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

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

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for local weather change risks” and urged others within the oil and gasoline trade to “walk away while there’s still 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 workers. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she said she had quit due to Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

Dennett accused the oil and gas firm of “working beyond the design limits of our planetary systems” and “not putting environmental safety earlier than production”.

She mentioned: “Shell’s acknowledged security ambition is to ‘do no harm’ – ‘Objective Zero’, they call it – and it sounds honourable but they're utterly failing on it.

“They know that continued oil and gasoline extraction causes extreme harms, to our climate, to our environment and to folks. And whatever they are saying, Shell is simply not winding down on fossil fuels.”

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

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

“I can now not work for an organization that ignores all of the alarms and dismisses the dangers of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she said. “Because, opposite to Shell’s public expressions around web zero, they are not winding down on oil and gas, however planning to explore and extract much more.”

Dennett – a legal justice graduate who has spent her profession in research and consultancy – was impressed to cease working with Shell after watching information footage of Extinction Riot climate protesters urging the corporate’s workers to go away. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing undertaking encourages oil and gasoline staff to walk away from the trade.

The consultant, who runs internal safety surveys and is based in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to walk away and “many people working in fossil gasoline corporations simply aren’t so fortunate”.

She urged Shell’s executives to “look within the mirror and ask themselves if they actually consider their imaginative and prescient for more oil and gas extraction secures a secure future for humanity”.

In late 2020, a number of Shell executives in its clear vitality sector left amid reports they had been annoyed at the tempo 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 reduce emissions can be mentioned at the assembly where the Dutch activist group Follow This will push for the company’s policies to be extra in keeping with the Paris local weather accord. Shell’s board has advised investors to reject the group’s resolution 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 firm’s local weather transition proposals.

The Shell chief government, Ben van Beurden, could experience an investor rebellion in opposition to 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 said: “Be in little doubt, we are determined to ship on our international technique to be a internet zero firm by 2050 and thousands of our individuals are working hard to realize this. Now we 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, though the world will nonetheless need oil and gas for decades to come in sectors that can’t be simply decarbonised.”

Shell also faces the prospect of a potential windfall tax to fund cuts to family bills after the energy trade reported bumper income fuelled by the increase in market prices, prompting opposition parties to name on the government to bring in a one-off levy.

On Monday, the largest oil and gas producer within the North Sea spoke out against a one-off levy, arguing it will lead to the trade approving fewer projects.

Harbour Power’s chief govt, Linda Prepare dinner, instructed the Financial Times: “A higher tax burden will make it more difficult for new oil and gasoline tasks to satisfy funding hurdle rates, that means fewer initiatives will likely be sanctioned.

“That is at a time when industry is being inspired to increase domestic UK oil and gasoline manufacturing and assist an orderly energy transition.”

Harbour has instructed the federal government it plans to speculate $6bn within the North Sea over three years as trade makes its case in opposition to the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Prepare dinner had obtained a £4.6m “golden hiya” from the firm.