Posts under ‘Bill Campbell’

By John Donovan

It seems that Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform has had another close call.

On Monday workers were evacuated and production shut down after natural gas began seeping out from under the platform.

All of the ingredients for a disastrous explosion, of the kind that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, which almost brought about the demise of BP and the explosion on Shell Brent Bravo, resulting from Shell management (Malcolm Brinded) failing to take adequate action after a safety audit exposed a “Touch F*** All” safety culture and falsification of safety records.

Printed below is a comment from a Shell North Sea Platform Safety & Maintenance Expert on the recent oil spill near the Gannet Alpha Platform.

…another example of reactive maintenance regime, i.e. allowing, through neglect, equipment to fail and then reacting to the failure rather than, as the Safety Case for Gannet prescribes, preventing failure in the first instance by application of appropriate maintenance, inspection and monitoring.

(Expert in question may be available to the media for comment)

It seems that not much has changed. Production, profits and FAT CAT bonuses take priority over the safety of offshore workers.

RELATED ARTICLES

Hypocrisy of Shell CEO Peter Voser on BP Gulf of Mexico disaster

Oil and gas spills in North Sea every week, papers reveal

Collusion between Shell and HSE in Brent Bravo cover-up

Bill Campbell quoted in Final Report on BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Gas leak evacuates Shell oil rig

February 02, 2012, 1:20 PM EST

By Eduard Gismatullin

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, is losing about $1 billion a year from drilling delays in the Gulf of Mexico since the 2010 Macondo disaster.

Shell’s production in the region will be curbed by about 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent this year, similar to 2011, Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said. The company expects to return to planned operations off the Gulf coast by 2014.

“The cash flow implications are a billion dollars or more per year relative to where we want to be,” Henry said in London today. “We are catching up.”

The company, which in March said it planned to raise output to 3.5 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2012, is now warning that production could be lower due to Gulf drilling delays, asset sales and oil and gas prices in the U.S.

The U.S. Interior Department issued new safety regulations after lifting the drilling moratorium in October 2010 put in place after BP Plc’s Macondo well exploded in April the same year. The blowout, which killed 11 and sank the drilling rig, led to hundreds of lawsuits against BP and its partners and contractors.

–Editors: Stephen Cunningham, Randall Hackley.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net

SOURCE ARTICLE

Shell may even go as far as paying a special dividend or buying back shares to maximize shareholder value, according to analysts at Citigroup Inc.

In a front page lead story in the Financial Times, our site was properly credited with breaking news of the restructuring plans of Peter Voser.

FROM OUR ARCHIVE: EXTRACT FROM A RELATED EMAIL MESSAGE SENT BY JOHN DONOVAN TO OVER 400 SENIOR SHELL EXECUTIVES

Congratulations!

I am writing to offer our best wishes on your appointment/new title, as announced on our website royaldutchshellplc.com within the lists of Shell senior executive appointments we published on 22 June and 3 August.

The unauthorised publication of leaked Shell confidential information on our site has become a news event in its own right, regularly reported by The Wall Street Journal and other news organisations.

In a front page lead story in the Financial Times, our site was credited with breaking news of the restructuring plans of Peter Voser.

Our role was acknowledged in many other news stories including, for example, the London Evening Standard which reported:

“Meanwhile, staff flocked to Royaldutchshell.com to attack the group’s management.”

Reuters also acknowledged “The Royaldutchshellplc.com website was the first to reveal news of the planned restructuring.”

Our insider sources know that we will protect anonymity.  If you ever feel the need to supply information, please contact me and I will advise on setting up secure communications.

SHELL BLOG

Comments posted by Shell employees on our “Shell Blog” have been quoted in many news articles.

If you want to keep in touch with uncensored grassroots opinion of Shell stakeholders, I would strongly recommend regular visits to the facility, as the comments are often insightful and reflect all shades of opinion. Why not post your own views? You can do so anonymously. What do you think about Shell executives being forced to reapply for their jobs? What do you make of the callous comment by Peter Voser that asking staff to reapply had been “an interesting exercise“?

