At Shell, New Accounting and Rosier Oil Outlook

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/business/12OIL.html?hp

Arriving on stage in a spaceship and an astronaut suit, Philip Watts, then the senior executive in charge of exploration and production for the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, glowed as he delivered a message of optimism to a conference of 600 company executives in the Dutch city of Maastricht in June 1998.

"I have seen the future and it was great," he declared.

He was talking about the success of a special management program that had recently addressed a fundamental problem at the company — that it was pumping oil and gas out of the ground faster than it was finding new supplies. Internal documents show, however, that the program allowed Royal Dutch/Shell to increase its oil and gas reserves not by discovering major new sources, but by changing its accounting to add reserves that it was not sure could ever be tapped.

At the conference, executives wore yellow T-shirts that said "15 percent growth" and affirmed their faith in Shell's "transformation process" by singing "Ode to Joy," according to a company employee and a brief account in The Times of London.

[wasp in a wig]

1. things must be getting really bad

.. if they're going to such ridiculous lengths to make things look good.

Hey... that reminds me of another bunch of oil-related crooks whose time is almost up...