Kingdom and Korea as well,” he said. “I think we should unite worldwide. We need to find some way to unite with the protests in other countries.”

Nemuri has also been inspired by movements in other countries and is thinking about how to use her art to foster a stronger culture of political discussion in her country.

“Last year, I saw [Zohran] Mamdani win an election, and their team took to the streets with signs saying, ‘Let’s talk politics,’” Nemuri said. “I’m not a politician, but a musician, and I think I can expand this towards more artistic activities. Drawing from [German philosopher Jürgen] Habermas, I’d love to bring the public sphere, the coffee house, out onto the streets where literally anyone can join.”

This article In Japan, raves and tea parties become sites of protest was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s ties to the Yellowstone Club stretch back nearly two decades, Center for Western Priorities Communications Director Kate Groetzinger writes in a new Westwise post, and raise questions about whether he represents the best interests of the public.

The Yellowstone Club, which sits on land that was once public, and its owners are notorious in Montana for locking up public lands through land swaps with the federal government. The club’s member list includes celebrities and tech titans, like Justin Timberlake and Bill Gates. Financial disclosure and property records show that Burgum owns a condominium inside the club valued at $22 million as well as an ownership stake in the club, generating annual income from both.

Burgum’s financial stake in a resort with a long history of disputes over public-land access, land swaps, and development raises serious ethical concerns. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter said Burgum should not be involved in decisions affecting residential development on public lands while retaining an ownership stake in the Yellowstone Club.

And while Burgum’s office says he has complied with federal ethics requirements, legal compliance is beside the point: the man charged with stewarding America’s public lands should not have significant financial interests tied to a luxury resort that has repeatedly benefited from locking the public out of public lands.

Quick hits Why is Brooke Rollins dead set on saving a failing California dam?

Grist

Cuts trigger scientific brain drain as Trump reshapes government

E&E News

Forest Service offers separation incentives to employees ahead of relocations

Federal News Network

New bill would block public lands layoffs until 2030

GearJunkie

Forest Service and state of South Dakota sign agreement to work together on forest management

South Dakota Searchlight

Federal firefighting change-ups and this summer’s forecast are a bad mix, advocates say

Utah News Dispatch

Opinion: Why we are suing Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks

Billings Gazette

At Delta Lake, AI mogging TikTok

Jackson Hole News & Guide

Quote of the day

Every public acre locked away from public access is an acre lost to the next generation of Montana hunters and anglers… So we’re asking the court to provide what FWP would not: clarity, accountability, and a path back to the public land that belongs to everyone. Now—and for all who come after us.”

—Montana Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and Public Land/Water Access Association, Billings Gazette

Picture This

@Interior

The NBA Finals have Wemby.

America’s public lands have these giants.

Feature image: A condo at the Yellowstone Club that was listed for sale for $22 million in 2020. Source: Mountain Living

The post The Secretary of the Interior has a Yellowstone Club problem appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

DENVER—U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz appeared in front of a House Natural Resources subcommittee Thursday to defend the Trump administration’s downsizing of his agency and answer questions about the upcoming wildfire season.

Schultz defended the Trump administration’s unpopular staffing cuts to the Forest Service, which have resulted in a massive gap in wildfire prevention work heading into the summer wildfire season, as well as the administration’s move to shutter research stations across the U.S.

Since President Donald Trump took office, the Forest Service has lost around 16 percent of its staff—a total loss of 5,860 employees—including “red card” holders who are authorized to assist in wildfire efforts. Meanwhile, according to a Center for Western Priorities analysis of publicly available data, the Forest Service treated roughly 35 percent fewer acres of forest for wildfire in 2025 compared to 2024.

Schultz also defended the administration’s efforts to aggressively ramp up logging in national forests and repeal the Roadless Rule, which currently protects 45 million acres of national forest land from clear-cutting, road-building, mining, and oil and gas drilling.

Research has found that high-severity wildfires are almost two times more likely to occur on private industrial forest lands than on adjacent public lands. Meanwhile, the Roadless Rule does not preclude fuels reduction work. Since the Roadless Rule took effect in 2001, nearly 2 million acres of inventoried roadless areas across 12 western states have been treated for hazardous fuels.

Schultz also defended the administration’s aggressive strategy of putting all wildfires out as soon as possible after they begin, constraining fire managers from making the call based on available resources and expertise. This approach, known as full or total suppression, has been shown by science to increase long-term wildfire risk.

Finally, the Trump administration is currently proposing a cut of 75 percent to the overall Forest Service budget, including the complete elimination of the agency’s research program.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Deputy Director Lauren Bogard:

“The Trump administration continues to treat our national forests like assets on a balance sheet, prioritizing timber industry profits over responsible, science-backed management.