You are also welcome to supply Shell related articles for unedited publication under your own name. We have published numerous articles on this basis from eminent Shell retirees, Shell executive Paddy Briggs, Shell International HSE Group Auditor, Bill Campbell, and Royal Dutch Shell Global Chief Petroleum Engineer, Iain Percival.

The Shell Blog has replaced “Tell Shell”, the official Shell Internet forum for open and lively debate, “temporarily suspended” (permanently) after we exposed the secret censorship of postings considered too open and too lively.

Shell General Counsel Richard Wiseman (now RDS Plc Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer) confirmed to us in an email dated 11 November 2005 Shell’s censorship of Tell Shell postings.

In the same email, Mr Wiseman stated:

The extraordinary tolerance shown to your internet activities ought to demonstrate better than anything else the fact that we are uninterested in, and unmoved by, your current activities

Richard Wiseman subsequently, at his own initiative, sent us an updated photograph of himself to display on our website (left).

In a further development revealing the truth, as opposed to the spin, we found out from documents obtained under the Data Protection Act that Shell set up a team in an attempt to counter our activities. The relevant internal email exposes the hostility towards us and the fact that it is is held in check by fear of reprisal on our part. If you find this difficult to believe, read the email.

So much for being uninterested and unmoved!

Update: Richard Wiseman retired from Shell in March 2011.

By John Donovan: 12 January 2012

The front page lead story published by the Financial Times newspaper today reports that European refiners have begun to sever links with Iran ahead of an EU meeting, which could impose a full oil embargo on the Iranian regime.

(A version of the article is also published on ft.com)

Iran is the world’s third-largest oil exporter.

Tensions and oil prices are heightened by the regimes threat to close the Strait of Hormuz.

The article reports that according to Argus Media, Royal Dutch Shell is the biggest supplier of Iranian crude.

As could be expected, Shell has been extremely sensitive about purchasing oil from the fanatical Iranian regime supplying road side bombs, which have maimed and killed many US and British soldiers, but has continued to do so. With Shell, money wins out over mere moral considerations.

On 28 October 2010, Shell CFO Simon Henry came clean after press reports on the subject and admitted that Shell has continued to trade with Iran:

“Simon Henry, Shell’s top financial official, said his company was still taking delivery of Iranian crude oil under the terms of its existing contracts with the Islamic republic.” (extract from UPI article)

The following month, November 2010, Reuters published an article which stated:

“Companies are still finding ways to buy Iranian oil. Royal Dutch Shell and some Italian and Spanish refiners buy Iranian barrels with finance coming from Chinese and Italian banks…”

Shell has in fact continued to buy oil from the Iranian regime for many years and and because of the obvious sensitivity, has on occasion used subterfuge to disguise shipping movements.

I discovered just how sensitive the issue is after sending an email in March 2007 to Bill O’Reilly at Fox News, under the innocuous subject heading “Shell’s treachery in Iran“.

As a result of making an application to Shell under the Data Protection Act, we discovered from Shell internal communications the company was compelled to supply, that my email had sent Shell into a panic on both sides of the Atlantic. This was out of concern that if the story was taken up by Fox News, it could result in a US boycott of Shell gasoline.

The internal emails also revealed anxiety over information being leaked to us:

“They are a continued source of leaks from inside Shell – if you read their on line blog you will see a lot of insider material”.

A media statement was drafted on a contingency basis.

As can be seen from the covering message, it contained the usual spin and was founded on deception:

“Greetings all – The lawyers are happy with the following response statement no changes from the draft I sent you yesterday). As discussed with xxxxxxx, we have phrased this as coming from Shell in the US, and have aimed to distance you as much as possible from what is essentially a dispute originating in the UK. Let’s hope there is no follow up and we don’t have to use anything.”

The Shell internal emails focused on our Iran initiative with Fox News, but also mentioned a surge in our activities relating to Sakhalin 2 and Shell North Sea “TFA” safety culture, as exposed by Bill Campbell, the former Group HSE Auditor of Shell International.

That same month, Shell set up an aggressive team to combat our activities. This was followed by an attempt to close down this website and the setting up of a related global spying operation targeting my family and all Shell employees, in conjunction with a US cyber intelligence unit partly staffed and funded by the FBI.

