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

A senior security 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 atmosphere.

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for local weather change risks” and urged others within the oil and gas trade to “walk away while there’s nonetheless time”.

The chief, who works for the unbiased agency 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 quit due to Shell’s “double-talk on climate”.

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

She mentioned: “Shell’s acknowledged safety ambition is to ‘do no hurt’ – ‘Objective Zero’, they name it – and it sounds honourable however they're fully failing on it.

“They know that continued oil and fuel extraction causes extreme harms, to our climate, to our environment and to individuals. And no matter they are saying, Shell is simply not winding down on fossil fuels.”

Dennett informed the Guardian she “couldn't marry these conflicts with my conscience”, including: “I couldn't carry that any longer, and I’m ready to cope with the results.”

Shell was a “main consumer” of Dennett’s business, which specialises in evaluating security procedures in high-risk industries together with oil and gas manufacturing. She started working with Shell in the aftermath of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which rocked the industry.

“I can no longer work for an organization that ignores all of the alarms and dismisses the risks of climate change and ecological collapse,” she stated. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions round net zero, they are not winding down on oil and fuel, but planning to discover and extract rather more.”

Dennett – a legal justice graduate who has spent her profession in research and consultancy – was inspired to cease working with Shell after watching news footage of Extinction Rise up climate protesters urging the corporate’s workers to leave. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing challenge encourages oil and gas staff to walk away from the business.

The guide, who runs internal safety surveys and is predicated in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to stroll away and “many people working in fossil fuel companies just aren’t so lucky”.

She urged Shell’s executives to “look within the mirror and ask themselves in the event that they really consider their imaginative and prescient for more oil and fuel extraction secures a safe future for humanity”.

In late 2020, several Shell executives in its clear energy sector left amid studies they had been pissed off on the tempo of Shell’s shift towards greener fuels.

Her announcement comes on the eve of Shell’s AGM in London on Tuesday. Its plans to cut back emissions might be discussed at the meeting the place the Dutch activist group Observe It will push for the corporate’s insurance policies to be more according to the Paris climate accord. Shell’s board has instructed investors to reject the group’s decision that asks it to set extra stringent local weather targets.

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, may experience an investor insurrection against his £13.5m pay packet on the AGM after the investment adviser Pirc urged a vote towards it.

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A Shell spokesperson stated: “Be in little question, we are determined to deliver on our global strategy to be a internet zero company by 2050 and 1000's of our persons are working exhausting to realize this. Now we have set targets for the quick, medium and long term, and have every intention of hitting them.

“We’re already investing billions of dollars in low-carbon power, though the world will nonetheless want oil and gas for many years to come in sectors that may’t be simply decarbonised.”

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

On Monday, the largest oil and fuel producer in the North Sea spoke out in opposition to a one-off levy, arguing it will result in the trade approving fewer initiatives.

Harbour Energy’s chief executive, Linda Prepare dinner, advised the Financial Occasions: “The next tax burden will make it more challenging for brand new oil and fuel initiatives to satisfy funding hurdle rates, that means fewer projects can be sanctioned.

“That is at a time when trade is being inspired to increase home UK oil and gas production and support an orderly vitality transition.”

Harbour has advised the federal government it plans to speculate $6bn in the North Sea over three years as trade makes its case against the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Cook dinner had received a £4.6m “golden good day” from the firm.