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

A senior security guide has stop working with Shell after 11 years, accusing the fossil fuel producer in a bombshell public video of inflicting “excessive harms” to the setting.

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

The manager, who works for the independent company 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 gasoline agency of “working beyond the design limits of our planetary methods” and “not placing environmental safety before production”.

She stated: “Shell’s stated security ambition is to ‘do no hurt’ – ‘Aim Zero’, they name it – and it sounds honourable but they're utterly failing on it.

“They know that continued oil and gasoline extraction causes excessive harms, to our climate, to the environment and to people. 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 couldn't carry that any longer, and I’m ready to take care of the implications.”

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

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

Dennett – a legal justice graduate who has spent her career in analysis and consultancy – was impressed to cease working with Shell after watching news footage of Extinction Insurrection local weather protesters urging the corporate’s employees to go away. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing undertaking encourages oil and gasoline workers to walk away from the industry.

The guide, who runs internal safety surveys and relies in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to stroll away and “many people working in fossil gas firms just aren’t so fortunate”.

She urged Shell’s executives to “look within the mirror and ask themselves if they actually 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 reviews they had been frustrated on the tempo 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 shall be discussed at the meeting where the Dutch activist group Follow It will push for the company’s insurance policies to be extra per the Paris climate accord. Shell’s board has informed traders to reject the group’s resolution that asks it to set extra stringent local weather 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 government, Ben van Beurden, may expertise an investor revolt against his £13.5m pay packet at the AGM after the investment adviser Pirc urged a vote towards it.

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A Shell spokesperson mentioned: “Be in little question, we are determined to deliver on our world strategy to be a web zero company by 2050 and thousands of our individuals are working laborious to attain this. We now 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 energy, although the world will still want oil and gas for many years to return in sectors that can’t be simply decarbonised.”

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

On Monday, the biggest oil and gas producer in the North Sea spoke out against a one-off levy, arguing it might lead to the business approving fewer tasks.

Harbour Power’s chief govt, Linda Prepare dinner, advised the Monetary Times: “A higher tax burden will make it tougher for brand new oil and fuel tasks to satisfy funding hurdle charges, that means fewer initiatives will be sanctioned.

“That is at a time when business is being inspired to increase home UK oil and gas production and assist an orderly vitality transition.”

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