Meeting with Van der Veer in the Hague last November, Putin reportedly criticized the cost escalation.
Shell's chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, said the firm had delivered "another competitive set of results".
"I have no doubt that the future is gas, " Van der Veer recently told a conference in Amsterdam.
Soon after taking over in early 2004, Van der Veer launched a push to improve Shell's project management.
Costs were rising, but Shell didn't know how much until last year, when Van der Veer ordered new analyses.
Mr van der Veer added that firms must respond to rising concerns about the pay given to to executives.
In Shell's 99-year history Van der Veer is the first of his type--a sole chief executive, ruling from headquarters in the Hague.
"This company has been losing ground now for many years, and I don't like that, " says Jeroen van der Veer, the 58-year-old chief executive.
Van der Veer, who says he expects to be in his job for no more than six more years, will have to work quickly to prove the skeptics wrong.
As a token of that close relationship, Van der Veer has a bejeweled curved Saudi dagger, a traditional gift to boys entering manhood, hanging in his otherwise spartan corner office.
As a token of his close Saudi ties, Van der Veer has a bejeweled curved Saudi dagger--a traditional gift to boys entering manhood--hanging in his otherwise spartan corner office.
Trained as an economist and mechanical engineer before joining Shell in 1971, the skinny (he's an avid jogger), bespectacled Van der Veer is at ease with flowcharts and schematics.
Around 1, 400 company chairmen and CEOs will also be in attendance, including News Corp. media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer, Renault President Carlos Ghosn and HSBC Chairman Stephen Green.
In mid-July Shell began the first of seven wildcat wells it will drill this year in the Kingdom's Rub al-Khali, a desert known as the Empty Quarter (a name Van der Veer hopes is merely metaphorical).
应用推荐