All in response to an entirely non commercial website publishing the truth about the dark side of Royal Dutch Shell, including its relationship with the Iranian regime.

RELATED

Royal Dutch Shell Iranian treachery

John

Oops these sort of things only happen to BP!

Our dear friend Mr Voser will no doubt be miffed that in the Gulf even a well designed to his`Utopian‘ Shell standards can dare to leak.  The report today on your website states that Shell wasn’t involved in the Deepwater Horizon spill last year in the Gulf of Mexico.

But the Deepwater Nautilus rig it is currently using has the exact same design and is considered a “sister” rig of the Deepwater Horizon.

This so called sister rig that Shell is using will by implication have the same design flaws as the Deepwater Horizon. Nothing has been done by the Industry as far as I am aware to remedy this situation.

Some examples

• the unwillingness of the operators to isolate all power supplies during a gas leak, mentioned in the previous Congressional report – because this by implication isolates the dynamic positioning thrusters and means that the emergency disconnect needs to be operated as the vessel drifts from the riser – has not been tackled by the Regulator with the implication that gas released from a well kick will enter areas where sources of ignition exist on Deepwater Nautilus as it did on Deepwater Horizon
• the technical investigation found that there was insufficient geographic separation of the air inlets to non hazardous areas from the moon pool or drilling facilities such as the mud treatment skid
• In 7,200 feet of water even if the BOP operates perfectly if gas from a kick has reached the surface before it is detected and is not directed overboard via the surge diverter (as was the case with Depwater Horizon) there is still sufficient gas escaping from the riser at the surface to ingress into the ventilation ducts of power generation modules et al
• the design of the gas detection systems on Deepwater Horizon were medieval when compared to North Sea standards
• Depwater Horizon, and by implication Nautilus, did not have what we in the North sea would recognise as a safe haven or Temporary Refuge and in general protection of safety critical systems from explosion overpressure’s was completely inadequate including escape routes to lifeboats.

To quote the latest report covered on your web-site from the New York Times re lessons learned from Deepwater Horizon.

The search for new oil and gas reserves must be part of a balanced energy policy. But the enduring lesson of the Deepwater Horizon is that complacency can easily lead to disaster. The cost of the Deepwater Horizon blowout has been huge in both lost income and natural resource damage. The ultimate tally to BP and its partners could run as high as $40 billion, with civil penalties. The inescapable bottom line is that if industry wants to keep drilling, it needs to commit fully to doing things differently. As do the regulators.

In my book it is incredibly complacent that a quarter of  century after the lessons were learned on Piper Alpha to prevent as far as was reasonably practicable gas from being ignited on the limited confines of an offshore installation Shell and others continue to use vessels which are intrinsically dangerous due to the lack of mitigation against this major accident event although they are now perfectly aware that these hazards exist. A commitment to doing things differently would be to adopt at least some of the salutary lessons learned from the deaths of 167 souls all those years ago.

Bill Campbell

RELATED ARTICLES

A Look at Deepwater Horizon: Were the Risks For Those On Board Reasonable?

Shell’s North Sea Reputation sunk by severe corrosion

Deepwater Horizon Regulatory Failures

BILL CAMPBELL REFERENCE TO THE PIPER ALPHA DISASTER

EXTRACT FROM “PAYING FOR THE PIPER“

Violation of this court order, Shell warned, could result in the families and survivors concerned being ‘subject to bodily imprisonment: Faced with such legal harassment, even case-hardened lawyers involved in the proceedings reeled in disbelief

(SEE: Shell’s North Sea history of safety violations, blackmail and blacklisting)

Mr Campbell insisted it is only a matter of time before there is another major tragedy in the North Sea. He said: “According to public domain data there were 85 gas releases and 443 dangerous occurrences last year. If you are getting 85 gas leaks that’s one and a half, or two, leaks a week. The probability of an undesirable event is very high.”

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

By John Donovan

The Sunday Express has today published an article under the headline: “Rusting rigs spark fears of oil tragedy” (above newspaper article) and “SCOTTISH OIL RIGS IN DIRE STRAITS” (online version).

The newspaper approached us for assistance and we were happy to supply extensive information, including the revealing letter we obtained from the Health & Safety Executive that is mentioned in the article.

