Shell guide quits, accusing agency of ‘excessive harms’ to environment | Shell

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

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for local weather change dangers” and urged others in the oil and gas industry to “stroll away while there’s nonetheless time”.

The manager, who works for the impartial 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 give up because of Shell’s “double-talk on climate”.

Dennett accused the oil and gas firm of “working beyond the design limits of our planetary programs” and “not putting environmental safety before production”.

She stated: “Shell’s acknowledged safety ambition is to ‘do no harm’ – ‘Goal Zero’, they call it – and it sounds honourable however they are fully failing on it.

“They know that continued oil and gas extraction causes excessive harms, to our local weather, to our surroundings and to folks. And whatever they are saying, Shell is solely not winding down on fossil fuels.”

Dennett told the Guardian she “couldn't marry these conflicts with my conscience”, adding: “I couldn't carry that any longer, and I’m able to take care of the results.”

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

“I can no longer work for a company that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the risks of climate change and ecological collapse,” she said. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions round web zero, they don't seem to be winding down on oil and gasoline, however planning to explore and extract way more.”

Dennett – a legal justice graduate who has spent her career in research and consultancy – was impressed to stop working with Shell after watching news footage of Extinction Insurrection climate protesters urging the company’s workers to go away. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing undertaking encourages oil and gas workers to walk away from the business.

The guide, who runs inner safety surveys and is based in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to walk away and “many individuals working in fossil gasoline corporations simply aren’t so lucky”.

She urged Shell’s executives to “look in the mirror and ask themselves in the event that they actually believe their imaginative and prescient for more oil and gas extraction secures a secure future for humanity”.

In late 2020, several Shell executives in its clear energy sector left amid stories they had been frustrated on the pace of Shell’s shift in the direction of greener fuels.

Her announcement comes on the eve of Shell’s AGM in London on Tuesday. Its plans to reduce emissions will likely be mentioned at the meeting where the Dutch activist group Comply with It will push for the corporate’s policies to be extra in keeping with the Paris climate accord. Shell’s board has told traders to reject the group’s resolution that asks it to set extra stringent climate objectives.

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

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

Signal up to the every day Business Today e-mail or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk

A Shell spokesperson stated: “Be in no doubt, we are decided to ship on our international technique to be a internet zero firm by 2050 and thousands of our people are working laborious to attain this. Now we have set targets for the short, medium and long run, and have each intention of hitting them.

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

Shell also faces the prospect of a possible windfall tax to fund cuts to household payments after the energy trade reported bumper income fuelled by the rise in market costs, prompting opposition events to call on the federal government to usher in a one-off levy.

On Monday, the most important oil and fuel producer within the North Sea spoke out in opposition to a one-off levy, arguing it might result in the trade approving fewer initiatives.

Harbour Vitality’s chief govt, Linda Cook, advised the Financial Times: “The next tax burden will make it tougher for brand spanking new oil and fuel initiatives to meet funding hurdle rates, meaning fewer tasks will probably be sanctioned.

“That is at a time when industry is being inspired to increase home UK oil and gas production and help an orderly power transition.”

Harbour has informed the federal government it plans to invest $6bn in the North Sea over three years as trade makes its case in opposition to the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Cook had acquired a £4.6m “golden hi there” from the agency.