Shell Oil recently announced a joint-venture with New Orleans-based Dryades Savings Bank to offer as much as $7.5 million in small-business and community-development loans to minority-run businesses in the city through the bank. Under the plan, Dryades will research and approve commercial loan applicants, and Shell will fund up to 40 percent of each loan, most of which will be between $250,000 to $1 million. Shell established its Community Banking Initiative in 1998 in Houston and Los Angeles, and it has since been instituted in Washington, D.C., and now New Orleans.