MALCOLM BRINDED certainly knows how to keep calm in a crisis. As the recently crowned head of Exploration & Production (E&P) at Royal Dutch/Shell, the British engineer clearly has faith in his ability to handle an audience.

Even with the constraints of working for a company that verges on the paranoid in its dealings with the outside world, last Thursday’s gathering on the 23rd floor of Shell Centre let Brinded show off in the way that he obviously loves.

Forty journalists and analysts packed the meeting room and another 350 listened in on a conference call as Shell called a meeting to elaborate on yet another bombshell.

Yet despite the fact that Brinded and his new boss Jeroen van der Veer are involved in a huge crisis, they both managed to crack a joke or two. “I hope that we don’t lose a third head of E&P in short order,” said Brinded.

Brinded’s two predecessors in E&P have just lost their jobs. Sir Philip Watts and Walter van de Vijver were sacked two weeks ago after they lost the confidence of their boardroom colleagues. Watts had become chairman but he was damaged by his past responsibility for finding new reserves.

And that is not the only reason why the background to the meeting was anything but funny. A press release sent out just after midday confirmed that 470m barrels of oil would be wiped off Shell’s proved oil reserves, on top of the 3.9 billion barrels that were recategorised from proved in January.

Not only that, but the 2003 results, which were due to be released last Friday, have been put back until the end of April while the annual meeting, scheduled for April, is now expected to be held on June 28.

One analyst said: “This is a company with good assets but a management team that does not know what it is doing.”

The timing could hardly have been worse. Having sacked Watts and Van de Vijver, now should have been a time for rebuilding Shell’s reputation.

Van der Veer and Brinded tried to stop people dwelling on the bad news with fighting talk. Van der Veer said: “We will be very sure that we will never drop this bomb again.”

Both painted visions of a future Shell untainted by problems in replenishing its oil production and where a string of corporate-governance changes would make all the difference.

All would become clearer within weeks when Ryder Scott, a group of consultants that is reviewing Shell’s entire oil portfolio, will complete its work, they assured.

Some analysts even left feeling upbeat. But Shell’s share price told the real story. It ended the day down in both Britain and America, where an estimated $2.5 billion (£1.4 billion) was wiped off the company’s market value.

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