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Russia won the SHELL game
Henk Ruyssenaars - Foreign correspondent - 18.12.2006 18:41
Soon it will be announced that SHELL in Russia has made an energy 'deal' with Putin's government. But it is 'an offer they can't refuse'. SHELL lost this important geopolitical fight for energy resources and must surrender control over Sakhalin-2, the only foreign owned huge oil and gas fields in Siberia.
To stop SHELL expats they were 'investigated for visa violations'...
by Henk Ruyssenaars
FPF - Amsterdam - Dec. 18th 2006 - Most people know the 'shell game' is a gambling game, and most will know too that it's often used to perpetrate fraud. In the ongoing 'negotiations' in Moscow, the delegation of Dutch/Anglo multinational Royal Dutch Shell has understood it has lost the 'shell game' with Russian President Putin's government. The wholly foreign owned Sakhalin-2 oil and gas fields - of which SHELL owned 55% and Mitsubishi 45% - will in the future like all other Russian energy sources be controlled by Putin's energy ministry. And not by foreigners.
The Russian government will thus have gained control and a powerful political warfare tool. Like money and food, energy is an important tool which - as the other 'rulers' - President Putin and his Kremlin group can use and have already used. And like the junta managing the US, Putin knows very well that energy is quit effective as a weapon in their turf battle for global power. A battle the US/UK group is losing on many fronts. They have never cared about the cost of millions of lives.
When Lord Rothschild's Bank of England group in 'The City' of London was stopped from taking over all Russian energy sources and Putin took control over Yukos* the Russian oil and gas giant, the arrest by Putin's forces of the group's leader, Russia's richest man and oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a loud and dangerous shot before the bow of the London group. Most of the Yukos mafia fled to Israel because they nearly all had double nationalities and many of the 'nouveau riche' oligarchs - 'robbing hoods' like Berezovsky - escaped to England. But Putin and his people put Khodorkovsky convicted of tax fraud in jail as a warning sign to Rothschild's warlords group in London.
HAVE THEY LEFT THE SINKING SHIP IN THIS TIME OF MISERY?
Trying to avoid information about this disaster, the official SHELL web site is silent about Sakhalin-2 since last Nov. 27th* Which made an insider ask: "Are the spinners sleeping or have they left the sinking ship in this time of misery?" SHELL announced the investment in Sakhalin-2 had doubled in cost to at least 22 $billion, but that didn't help either to scare the Russians. They said they had claims of up to thirty billions. In Moscow the SHELL delegation led by Dutch director Jeroen van de Veer has a Kalashnikov to its head and tries to survive 'an offer they can't refuse'.
The alternative is loosing every billion of the according to SHELL twenty-two $billions invested this far in the Sakhalin-2 project. It's clear to everybody in the game that Shell will be harassed until it 'agrees to sell' a big chunk of its assets to Gazprom. And Putin decides the price. This way of doing business is normal for the US junta's and other multinationals and the way they globally for some centuries always have acted. Covered by propaganda from the by them owned media.
According to the usual disinformation by the US junta's information bureau Bloomberg: ''The treatment of Shell is the most shameful episode so far. Shell's development of the $22 billion Sakhalin-2 oil and gas field off Russia's Pacific coastline is one of the biggest foreign investments made in the country since the collapse of the communist regime 15 years ago." But, the Russians - using the power they have - say it is their country and their gas and oil. And they will use it as a geopolitical weapon against the West, and not the other way around.
The trick is older than the road to Rome: first you let them invest and than you step in, use anything to force them out and take over. Making them leave is done in many ways, using a pretext stopping workers is one.
SHELL EXPATS 'INVESTIGATED FOR VISA VIOLATIONS'
It's for everybody who is not blinded by stolen $billion profits easy to see how SHELL and Mitsubishi were and are trapped by the Russians. But you won't find it in their mainstream media or on their propaganda sites on Internet. It's an old trick but it always works. Most of the 'expats', the workers and staff which are imported and should work for SHELL are now being 'investigated for visa violations'. Which one insider describes as 'bulls..t from the Russians'. Of course there are no 'visa irregularities' but it does allow them to all the time 'legally' get rid off, stop and/or deport any expat people they don't want. And so far several hundred are either sent home or sitting on the sideline not allowed to do any work. And with many of the staff and expat workers idle or gone, Anglo/Dutch SHELL and the Japanese are flat on their back.
When the SHELL delegation in Moscow tried to block this fiendish take-over, referring to a possible claim that the Russians pay back the foreign investment ranging from twenty-two to twenty-five billion, the Russians said ''that was too bad.'' Because they countered that they had official claims, based on a report concerning SHELL's environmental vandalism, of around thirty billion US dollars.
The western multinational's information bureau 'AP' (Associated Propaganda) had to report from Moscow that Putin's friend and Russia‘s 'Natural Resources Minister' Yuri Trutnev rejected a call to stop the 30 billion dollar claims by environmental regulator Oleg Mitvol who has done an environmental probe against SHELL's Sakhalin-2 gas project. So, the Russians stick to their 30 $billion damage claim, this way forcing SHELL and Mitsubishi out of the Sakhalin project's 'control tower'. And if SHELL raises the price the Russian 'claims' will climb along...