We also put the Sunday Express journalist Paula Murray into contact with Bill Campbell, the retired HSE Group Auditor of Shell International to led the safety audit team on Shell North Sea platforms in 1999 which exposed a “Touch F*** All” maintenance culture with bodged repairs and falsified safety records. A more recent report (in 2008) by upstreamonline revealed that even the oil rig lifeboats were not seaworthy.

Shell management actions on North Sea employee safety appear to be completely different to its approach on the Pearl Gas-to-liquids project in Qatar, which apparently has an exemplary safety record. Is it because North Sea operations are viewed as rapidly becoming past history, whereas Pearl is seen as the money-spinning future?

If so, it is unfortunate and dangerous  for employees and contractors working offshore for Shell in the North Sea.

If, God forbid, there is a major disaster on a Shell North Sea facility, relevant Shell senior managers will find themselves in an unenviable position after ignoring so many alarm bells rang so loudly and incessantly by Bill Campbell since 1999.

The video taken last month shows an offshore worker hammering a hole through the floor of one of the platforms, sending chunks of the metal frame tumbling into the North Sea hundreds of feet below.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Express has also obtained a damning letter from the Health and Safety Executive following a summer inspection that found a 15,000-hour backlog in essential maintenance on one rig alone.

In it officials warn of the danger of some of the structure falling down “as the integrity worsens”.

Some rigs are being forced to use scaffolding to support failing hand railings and boards on the worst affected walkways to prevent workers falling through rusting metalwork.

Experts say that about half of the oil and gas platforms operating off the east coast of Scotland have already exceeded their “best before” dates, some by as much as 20 years, leading to fears of a major catastrophe.

Now the emergence of the footage from the undisclosed rig has sparked fresh demands for the safety of operations in the North Sea to be urgently reviewed.

Bill Campbell, former Group Auditor for Shell International and now a safety campaigner, said: “The useful life of any mechanical man-made structure can only be reached if maintained and inspected throughout its life.

“But the dominant failure characteristic for offshore installations is age-related. This footage testing the gratings was taken some weeks ago and shows what we already know.”

Mr Campbell added that he believed many rig workers are “blissfully unaware of the risks they are taking”.

More than 23 years have passed since 168 men died following an explosion on the Piper Alpha platform that also left 61 workers injured.

In the last 12 months there have been hundreds of dangerous incidents offshore with improvement notices handed out to various companies.

Last month Royal Dutch Shell battled an oil leak some 120 miles from Aberdeen in the biggest incident in a decade that saw more than 200 tonnes of oil spill into the sea.

The Sunday Express has obtained a report from the Health and Safety Executive of an inspection on Shell’s Brent C platform in July, which reveals “areas of the installation are suffering from severe corrosion”. Officials also point out that “redundant equipment did not appear to be inspected or  maintained and there is a risk that some aspects may pose a dropped object threat as integrity worsens”.

In a letter to Shell, Fraser Easton, HM Principal Inspector of Health and Safety, said he found a “significant maintenance backlog” exceeding 15,000 hours and demanded assurances that lives were not at risk.

Mr Campbell insisted it is only a matter of time before there is another major tragedy in the North Sea. He said: “According to public domain data there were 85 gas releases and 443 dangerous occurrences last year. If you are getting 85 gas leaks that’s one and a half, or two, leaks a week. The probability of an undesirable event is very high.”

But industry representative Oil & Gas UK, which organised a safety summit earlier this month, insisted the HSE’s most recent statistics show the number of major and significant gas leaks is already going down.

Robert Paterson, health and safety director, said: “The offshore industry invests significant funds, time and energy to ensure that its installations remain in a safe condition. All safety-critical systems on every North Sea platform are subject to regular and rigorous inspections.”

