Here's a bit of irony for you: Royal Dutch Shell provided one of the speakers at an international summit on corporate ethics in Barcelona last week.

Albert Wong, Shell's head of policy and external relations, was invited to speak on Tuesday about "stakeholder engagement strategy". "Stakeholder" is corporate speak for anyone affected by your business. The people of the Erris peninsula and the Niger Delta are stakeholders in Shell. We all are, actually.

Wong was asked to consider how to show your stakeholders that you are "reacting to their contribution" and how to "learn from the expertise of your stakeholders". You'd nearly shout with laughter.

Interestingly, Shell declared on Friday it was abandoning its Corrib pipeline for the present, while on Thursday, it announced it had been ordered to hand over land around its Bonny oil terminal in Nigeria to the local population, having kept quiet about the order for months.

Maybe Shell also attended Monday's workshop in Barcelona on managing "'difficult' stakeholder relationships", which was about "convincing your other stakeholders that they should not get worried". Stakeholders beware.