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

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

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

The executive, who works for the independent company Clout, ended her working relationship with Shell in an open letter to its executives and 1,400 employees. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she mentioned she had give up due to Shell’s “double-talk on climate”.

Dennett accused the oil and gas agency of “working beyond the design limits of our planetary methods” and “not placing environmental security earlier than manufacturing”.

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

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

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

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

“I can now not work for a company that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the risks of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she said. “Because, contrary to Shell’s public expressions around net zero, they aren't winding down on oil and fuel, however planning to discover and extract much more.”

Dennett – a legal justice graduate who has spent her profession in analysis and consultancy – was impressed to cease working with Shell after watching information footage of Extinction Rebel climate protesters urging the company’s workers to go away. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing project encourages oil and gas staff to stroll away from the trade.

The guide, who runs inner security surveys and relies in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to have the ability to walk 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 really consider their vision for extra oil and gasoline extraction secures a secure future for humanity”.

In late 2020, several Shell executives in its clean vitality sector left amid reviews they had been annoyed on the pace of Shell’s shift in direction of greener fuels.

Her announcement comes on the eve of Shell’s AGM in London on Tuesday. Its plans to cut back emissions might be mentioned at the assembly the place the Dutch activist group Follow This will push for the corporate’s insurance policies to be extra per the Paris local weather accord. Shell’s board has instructed investors to reject the group’s decision that asks it to set more stringent climate objectives.

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

The Shell chief govt, Ben van Beurden, could expertise an investor rebel against his £13.5m pay packet on the AGM after the funding adviser Pirc urged a vote against it.

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A Shell spokesperson mentioned: “Be in no doubt, we are determined to ship on our world strategy to be a internet zero firm by 2050 and hundreds of our individuals are working arduous to achieve this. We now have set targets for the brief, medium and long run, and have each intention of hitting them.

“We’re already investing billions of dollars in low-carbon vitality, although the world will nonetheless want oil and gasoline for many years to come back in sectors that can’t be easily decarbonised.”

Shell also faces the prospect of a possible windfall tax to fund cuts to household bills after the vitality industry reported bumper earnings fuelled by the rise in market costs, prompting opposition events to call on the federal government to bring in a one-off levy.

On Monday, the most important oil and gasoline producer in the North Sea spoke out towards a one-off levy, arguing it might result in the trade approving fewer tasks.

Harbour Vitality’s chief executive, Linda Cook dinner, instructed the Monetary Occasions: “The next tax burden will make it tougher for brand new oil and fuel tasks to fulfill funding hurdle charges, meaning fewer tasks will probably be sanctioned.

“This is at a time when business is being encouraged to extend home UK oil and gasoline manufacturing and assist an orderly vitality transition.”

Harbour has advised the government it plans to invest $6bn in the North Sea over three years as business makes its case towards the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Cook dinner had obtained a £4.6m “golden good day” from the agency.