SOURCE ARTICLE

PDF Version of article

RELATED RECENT ARTICLES, MOST OF WHICH REFER TO BILL CAMPBELL

Leaked Shell Sigma3 document may hold clue to cause of Gannet oil spill: RoyalDutchShellPlc.com

Former Shell chairman James Smith to lead deregulation of UK oil and gas industry: Telegraph

UK Offshore Regulator Mulls Naming North Sea Spill Offenders: Dow Jones Newswires

Warning North Sea oil platforms could be near collapse: STV

Shell defends reporting of North Sea oil spill: The Guardian

Shell’s North Sea Reputation sunk by severe corrosion: Sunday Times/RoyalDutchShellPlc.com

Investigation into leak at Shell’s North Sea platform to get under way news: domain-b.com

No wonder bits are falling off the Shell Brent Platforms

Oil spill investigation begins as Shell plugs North Sea leak: The Guardian

Oil production in North Sea scrutinized: UPI

Halt Shell projects in North Sea, says WWF: The Press & Journal

Investigation gets under way as Shell plugs North Sea oil leak: Telegraph

Revealed: Shell’s poor safety record in the UK: Herald Scotland

Shell could face fines over Gannet oil spill: Telegraph

Shell’s Touch Fuck All culture on North Sea Platforms

So let’s deregulate and make a dash for abandonment at minimum cost and hope we get lucky seems to be the game.  And also let’s put the Chairman of the North Sea’s worst offending Company in charge of the process. Hopefully sense will prevail before the next almost inevitable major accident event when one of the 85 gas leaks per year coincides with a source of ignition.

COMMENT SENT BY BILL CAMPBELL TO ROWENA MASON ON HER RECENT TELEGRAPH ARTICLE: Former Shell chairman James Smith to lead deregulation of UK oil and gas industry

Rowena – interesting article

With some 50 serious injuries a year (up by 20) and over 400 reported dangerous occurrences 85 of which were losses of containment of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere (1) it seems an inappropriate time to reduce regulation. Apart from the recent oil spill on Gannet where Shell accept a causal factor may have been lack of maintenance and inspection, with the HSE stating publicly that lack of maintenance offshore could have severe consequences generally across the oilfield, it seems that better and more proactive oversight of this industry is needed rather than less.

(1) Based on public domain data from HSE for year 2009/10, this year figs not yet available, dangerous occurrence is by Government definition under the relevant legislation.

With 50 % of offshore installations well past their original design life (normally 25 years) with some by as much as 20 years,  failure is endemic due to ageing, what we call age related failure.  The failure mechanisms effect all aspects of the installation where carbon steel is used from the primary structure to pipe, grating, floors, decks et al the list goes on.  The corrosion grows and spreads, perniciously like a cancer, through the whole rig, in what is a relatively warm but highly saline atmosphere causing the surface corrosion of metal allied in pipelines with internal erosion caused by reservoir sands carried to the surface by the flow of oil and gas.

Assets which go beyond their design life need more expenditure on maintenance, not less.  And, beyond the design life, sometimes called operating or useful life, the risks of continued operation increase with time.

Just at the time when costs are rising revenue is in sharp decline as the reservoirs deplete.  Deregulation can be motivated I suspect as a cost saving initiative

All the circumstances we need to exist for the most common cause of major accidents worldwide that is bad behaviour driven by conflict of interest. In this case the conflict between cost of increased maintenance, inspection and monitoring and loss of revenue to support these costs without going into the red.

So let’s deregulate and make a dash for abandonment at minimum cost and hope we get lucky seems to be the game.  And also let’s put the Chairman of the North Sea’s worst offending Company in charge of the process. ( Freedom of Information data shows Shell is the industry leader in gas leaks by a good measure).  It for example had Brent Charlie shut down in January with the HSE concerned about potential catastrophic risks if it continued to operate.  So Mr Smith’s appointment!  He is probably a nice man but Fox in charge of the hen house comes to mind.

Hopefully sense will prevail before the next almost inevitable major accident event when one of the 85 gas leaks per year coincides with a source of ignition.

regards

Bill Campbell

PS: I have contributed input to your paper before, also Guardian and Times, Channel 4, STV, BBC etc

WHAT WILL BILL CAMPBELL MAKE OF THIS? PUTTING A FOX IN CHARGE OF THE HEN HOUSE?

The Government has appointed James Smith, the former UK chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, to lead a radical deregulation of the oil and gas industry.

By Rowena Mason 6:00AM BST 07 Sep 2011