Shell advisor quits, accusing agency of ‘extreme harms’ to setting | Shell

A senior security guide has give up 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 in the oil and fuel business to “walk away whereas there’s nonetheless time”.

The manager, who works for the independent agency 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 mentioned she had quit due to Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

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

She said: “Shell’s said security ambition is to ‘do no harm’ – ‘Aim Zero’, they call 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 individuals. 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 could not carry that any longer, and I’m ready to take care of the consequences.”

Shell was a “major client” of Dennett’s business, which specialises in evaluating safety procedures in high-risk industries together with oil and gasoline production. She began 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 local weather change and ecological collapse,” she said. “As a result of, contrary to Shell’s public expressions around web zero, they aren't winding down on oil and gas, but planning to discover and extract far more.”

Dennett – a felony justice graduate who has spent her profession in research and consultancy – was inspired to stop working with Shell after watching news footage of Extinction Rebellion local weather protesters urging the corporate’s employees to go away. The motion’s TruthTeller whistleblowing undertaking encourages oil and fuel employees to walk away from the business.

The consultant, who runs internal safety surveys and relies in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to walk away and “many individuals working in fossil fuel companies simply 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 more oil and gasoline extraction secures a secure future for humanity”.

In late 2020, several Shell executives in its clear vitality sector left amid reports they had been frustrated on the pace of Shell’s shift towards greener fuels.

Her announcement comes on the eve of Shell’s AGM in London on Tuesday. Its plans to reduce emissions shall be mentioned on the meeting where the Dutch activist group Observe This may push for the company’s policies to be more in line with the Paris climate accord. Shell’s board has told traders to reject the group’s resolution that asks it to set more stringent local weather goals.

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 govt, Ben van Beurden, might experience an investor rebellion 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 said: “Be in no doubt, we're determined to ship on our international strategy to be a net zero firm by 2050 and hundreds of our persons are working laborious to achieve this. We've got 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 energy, although the world will nonetheless want oil and gasoline for decades to come back in sectors that can’t be simply decarbonised.”

Shell also faces the prospect of a possible windfall tax to fund cuts to family payments after the power trade reported bumper earnings fuelled by the increase in market prices, prompting opposition events to call on the federal government to bring in a one-off levy.

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

Harbour Power’s chief government, Linda Cook dinner, advised the Monetary Times: “A higher tax burden will make it tougher for new oil and gasoline projects to satisfy investment hurdle rates, that means fewer initiatives might be sanctioned.

“That is at a time when trade is being encouraged to increase home UK oil and gasoline manufacturing and help an orderly energy transition.”

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