SHELL-SHOCKED

E-MAILS have become the smoking guns of enquiries into the inner workings of government and big business. Those produced by Downing Street for the Hutton Inquiry last year gave a worrying insight into the slack way in which top civil servants communicate with each other these days. Now there are revelations of the dubious inner workings of one of the commanding heights of the global oil business in e-mails sent by the head of exploration at Shell, Van de Vijver, to his chairman, Sir Philip Watts. After several e-mails in the early months of 2003 Mr Van de Vijer finally sent this to his chairman last November: “I am becoming sick and tired about lying about the extent of our reserves issues and the downward revisions that need to be done because of far too aggressive/optimistic bookings.” To the general public there has always been something reassuringly reliable about Shell but it is now seems that its reputation is just, well, a shell. Its oil reserves are probably 25 per cent less than has been claimed and this fact may have been known to the highest level of management for several years. At the other end of the management ladder, an inquiry has found that the responsibility for auditing the figures showing the state of the reserves was performed by “a single, part-time former Shell employee” whose cycle of field audits was once every four years. There have been three resignations at senior level and others may follow when the US Justice Department inquiries begin to bite. The effect on Shell's market value has been serious. Equally serious is public concern that a company as big and influential as Shell can be run in such a sloppy and dishonest way.