When Sergei Sai, the head of state environment watchdog 'Rosprirodnadzor' asked Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev, who also oversees his agency, to review Mitvol‘s work and claims, Trutnev flatly rejected the appeal. "He sent the letter back," said Trutnev‘s spokesman Rinat Gizatulin. "He said the effectiveness of Mitvol is higher than that of the Rosprirodnadzor leadership and advised Sai to do something about it." No words minced: Russia wants it's own oil and gas fields and exits SHELL and Mitsubishi.
SHELL RESERVES FRAUD
It's expected that heads are going to roll again at the SHELL meeting next year on February 1st when the SHELL top must tell its shareholders who expect profits and no whitewashing anymore. Especially after the Hague based SHELL (paying NO taxes either in their Dutch fiefdom) by the US SEC, the 'Securities and Exchange Commission' in a court case concerning SHELL's inflated 'reserves' was charged with fraud. Bloomberg wrote that 'developing fields off Sakhalin Island, north of Japan, was key to Shell's plans to revive output and increase reserves'. Which Putin made a pipe dream.
Shell is still recovering from the scandalous 2004 accounting review that forced it to reduce the lied about 'proven' reserves by 5.63 billion barrels, or 29 percent. That was sheer theft, with among others the SHELL manager's $million 'bonuses' being based on non existing 'reserves'. And they are still paying the price for their global criminality. SHELL to most victims is infamous for it's 'kill & drill' policy.*
SHELL KEEPS GASSING PEOPLE IN NIGERIA
To give just one example: as a correspondent in Africa for ten years I also was confronted with SHELL's killing and drilling when in November 2005 the Nigerian High Court ruled that gas flaring by SHELL was a 'gross violation of the rights to life and dignity.' One year later SHELL continues to flare more than 600 million cubic metres gas in Nigeria. The amount flared five years ago - in 2001 - already equaled 40 per cent of gas consumption on the entire continent of Africa. In spite of all its promises to stop flaring gas, a good deal more gas was flared in 2005 than in 2002.*
It's a well documented fact that SHELL's flaring causes serious air pollution. The population of the Niger Delta for instance suffers from a range of health problems: an increased risk of asthma, chronic bronchitis, leukaemia and increased child mortality. In cooperation with criminal and armed locals and 'managers' SHELL just keeps killing and drilling. Dr. Saro-Wiwa, brother of writer and poet Ken Saro-Wiwa who was executed by the US junta and the by SHELL backed Nigerian government in 1995 for his protest against Shell, says: "I do believe Shell knows that they are gassing the community and no company in this world should be allowed to gas its community."
IRELAND: THE 'ROSSPORT FIVE' LAUNCH THEIR BOOK
In Ireland tomorrow, Tuesday December 19th, an important book will be presented by the people who were put in jail when they protested against SHELL's ongoing destruction in Ireland. The 'Rossport Five' launch their book* in Mayo in Daly's Hotel, Castlebar, and proved that you do not always need to have the power behind you of a Putin to stand up against the power of SHELL. They and their friends fought back.
It'll be interesting to see how SHELL spin doctors are going to phrase the Sakhalin debacle.
As said: the 'shell game' is a gambling game used to perpetrate fraud.
And SHELL lost.
Henk Ruyssenaars
* OFFICIAL SHELL WEB SITE - Url.:  http://www.shell.com/home/Framework?siteId=home
* SHELL IS GASSING NIGERIANS - NOT ONLY HANGING THEM - PDF! - Url: www.foei.org/publications/pdfs/gasnigeria.pdf
* KILLING & DRILLING - SHELL IN COURT - Web Results 1 - 10 of about 1,710,000 for SHELL +''Court cases''. - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/sz4rn
* THE REAL STORY OF THE YUKOS OIL SNATCH - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4gpd7
* ENERGY AS WEAPON - PUTIN STOPS GAS TO UKRAINE - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/wf3ms
* CAMPAIGN AGAINST SHELL IN IRELAND - LINKS - Url.: http://corribsos.com/index.php?id=1117
* THE ROSSPORT FIVE PRESENT THEIR BOOK ABOUT SHELL'S DESTRUCTION - Url.: http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=822
* FOUNDER OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL, ONE OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST OIL COMPANIES, was Henri Wilhelm August Deterding. Called the "Napoleon of Oil". (19 April 1866, Amsterdam - 4 February 1939, St Moritz) Deterding engendered controversy in 1935 when he (supporting Hitler) gave the Nazis a year's oil reserves on credit and was forced to resign from the company's board the next year. He was made an honorary KBE in 1920 for service to Anglo/Dutch relations, but mainly for his work supplying Allies with petroleum during WWI. Selling to both sides by the way. Stukas and Spitfires: they all flew on Shell kerosene... Wikipeadia Url.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Deterding
* THE USE OF THE PHRASE 'ANTI SEMITISM' IS PURE NONSENSE - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/y8fwhf
* Dutch born HR this far has lived and worked abroad (never in an English speaking country) for more than 4 decades for national and international media as an independent foreign correspondent. Of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the African/Arab world and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every invasion, bullet and bomb logically breeds more and legal resistance. Not only among Muslims, as the US Junta's propaganda media claim, but in all countries surrounding the US and their junta's war machine. From North to South and from the East to the West. - "War criminals, beware!" - Url. http://tinyurl.com/y7wr67
* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information.
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/gpr4j
The Netherlands
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