Shell Dings BP...Again

In Silicon Valley, the interesting spat to watch is Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL). Once gentle rivals who found their way into a profitable partnership, the two seem set for a schoolyard scrap.

Well, the tech titans don't have much on Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A) and BP (NYSE: BP), Europe's two largest oil companies.

The two oil giants have always been rivals, but it wasn't that long ago that they reportedly held merger talks and when those talks were held, the companies' respective market values were close enough that figuring out buyer and the seller would have been difficult.

Not today. Shell is worth $67 billion more than BP and probably loving every penny of that difference.

Shell hasn't been shy about criticizing BP following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, probably because the ensuing moratorium on deepwater drilling put a crimp in Shell's plans to start a project in Alaska.

High-ranking Shell executives, CEO Peter Voser included, have aired their feelings in the court of public opinion and they don't seem ready to stop.

Add this to the latest hit in the Shell/BP saga: Shell is now saying BP's brand positioning misled consumers.

The remarks were made by a Shell executive at the Brand Finance Forum. At the core of the remarks was quest a comment that BP's "Beyond Petroleum" ad campaigns were misleading.

Who said oil companies weren't fun to watch?