Shell consultant quits, accusing firm of ‘extreme harms’ to environment | Shell

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

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for local weather change dangers” and urged others within the oil and gasoline industry to “stroll away whereas 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 employees. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she said she had stop due to Shell’s “double-talk on climate”.

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

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

“They know that continued oil and gasoline extraction causes excessive harms, to our local weather, to the environment and to folks. And whatever they say, Shell is just not winding down on fossil fuels.”

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

Shell was a “main 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 not work for a corporation that ignores all of the alarms and dismisses the risks of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she said. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions around internet zero, they don't seem to be winding down on oil and fuel, however planning to explore and extract much more.”

Dennett – a felony justice graduate who has spent her career in analysis and consultancy – was impressed to stop working with Shell after watching information footage of Extinction Riot climate protesters urging the company’s workers to depart. The motion’s TruthTeller whistleblowing challenge encourages oil and gasoline workers to walk away from the business.

The guide, who runs inner security surveys and is based in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to walk away and “many people working in fossil fuel companies just 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 vision for more oil and gas extraction secures a safe future for humanity”.

In late 2020, several Shell executives in its clear vitality sector left amid studies they had been pissed off 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 scale back emissions will be mentioned on the meeting the place the Dutch activist group Follow This can push for the company’s insurance policies to be more in step with the Paris climate accord. Shell’s board has told investors to reject the group’s decision that asks it to set extra stringent climate targets.

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

The Shell chief executive, Ben van Beurden, might expertise an investor insurrection towards his £13.5m pay packet on the AGM after the investment adviser Pirc urged a vote in opposition to it.

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A Shell spokesperson mentioned: “Be in no doubt, we are determined to ship on our global technique to be a web zero company by 2050 and hundreds of our individuals are working hard 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, though the world will still need oil and gas for decades to come in sectors that can’t be easily decarbonised.”

Shell also faces the prospect of a potential windfall tax to fund cuts to family payments after the vitality trade reported bumper profits fuelled by the rise in market costs, prompting opposition events to call on the government to bring in a one-off levy.

On Monday, the largest oil and fuel producer in the North Sea spoke out towards a one-off levy, arguing it will result in the industry approving fewer tasks.

Harbour Energy’s chief government, Linda Prepare dinner, instructed the Monetary Occasions: “A higher tax burden will make it more challenging for new oil and gas projects to meet investment hurdle rates, which means fewer projects might be sanctioned.

“This is at a time when business is being encouraged to extend domestic UK oil and gasoline production and help an orderly power transition.”

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