“In today’s hearing, members of Congress and Chief Schultz seemed convinced that we can log our way out of wildfires by ramping up commercial logging, which actually increases wildfire risk, according to science.

“Meanwhile, the Trump administration has fallen way behind on the targeted fuel reduction treatments that actually reduce wildfire risk, leaving communities across the country more exposed to the risk of catastrophic wildfire.”

Learn more:

• Falling behind: Forest Service fuel treatment gap puts communities at risk – Center for Western Priorities
• As admin claws at national forests, what will become of the Forest Service? – Wilderness Society

The post STATEMENT on Forest Service hearing in House Natural Resources subcommittee today appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 4, 2026

Statement on ACT NOW Clean Tech Initiative

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — On June 4, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato signed the Advancing Clean Technology for Neighborhood and Next-Generation Opportunity and Workforce (ACT NOW) Executive Order. In response, Ohio River Valley Institute Industrial Decarbonization Program Manager Justine Hackimer issued the following statement:

Clean technology and advanced manufacturing present a generational opportunity to strengthen Allegheny County’s economy, create high-quality jobs, and build on our region’s long history of industrial innovation. 

For generations, southwestern Pennsylvania’s workers, manufacturers, and research institutions helped power economic growth across the country. As global markets increasingly demand cleaner technologies, our region is well-positioned to compete for the industries that will shape the next generation of manufacturing. 

But realizing that opportunity requires more than individual projects. It takes coordination and smart policy like ACT NOW to ensure workers and local communities directly benefit from investments. We applaud County Executive Sara Innamorato’s leadership in shaping a clean tech future that works for all Pennsylvanians.

By investing in the industries of tomorrow while strengthening the systems that support workers and communities, the region can build a more diverse, resilient economy that creates opportunities for generations to come.

###

 

The post Statement on ACT NOW Clean Tech Initiative appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.

DrillOrDrop’s round-up of announcements from three companies with UK onshore oil and gas interests: investor raises stake, director resigns and refinancing continues.

West Newton oil and gas field.
Photo: West Newton and Sproatley Gateway to the Gasfields Reabold Resources – Crypto Cousins raises stake

Reabold Resources, the majority owner of the West Newton oil and gas field in East Yorkshire, announced this morning that a US investment company had increased its interest.

Rohan Oza, through Crypto Cousins, LLC, raised his investment in Reabold from 5.6% to 14.309% of voting rights.

A statement from Reabold said the share-owning threshold was crossed on 8 May 2026 and completed today (4 June 2026).

In March 2026, the company announced that Rohan Oza’s investment group had committed to buy 1,900 million ordinary shares.

Reabold said the funds raised from that share placing would be “used primarily to progress” the West Newton project. The operator, Rathlin Energy, has planning permission for lower-volume fracking on the West Newton A-2 well.

Reabold revealed last year that the West Newton sites, currently mothballed, could be used for bitcoin mining. It unveiled plans to use gas from the wells to generate electricity.

Reabold has also announced (3 June 2026) that it had granted exclusive rights to Zenith Energy plc to evaluate the potential acquisition of Reabold shares in Daybreak Oil and Gas.

Union Jack – director resignation

Union Jack Oil, another investor in West Newton, has announced the resignation of Graham Bull, a non-executive director.

A statement yesterday (3 June 2026) said:

“Mr Bull cited the detrimental effect attacks on the Board from certain media organisations has had on him and his family in his decision to resign.”

The statement did not name any media organisations.

Angus Energy – financial restructuring

Angus Energy, which operates the UK’s largest onshore gas site at Saltfleetby in Lincolnshire, announced today (4 June 2026) that it continued “to make good progress” on legal documents associated with its proposed financial restructuring.

The company has been refinancing its loan with the main creditors, including Trafigura and Forum Energy Services Limited.

The company said in a statement to shareholders:

 “Although progress to final binding agreements has been slower than anticipated, the Company is confident that the restructuring process will conclude in the coming weeks.”

“Upon execution, the proposed restructuring is expected to materially strengthen the Group’s balance sheet, enhance liquidity, and establish a more sustainable long-term capital structure.”

Share trading in Angus has been suspended since 19 May 2026. The company said trading would resume when the restructuring had been completed.

Angus also operates the Balcombe oil site in West Sussex. Planning permission for a well test at the site lapsed in February 2026. The company said it would reapply but no application has yet been published.

Price floors and supply management programs seem common sense to policymakers when it comes to oil and minerals, but what about US farmers and our overall food system? By: Patti Naylor, FFD president, George Naylor, FFD board member, and Laurel … Continue reading →

The company that gave up on oil operations in the protected landscape of the Lincolnshire Wolds is now trying to keep the abandoned well pad.

