A few days before the US withdrew its ambassador to Syria, I asked Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive what he planned to do.

Peter Voser had talked at the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants dinner in London about Shell’s duty to society, its role and occasional failings in Nigeria, and its consultations with the native peoples of the Arctic, which is rich in undiscovered oil. But he had said nothing about Syria, where Shell has a joint venture with a company controlled by a regime that has recently killed an estimated 3,000 of its citizens.

When I asked, he began by observing that being in the oil business meant you worked in incident-packed parts of the world. Shell was complying with US and European Union sanctions against Syria, which ban oil exports from the country. But there were 3,000 people in the Syrian joint venture and he had a duty to ensure they could continue to work safely. He added: “We are not in charge of sorting out the political problems in Syria.”