MarkMoody-Stuart

That is a very important question. We are not going to run out suddenly or in the near future. I expect that there is a limit to the amount of daily production which can be maintained for any length of time. The world is using about 90 million barrels a day now and this consumption is still growing. Consumption in Europe and now in the US is actually going down mainly because of increases in transport efficiency but is going up in the developing parts of the world (China, India and many others) so that overall consumption is going up by round a million barrels a day. We can probably increase production gradually to 110 or 115 million and hold that for many years. I suspect production will turn down somewhere in the middle of the century say 2040 or 2050, because other forms of energy will be growing and everyone will be using energy more efficiently. The world is not short of reserves of oil - present production comes mainly from what we call conventional fields. There is potential from oil sands heavy oil in Venezuela and now shale several times that of conventional. So I do not think we are going to run out. We will use energy more effectively, use other non fossil forms of energy and save hydrocarbons for making chemicals rather than burning them for transport. And all of that is dependent on what we collectively do about climate and putting a proper price on carbon. Sorry long answer but it is a complicated question.

I and we did not ignore human rights problems. I was indeed in the top group at Shell at the time of Ken Saro Wiwa's execution and have thought about it a lot, including what we should or could have done differently. I have met Ken Saro Wiwa's son Ken since, so have certainly not tried to ignore it. Ken Saro-Wiwa and the others were hanged unjustly for alleged involvement in the murder of four Ogoni chiefs. Shell called publicly for a fair trial and for proper medical treatment and called for clemency. It was a surprise to me, to everyone I think, certainly to his daughter according to an interview she gave, that Abacha suddenly decided to carry out the execution. Withdrawal by Shell from Nigeria would not have changed that decision as the Shell operations were largely run by Nigerians who could not withdraw. And would it have been right for Shell just to withdraw and leave them. "Shell's lawyers and other workers" as you put it certainly had nothing to do with it. I have given more of the background and my views on it in the book. That sort of thing is not something anyone could forget and not lose a lot of sleep over.

A type of sandwich until the ration of filling to bun exceeds three and then it is something else.

Yes. In the seventies, in the wake of a corruption scandal affecting the industry in Italy a man called Geoffrey Chandler drafted the first Shell Business Principles. I think they were advanced for their time, although we modified them in the nineties after the 1995 events of Saro Wiwa and Greenpeace/Brent Spar to cover human rights and sustainable development. The principles spelled out our obligations to our shareholders, employees, customers and society - what we would now call stakeholders. We said that our obligation to our shareholders was to give them "an acceptable return on their investment and to protect its long term value" This is not maximising profit and is I think absolutely compatible with the interests of governments and people.

For much of my career into the mid nineties, although the oil industry had a mixed image (environmental damage, which can be limited, versus what many regard as a social good in te supply of the reliable cheap energy on which modern economies depend for everything including food) the trheat of climate change reared its head in the nineties (of before for some but for most of us in the nineties. That was when Shell and BP both acknowledged climate change as a threat. So the balance tipped somewhat against the industry for many people. But it remains and will remain for decades a fascinating geological and engineering challenge. My son who is mid forties is in the industry and we can still recruit engineers but not enough. If you think we have image problems try nuclear (which I think is a pity because nuclear has to be part of the solutions)! I think your ideas on health and safety are very sensible - that is need ed in any anad every industry and the skills are highly transferrable