Shell Transport and Trading: Extract from 'Written in Flames'

Shell Is owned by the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and by the British company Shel1 Transport and Trading. The Royal Dutch Shell Group, to give It Its ful1 name, Is run by a committee of 7 managers, three of them come from She 11 Transport and Trading. Shel1 takes oil and gas from the North Sea, Switzerland, the Middle East and the Sudan. It makes polystyrene and agrochemicals.

It mines coal In South Africa, Canada and Australia and runs saw mlills In New Zealand. Shell T&1's cut of the group profits was £4 bll1lon In 1985. Last year, Shel1 began to feel the pressure of anti-apartheid protest. Consumer boycotts, occupations In the States, arson in the Netherlands, as Shel1 were accused of breaking the oil embargo on South Africa, supplying the army and the police, as well as owning mining and refining Interests there. BP have managed to escape much of this attention, despite co-owning the South African refinery with Shell.

• Peter Holmes Is the chair of Shel1 Transport and Trading and vice chair of the rulIng Dutch Shel1 committee. He's 55, went to Cambridge and worked for Shel1 throughout Africa. He lives at 41 Pembroke Square, West Kensington W8.

His second in command is William Thomson (61) of Saxons, 45 Levysdene, Merrow, near Guildford in..Surrey.

Shell's ex-chair, Sir Peter Baxendell, now head of Hawker Slddeley, Is still on the board. With him are a variety of notables from George Baring, Earl of Cromer, former head of IBM computers, to Sir Robert Clark, boss of the Hill Samuel merchant banking group. Another Shel1 ex-chair Is Lord McFadzean who sits with former Unilever head Sir David Orr, Sir Michael Palliser, formerly permanent secretary at the Foreign Office and Sir Rowland Wright, ex-chair of both ICI and the Blue Circle cement company.

• Edmund Dell (66), former Labour minister and chief executive of the finance company Guiness Peat, lives at 4 Reynolds Close Hampstead Heath NW11. He's chair of Channel 4 and shares the directorship of the English National Opera Company with Sir Peter Baxendell.