Dr Neil T Stacey Profile picture
May 7 14 tweets 3 min read Read on X
My PhD thesis was on fuel production, I did some of that PhD at a Shell-funded lab, I've sat in Shell boardrooms with their upper SA execs, some of my best friends are engineers at Shell. I know a good bit about their business and I have never read so much bunk in a single day.🧵
1) Shell exiting SA was a looming possibility a DECADE ago already. For people in the sector, it's been a huge surprise how long it's taken. Attributing it to the upcoming election is opportunistic electioneering of a gratingly stupid kind.
2) People saying "oh they're selling assets in some other markets too it's not an SA thing" are idiots. Them adjusting their asset portfolio and energy mix globally is standard stuff but selling off wholesale and leaving is a whole different thing. Analogy in next tweet.
In Europe, Shell is the equivalent of a guy saying "I might buy a hybrid car" whereas in SA they've got the house on the market, the car on WeBuyCars and the plane ticket in hand. I can scarcely fathom a functioning brain thinking the two equivalent.
3)Then there's a ton of empty, vapid speculation about WHY they're leaving, from people and journalists with no clue about the industry, the business, or the company. There is a swathe of reasons including some personal maneouvering, but a big one is this:
Part of Shell's corporate culture is, by oilco standards, a stiff-necked and pedantic adherence to rules and procedure. At their headquarters where there is no equipment, they make you watch a safety induction video that amounts to "use the handrails when you climb the stairs"
That induction video takes place in a room two floors up, interpret that how you will. Part of that culture is that they do SWOT analysis on every move they make, and for the SA business it goes something like this :
Strengths: just sheer size. Weaknesses: bad PR and brand perception, profitability below norms. Opportunities: ? . Then there's the Threats session which has a safety induction for whoever has to carry the notes, and a scheduled intermission for a bathroom break.
The stuff that goes on in the SA fuel sector is INSANE. Hot-tapping of major pipelines is a routine occurrence. Major storage vessels have been punctured to steal fuel, causing massive spills. I've heard of facilities paying protection money to syndicates for their trucks to pass
Not to mention, Shell had a gigantic sales slump when there were calls for a national boycott because of offshore gas prospecting on a much smaller scale than their main rival. There's legislation mandating biofuel blending but no mechanism for getting the subsidy for it
Rail has collapsed. Their refinery was already shut down BEFORE it flooded.
The short of it is; Shell is leaving. They've wanted out for a long time. They don't like it here. All the other fuel majors achieve higher profit margins here than they do, it makes sense to sell and has for ages.
Thread end, except that there's some other murky stuff that no-one will talk about.
@IvanBreytenbach But on top of that, it's more a question of comparing ROI, risk and PR to alternative assets in their umbrella, and ditching ones that are sub-par. Operational risks in SA are waaaay above normal and there are some nasty reputational risks lurking

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More from @NeilTStacey

Dec 4, 2021
I am a scientist born in Africa and working here, on COVID treatments and mitigation strategies. I am also a lecturer who would dearly love to be see my students able to return to campus. Vaccine inequity is tangibly present in every aspect of my personal and professional life./1
Nonetheless, American scientists keep telling me that I am not allowed to talk about vaccine inequity. Privileged first-world researchers insist that they are entitled to ownership of narrative around the reality that third-world scientists are actually living in. /2
This attitude of Western superiority is, itself, one of the root causes of vaccine inequity, because it has resulted in over-subscription to a handful of Western-made vaccines, while the bulk of vaccine manufacturing capacity (in Asia) has been under-utilized. /3
Read 4 tweets
Dec 3, 2021
We will not be able to discern the severity of Omicron from Gauteng hospitalizations: a thread. /1
Hospitalizations are a lagging measure; they follow cases by roughly a week. That term 'roughly' is tricky here because of how fast things are going. If you impose a lag of 7 days then the ratio of hospitalizations to cases is vastly lower than if you impose a lag of 8 days. /2
The frantic rate at which cases are growing means that small temporal uncertainties translate to large variance in severity markers. By the time things flatten out enough to get smoother data, hospitalization will have already saturated at the upper limit of capacity. /3
Read 4 tweets
Nov 27, 2021
A thread on genomic sequencing in SA: a very VERY widely circulated narrative is going around, which is that SA is being punished for having cutting-edge genomic surveillance. That notion hits just the right notes of self-righteousness to spike dopamine, but it's highly flimsy.
In the 30 days prior to Omicron's emergence, SA submitted just 44 sequences to GISAID. In the same time-frame Germany put in ~12 000 and the UK put in ~120 000. We do indeed have the technology and expertise for world-class genomic surveillance, we just weren't actually using it.
The consequence is this: we sequenced Omicron on the 23rd of November, but samples dating 12-20 November that we're testing now are basically 100% Omicron. Our cases started to climb sharply from 19 November. We didn't detect it AT ALL until after it was already rampant.
Read 9 tweets
Oct 22, 2021
morningshot.co.za/2021/10/21/wha…
This piece is a Rubicon moment for me, for the simple fact of it being published in a conservative outlet. My career has been devoted to renewable energy, sustainable food supply and eliminating waste plastic and my personal ideology is highly liberal. /1
My adult life has been committed to finding genuine solutions to humankind's problems. I have received some acclaim for my success in doing so, but without having sought it. I just like solving puzzles and it's most rewarding to tackle the most important ones. /2
Right now, COVID-19 is the most pressing issue facing us as a species so I involved myself in addressing it. I worked on research into COVID-19 treatments early on, and I have set up a lab to test Long COVID treatment protocols. /3
Read 13 tweets
Oct 20, 2021
My following here is almost entirely liberal; for the simple reason that I am hyper liberal - my adult life has been devoted to solving the crises of climate change, waste plastic accumulation and food scarcity. Tomorrow I will be publishing an article in a conservative outlet /1
This will alienate the majority of my following here. I've agonized over that . It's a lousy feeling to be disliked. I decided to do it because all mainstream outlets declined to publish a purely factual and scientific rebuttal of a popular narrative that is objectively false./2
This sucks deeply because the ideological right has long since labeled me as virulently woke up for my self-sacrificing efforts to solve environmental crises that threaten humankind and other life on Earth. /3
Read 7 tweets

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