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

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

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for local weather change dangers” and urged others within the oil and fuel trade to “walk away while 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 staff. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she mentioned she had stop because of Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

Dennett accused the oil and fuel firm of “operating beyond the design limits of our planetary methods” and “not putting environmental security earlier than manufacturing”.

She said: “Shell’s stated security ambition is to ‘do no harm’ – ‘Goal Zero’, they call it – and it sounds honourable however they're completely failing on it.

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

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

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

“I can now not work for a company that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the dangers of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she stated. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions round web zero, they are not winding down on oil and fuel, however planning to discover and extract far more.”

Dennett – a prison 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 corporate’s staff to depart. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing mission encourages oil and gasoline workers to walk away from the business.

The advisor, who runs inside safety surveys and relies in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to have the ability to walk away and “many people working in fossil gas corporations just aren’t so fortunate”.

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

In late 2020, a number of Shell executives in its clean energy sector left amid reviews they had been pissed off 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 might be discussed on the assembly where the Dutch activist group Observe This will push for the company’s policies to be more per the Paris local weather accord. Shell’s board has instructed buyers to reject the group’s decision that asks it to set more stringent climate objectives.

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

The Shell chief government, Ben van Beurden, may expertise an investor riot in opposition to his £13.5m pay packet at the AGM after the funding adviser Pirc urged a vote against it.

Sign as much as the every day Business Right now electronic mail or follow Guardian Enterprise on Twitter at @BusinessDesk

A Shell spokesperson stated: “Be in little doubt, we are determined to ship on our international strategy to be a net zero firm by 2050 and hundreds of our persons are working laborious to realize this. We have set targets for the quick, medium and long run, and have each intention of hitting them.

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

Shell additionally faces the prospect of a possible windfall tax to fund cuts to family payments after the power trade reported bumper earnings fuelled by the rise in market prices, prompting opposition parties to name 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 against a one-off levy, arguing it will result in the industry approving fewer initiatives.

Harbour Vitality’s chief govt, Linda Cook, told the Financial Times: “The next tax burden will make it more challenging for new oil and gasoline initiatives to fulfill funding hurdle rates, meaning fewer projects will likely be sanctioned.

“That is at a time when trade is being encouraged to extend home UK oil and fuel production and help an orderly vitality transition.”

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