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

A senior safety marketing consultant 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 environment.

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for climate change dangers” and urged others within the oil and gasoline business to “walk away whereas there’s nonetheless time”.

The chief, who works for the independent agency 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 said she had give up due to Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

Dennett accused the oil and fuel agency of “working beyond the design limits of our planetary systems” and “not putting environmental safety before production”.

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

“They know that continued oil and fuel extraction causes extreme harms, to our climate, to our surroundings and to people. And whatever they say, Shell is solely 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 ready to take care of the results.”

Shell was a “major shopper” of Dennett’s business, which specialises in evaluating safety procedures in high-risk industries including oil and gas manufacturing. 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 an organization that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the risks of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she stated. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions around web zero, they don't seem to be winding down on oil and gasoline, but planning to discover and extract rather more.”

Dennett – a prison justice graduate who has spent her career in research and consultancy – was impressed to cease working with Shell after watching information footage of Extinction Insurrection climate protesters urging the company’s workers to leave. The motion’s TruthTeller whistleblowing undertaking encourages oil and fuel workers to walk away from the business.

The advisor, who runs internal security surveys and is predicated in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to walk away and “many people working in fossil gas corporations simply aren’t so lucky”.

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

In late 2020, a number of Shell executives in its clean energy sector left amid reports they had been pissed off on the pace 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 will likely be discussed at the assembly the place the Dutch activist group Comply with This will push for the company’s insurance policies to be extra in step with the Paris climate accord. Shell’s board has informed buyers to reject the group’s decision that asks it to set extra stringent climate 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 executive, Ben van Beurden, could expertise an investor rebel in opposition to his £13.5m pay packet at the AGM after the investment adviser Pirc urged a vote towards it.

Signal as much as the every day Enterprise As we speak e-mail or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk

A Shell spokesperson stated: “Be in no doubt, we are determined to ship on our international technique to be a net zero company by 2050 and hundreds of our persons are working onerous to achieve this. We now have 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 nonetheless need oil and fuel for decades to come back in sectors that may’t be simply decarbonised.”

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

On Monday, the largest oil and gasoline producer in the North Sea spoke out against a one-off levy, arguing it could result in the business approving fewer initiatives.

Harbour Energy’s chief executive, Linda Cook dinner, told the Financial Instances: “A better tax burden will make it tougher for brand new oil and gasoline tasks to fulfill investment hurdle charges, which means fewer initiatives can be sanctioned.

“That is at a time when business is being inspired to increase home UK oil and gas production and help an orderly power transition.”

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