A typically worldly, multilingual Dutchman, who spent part of his youth as an anti-Nazi resistance fighter, has just taken over the top job in a globe-spanning industrial empire that employs 165,000 people, owns and charters a fleet of 200 ships and lately has encountered some rough weather. Gerrit ("Gerry") Wagner became chairman of the seven-man committee that runs Royal Dutch/Shell, which is the world's biggest industrial enterprise outside the U.S. as well as the second largest oil complex (after Jersey Standard). The son of a Dutch businessman, Wagner joined Royal Dutch in 1946 and spent 17 years running its petroleum operations in Venezuela and other countries.
Like many other oil firms, Royal Dutch/Shell faces dwindling profit margins, stiffening antipollution laws and inflating demands from producing countries for more money. Partly because of an economic slowdown in Europe and a leveling in earnings of its U.S. subsidiary, Shell Oil, the Royal Dutch group saw profits fall 35% in this year's first quarter, to $ 192 million. Predicts Wagner: "On the whole, 1972 is not going to be a very attractive year."
Wagner has not outlined his strategy for reversing the trend in the $13-billion-a-year group. Though a strong advocate of the profit motive, he believes that a company has a larger obligation to society. While others in his industry have criticized controls on pollution, for example, Wagner has all but embraced them. As he told TIME European Economic Correspondent Roger Beard-wood: "We are all part of the world —the employees, the stockholders, my family, me and the most radical students. We must reduce pollution, but we cannot do it overnight. Some developed countries are reluctant to industrialize further because they do not want to pay the price of pollution, overcrowding and noise. I would argue that industrialization is not bad, but there are limits."
As oil becomes scarcer, it will become costlier, Wagner asserts, and companies must search harder for alternative sources of energy, particularly from coal. "We can make gas from coal while it is still in the mine, and we can make oil from coal. Coal has a future, and a very long one; the world has coal reserves for hundreds of years, not just for half a century, as it has for oil." He also argues that the world should limit its use of energy: "At the moment we waste some of it, using it as if there were no tomorrow. We overheat our buildings in winter and freeze them in the summer. What we have to do is spend relatively more on insulating our buildings properly and rather less on heating and cooling them."
Wagner also insists that industrial nations must put more money into mass transit and less into autos. "The car is making our cities uninhabitable," he says. "That may sound silly from somebody who sells gasoline. But better mass transit is mandatory because it does not waste as much space and energy as the car does." Wagner does not always need a gasoline guzzler to get around; he recently bought a bicycle and cycles frequently along The Netherlands' picturesque canal banks.