Financial details of Shell’s vast oil and gas trading business are some of the company’s closest-held secrets. Documents in a lawsuit filed by a former employee, however, revealed its US crude trading regularly earns around $1 billion every year. Testimony by a former head of Shell’s US crude trading division filed in a Texas state court has offered a rare look at the huge profits of its trading operations and the multi-million dollar bonuses bestowed on traders. John Dimech, who was a manager in Shell’s crude oil trading group in Houston for 11 years, said in a deposition last year that the crude trading unit ... (full story)