SHELL BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Shell business continuity



Shell business continuity

Introduction

In a competitive world, Multinational Corporations (MNC) have been involving in tough competition. These corporations are often very large. Such companies have offices and/or factories in different countries. They usually have a centralized head office where they coordinate global management (Hodgetts, Luthans and Doh, 2004). Companies are not only known for their position in the stock exchange, profits, etc. But also for the companies involvement in community development, business ethics practices and culture. These factors also add to the overall outlook of the company. Oil industries have been in focus for a long time. Not just for the fact that the whole world relies on oil, but also for the environmental damages caused in the process of refining oil. This report will focus on Europe's second largest oil company-Shell Group facing ethical, environmental issues surrounding them in Nigeria.

Shell

Shell is a group of energy and petrochemicals companies which are operating in more than 140 countries and territories. Shell is widely known to the public for its service stations and for exploring and producing oil and gas on land and at sea. A part of these, shell also delivers wide variety of energy solutions and petrochemicals such as transporting and trading oil and gas, producing and selling fuel for ships and planes and generating electricity and providing energy efficiency advice. Moreover, it employs more than 112,000 people in more than 140 countries.

Shell carries out its operation in different part of the worlds such as Americas, Europe, Africa, and Commonwealth of independent states, Middle East and South Asia and Asia Pacific which are shown below.

Shell does invest and collaborate in the development of new technologies that will keep improving its performance. As a part of that, in 1907, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of companies was created to carry out its operations all over the world. Royal Dutch/Shell Group is commonly known as Shell. 60% of the group is owned by Royal Dutch of Netherlands and 40% is owned by the Shell Transport and Trading group of Great Britain. Shell includes many companies like Shell Petroleum of the USA, Shell Nigeria, Shell Argentina, Shell South Africa etc.

Royal Dutch/Shell Group is Europe's second biggest oil company. Shell Nigeria is one of the largest oil producers in the Royal Dutch/ Shell Group. Shell Nigeria operates in the Niger Delta, southeast region of the country, which accounts for 80% of the oil extraction in Nigeria. Shell Nigeria supplies 9 % of the company's oil (www.essentialaction.org).

Competitors in World Market

Shell's parent, Royal Dutch/Shell Group is the world's third petroleum company behind BP and Exxon Mobil. The Royal Dutch/Shell group has proved reserves of 14.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent after 14.6 and 21.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent of BP and Exxon Mobil respectively. The Royal Dutch/Shell Group had sales of $ 265,190 million and net income of $ 18,183 in the year 2004. On the other hand, BP and Exxon Mobil had sales of $ 2, 85,059 and $ 2, 63,989 respectively ...