From British weekly The Observer:
Shell board told to pay back bonuses
Investors call on head of pay committee to resign
* Richard Wachman
* Sunday 24 May 2009The backlash against executive pay took a dramatic new turn this weekend when shareholder activists demanded that Royal Dutch Shell directors return their bonuses.
They also called for the resignation of Sir Peter Job, the former senior Reuters executive who chairs the energy multinational‘s remuneration committee.
The demands for bonuses to be given back echo the row over Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension, when MPs campaigned for the former RBS boss to return all or part of his £703,000-a-year award. He has refused to do so.
Shell was engulfed in controversy at its annual meeting in the Netherlands on Tuesday when 59% of shareholders opposed its remuneration report. Bonuses were paid to directors despite performance targets being missed.
Shell and Nigeria: here.
ExxonMobil continuing to fund climate sceptic [rather: denialist] groups, records show: here.
Chemical Safety Board Probes ExxonMobil Refinery Toxic Gas Leak: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Pipeline spills crude into French nature reserve
Sat Aug 8, 2009 4:56pm EDT
SAINT-MARTIN-DE-CRAU, France (Reuters) – Four thousand cubic meters (140,000 cu ft) of crude oil has spewed into a nature reserve on the edge of France’s Camargue national park after an underground pipe burst, officials said on Friday.
“This is a real ecological disaster,” junior environmental minister Chantal Jouanno told reporters after visiting the area in the far south of France.
The spill spread over 2 hectares (5 acres) of the Coussouls de Crau reserve near the town of Saint-Martin-de-Crau, which was created in 2001 and is home to thousands of birds.
The site lies at the entrance to the Camargue park, a vast expanse of plains and marshland, famous for its wild horses and bulls, that boards the Mediterranean Sea.
The fractured pipeline was operated by the Societe du Pipeline Sud-Europeen (SPSE), which supplies refineries and a petrochemical plant in France, Switzerland and Germany.
Jouanno said the SPSE was responsible for the spillage.
“We will have to draw the consequences for all the pipelines in France,” she added.
Built in 1971, the broken pipe was a meter wide and buried some 80 cm (31.5 inches) under the ground.
A clean-up operation was already underway and officials said all the crude would be removed alone with the tainted earth.
A spokeswoman for SPSE said there would be no halt in supplies because the company had alternative pipeline networks.
The leak occurred at about 8.30 a.m. (0630 GMT) and as soon as it was detected a 20-km stretch of pipeline was shut off.
On its website, SPSE lists shareholders including France’s Total, U.S. firm ExxonMobil and Britain’s BP.
(Reporting by Jean-Francois Rosnoblet, Mathilde Cru and Estelle Shirbon)
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