Shell advisor quits, accusing firm of ‘extreme harms’ to atmosphere | Shell

A senior safety consultant has stop working with Shell after 11 years, accusing the fossil gas producer in a bombshell public video of inflicting “excessive harms” to the atmosphere.

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for climate change risks” and urged others within the oil and fuel trade to “stroll away while there’s still time”.

The manager, who works for the independent agency Clout, ended her working relationship with Shell in an open letter to its executives and 1,400 staff. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she mentioned she had quit due to Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

Dennett accused the oil and gasoline firm of “operating past the design limits of our planetary techniques” and “not placing environmental safety earlier than production”.

She said: “Shell’s stated safety ambition is to ‘do no harm’ – ‘Aim Zero’, they call it – and it sounds honourable but they are completely failing on it.

“They know that continued oil and gas extraction causes excessive harms, to our climate, to our surroundings and to folks. And whatever they say, Shell is just not winding down on fossil fuels.”

Dennett instructed the Guardian she “couldn't marry these conflicts with my conscience”, including: “I could not carry that any longer, and I’m ready to deal with the consequences.”

Shell was a “major consumer” of Dennett’s enterprise, which specialises in evaluating security procedures in high-risk industries including oil and gas production. She began working with Shell in the aftermath of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which rocked the industry.

“I can no longer work for an organization that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the dangers of climate change and ecological collapse,” she mentioned. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions round net zero, they are not winding down on oil and gas, but planning to explore and extract way more.”

Dennett – a prison justice graduate who has spent her profession in research and consultancy – was impressed to stop working with Shell after watching information footage of Extinction Rebel local weather protesters urging the company’s employees to leave. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing mission encourages oil and gasoline staff to walk away from the business.

The guide, who runs inner safety surveys and is predicated in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to stroll away and “many people working in fossil fuel companies simply aren’t so lucky”.

She urged Shell’s executives to “look within the mirror and ask themselves in the event that they really imagine their imaginative and prescient for more oil and gasoline extraction secures a protected future for humanity”.

In late 2020, a number of Shell executives in its clean vitality sector left amid studies they were frustrated on the pace of Shell’s shift towards greener fuels.

Her announcement comes on the eve of Shell’s AGM in London on Tuesday. Its plans to cut back emissions can be discussed on the assembly the place the Dutch activist group Follow This may push for the corporate’s policies to be extra consistent with the Paris local weather accord. Shell’s board has told investors to reject the group’s resolution that asks it to set extra stringent climate goals.

The Shell investor Royal London has mentioned it intends to abstain on a vote on the firm’s local weather transition proposals.

The Shell chief govt, Ben van Beurden, could experience an investor riot towards his £13.5m pay packet at the AGM after the funding adviser Pirc urged a vote in opposition to it.

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A Shell spokesperson mentioned: “Be in little doubt, we are determined to ship on our world strategy to be a web zero firm by 2050 and hundreds of our people are working exhausting to realize this. We've set targets for the short, medium and long term, and have every intention of hitting them.

“We’re already investing billions of dollars in low-carbon power, although the world will nonetheless need oil and gasoline for decades to come in sectors that may’t be simply decarbonised.”

Shell also faces the prospect of a potential windfall tax to fund cuts to family payments after the power industry reported bumper earnings fuelled by the rise in market costs, prompting opposition events to name on the government to usher in a one-off levy.

On Monday, the biggest oil and fuel producer within the North Sea spoke out towards a one-off levy, arguing it will result in the business approving fewer projects.

Harbour Power’s chief government, Linda Cook dinner, advised the Financial Times: “A higher tax burden will make it more difficult for new oil and fuel initiatives to fulfill investment hurdle charges, which means fewer initiatives can be sanctioned.

“That is at a time when trade is being inspired to increase domestic UK oil and gas production and support an orderly power transition.”

Harbour has told the government it plans to speculate $6bn within the North Sea over three years as business makes its case against the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Cook had obtained a £4.6m “golden howdy” from the firm.