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

A senior safety guide has give up working with Shell after 11 years, accusing the fossil gas producer in a bombshell public video of causing “extreme harms” to the environment.

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

The executive, who works for the unbiased company Clout, ended her working relationship with Shell in an open letter to its executives and 1,400 workers. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she said she had stop due to Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

Dennett accused the oil and fuel agency of “operating past the design limits of our planetary programs” and “not putting environmental security earlier than production”.

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

“They know that continued oil and fuel extraction causes extreme harms, to our local weather, to our environment and to folks. And no matter they are saying, Shell is just not winding down on fossil fuels.”

Dennett informed 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 “main client” of Dennett’s enterprise, which specialises in evaluating security procedures in high-risk industries including oil and gasoline production. She started 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 an organization that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the risks of climate change and ecological collapse,” she stated. “Because, opposite to Shell’s public expressions around web zero, they aren't winding down on oil and fuel, however planning to discover and extract far 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 local weather protesters urging the corporate’s employees to depart. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing project encourages oil and fuel workers to walk away from the trade.

The advisor, who runs inner safety surveys and is predicated in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to have the ability to stroll away and “many people working in fossil gasoline companies just aren’t so lucky”.

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

In late 2020, several Shell executives in its clean power sector left amid stories 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 can be discussed at the assembly the place the Dutch activist group Follow This may push for the company’s insurance policies to be extra in keeping with the Paris local weather accord. Shell’s board has told traders to reject the group’s resolution that asks it to set extra stringent climate goals.

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

The Shell chief executive, Ben van Beurden, may expertise an investor rise up towards his £13.5m pay packet on the AGM after the funding adviser Pirc urged a vote towards it.

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A Shell spokesperson mentioned: “Be in little doubt, we are decided to deliver on our international strategy to be a net zero firm by 2050 and hundreds of our persons are working exhausting to realize this. We've got set targets for the quick, medium and long run, and have every intention of hitting them.

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

Shell additionally faces the prospect of a potential windfall tax to fund cuts to household payments after the energy trade reported bumper profits fuelled by the increase in market prices, prompting opposition parties to name on the federal government to usher in a one-off levy.

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

Harbour Energy’s chief government, Linda Cook, informed the Monetary Times: “A higher tax burden will make it more challenging for brand new oil and fuel projects to meet investment hurdle rates, that means fewer tasks will likely be sanctioned.

“This is at a time when trade is being inspired to increase domestic UK oil and gasoline manufacturing and support an orderly vitality transition.”

Harbour has advised the government it plans to take a position $6bn in the North Sea over three years as business makes its case in opposition to the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Cook had obtained a £4.6m “golden hi there” from the firm.