The Lincolnshire Wolds National Landscape at Biscathorpe.
Photo: SOS Biscathorpe

Egdon Resources has applied for planning permission to retain the former Biscathorpe oil compound near Louth, including hardstanding, surrounding earth mounds, security gates and fencing, access track and drain.

It said the site would be used by the landowner, F Wallis & Sons, for agricultural purposes.

Egdon said in a statement that Lincolnshire County Council planners had already “agreed in principle” to the proposal.

A public consultation is now underway. Comments must be submitted to Lincolnshire County Council by the end of this month (Tuesday 30 June 2026).

Egdon announced in December 2025 that it had abandoned an appeal against the refusal of planning permission for oil production and further drilling at Biscathorpe.

The company said in April 2026 it would be decommissioning the oil well at the site.

But this week news emerged about the new plans for Biscathorpe.

Egdon said retaining the well pad would avoid the need for 738 heavy goods vehicle movements over a period of 10 weeks.

But local opponents have said the application, if approved, would save Egdon the cost of restoring the site to farmland, required in a planning permission granted in 2018. It would also turn what had been described as a temporary operation into a permanent development.

Amanda Suddaby, of the local campaign group, SOS Biscathorpe, said:

“While it is unsurprising to us that Egdon would prefer to leave the infrastructure in place rather than incur the cost and effort of restoring the site, we don’t believe those commercial considerations should influence the planning decision.

“The proposal now before the Council risks turning what was presented as a temporary development into a permanent foothold in the landscape.

“Of principal concern is the fact that retaining the wellsite pad keeps alive the possibility of future oil and gas development at Biscathorpe should political, regulatory or commercial circumstances change.

“While no such proposal is currently before the Council, retaining the site would make future development proposals significantly easier.

“Once the site is fully restored, any future developer would need to start again and make an entirely new case for development whereas retaining the infrastructure leaves the door open and preserves a platform for future proposals.”

The Biscathorpe site is in the protected Lincolnshire Wolds National Landscape, the new name for areas of outstanding natural beauty.

A new law requires public bodies to “seek to further” the statutory purposes of Protected Landscapes” when considering planning applications.

Government advice said public bodies should seek to avoid harm and contribute to the conservation and enhancement of the natural beauty, special qualities and key characteristic of protected landscapes”.

Ms Suddaby said:

“For years local communities were assured that this development was temporary and that, once operations ended, the site would be restored to agricultural land. That promise was central to the original planning permission and seemed to offer a guarantee that the development would leave no lasting visual impact on the protected National Landscape.

“Additionally, retaining a substantial area of hardstanding in the National Landscape could encourage other forms of development that would not otherwise arise at this location. However, the over-riding issue is that infrastructure which was expressly permitted on a temporary basis is now being proposed for permanent retention.”

She also said:

“It is troubling that the planning documents state that the principle of retaining the site has already been agreed with County Council officers – even before public consultation.

“If commitments that were central to the original planning permission can be set aside in this way, local residents are entitled to ask what confidence they can ever place in planning conditions intended to protect landscapes and communities.

“This application is ultimately about trust. The original permission was granted on the basis that the development was temporary and the land would be fully restored. The time has come for those commitments to be honoured.”

SOS Biscathorpe is urging residents and supporters of the Lincolnshire Wolds National Landscape to object to the application and call for the site to be restored in accordance with the original planning permission.

The group said the decision on the application would test whether commitments made during the planning process could be relied upon when development proposals were approved.

At the time of writing, there were 12 objections to the new application.

In its supporting statement, Egdon said Nottinghamshire County Council had granted planning permission in 2025 for the retention of another former Egdon wellsite, at Kirklington, near Newark. Since then, Newark and Sherwood District Council have confirmed that two steel framed buildings could be installed on the site without planning permission. (The Kirklington site is not in a National Landscape.)

Egdon also said the Biscathorpe scheme would include planting a 940m2 of native hedgerow around the site area to increase biodiversity and provide visual screening to the fencing. The company said this would achieve the minimum 10% net gain for habitats and hedgerows required by law.

Other abandoned sites

Other recently abandoned oil and gas sites have still not been restored to farmland, as required by conditions in their original applications.

DrillOrDrop is monitoring progress to restore the Broadford Bridge oil site in West Sussex and the Preston New Road shale gas site in Lancashire.

At the Harlequin well site, Radcliffe-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, the site was turned into a dog exercise track after five planning permissions for exploration expired without a well being drilled.

The National Planning Policy Framework requires mineral planning authorities to “provide for restoration and aftercare at the earliest opportunity, to be carried out to high environmental standards, through the application of appropriate conditions”.

Former Harlequin pad, now covered in artificial grass and used as a dog exercise area.