Posts under ‘Shell Employee Safety’

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

9 February 2012

Nearly 50 workers had to be evacuated from a North Sea oil platform after natural gas began seeping out beneath it, it has emerged.

Shell said staff were taken off the Gannet Alpha installation on Monday as a precaution. Production was shut down.

The oil giant said the incident was not linked to last August’s leak of more than 200 tonnes of oil from a pipeline beneath the Gannet Alpha.

The Health and Safety Executive is investigating.

The Gannet Alpha oil platform is 113 miles (180km) off Aberdeen.

SOURCE ARTICLE

• Gas work at leak pipe completed 04 NOVEMBER 2011
• ‘No more oil’ from leak pipeline 24 AUGUST 2011
• Shell defends safety after leak 22 AUGUST 2011
• Oil leak operation ‘successful’ 20 AUGUST 2011
• Shell’s oil spill: What happened 19 AUGUST 2011

POSTING ON SHELL BLOG 2 FEBRUARY 2012 BY ” AN OBSERVER OF SHELL”

Is Voser now also being jinxed by the famous Brinded spell?

This decent and down to earth Swiss financeman is trying to tell the world that Shell will increase production from North Sea fields by extending the life of these fields (Sky Sunrise interview).

I am taking bets with some friends this will not happen. All observable actions by Shell is that they are retrenching from the North Sea. Voser emphasised that there will be a lot of job creation in the UK….. Now, where have we heard this before????

And he says (Bloomberg story):
‘Shell will increase production to about 4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2017-2018. Last March, it said daily output would rise to 3.5 million barrels this year and 3.7 million barrels by 2014′.

Promises, promises, promises. This translates into bonuses and a bit later in ‘new insights’ or other factors that could not be foreseen. I give it to him he is not as audacious as Brinded who predicted 7-8 years ago that Shell would be doing close to 6 mln bbl/d around now.

I am not calling the man a liar. I would not dare to with his army of lawyers in Shell. But how should we call someone who ‘not speaketh the truth’?

Shall we keep it as ‘tarred with the same brush as Brinded?”

BLOG POSTING ENDS

Note added by John Donovan

Malcolm Brinded is the former Managing Director of Shell UK’s offshore oil and gas operations and is closely associated with the Shell “TFA” safety culture, which resulted in an explosion and deaths on the Brent Bravo platform. He is currently Executive Director Exploration and Production for Royal Dutch Shell plc.

Hamilton said the industry, represented by Shell Oil Co., also hasn’t budged on health and safety provisions the union wants in its new three-year contract.

By Dan Wallach, DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com (409) 838-2876

Published 02:46 p.m., Monday, January 30, 2012

The national oil contract bargaining is heading toward a midnight Tuesday deadline, but the two sides seem far apart on pay and safety rules, a local union member said today.

During the meeting, the manager confirmed on behalf of Shell their intention not to comply with the ruling from the Equal Treatment Commission. The main reasons for the meeting/interrogation were to clarify:

1. Where did John Donovan get his information for the article?

3. Was there a security issue?

Above are extracts from this article by John Donovan

On 4 January, we revealed that Shell Global Solutions had decided “after careful consideration” to flout a ruling by the Dutch Commission for Equal Treatment, which confirmed discrimination by Shell against a part-time employee, Mr Alberto Gatti, regarding compensation relating to public holidays.

The decision has ramifications for over 1,100 Royal Dutch Shell employees.

Mr Gatti works four days per week for Shell, thereby receiving a 20% reduction of monthly salary compared with a full time employee. He brought the case on a point of principle. Namely, fair treatment between employees.

Shell HR argued that it was a matter of “bad luck” and “all in the game“, when a Dutch public holiday coincided with the only week day on which Mr Gatti does not work – Monday in his case. This means that Mr Gatti receives no compensatory day off in respect of Easter Monday and Whit Monday, while full time employees do.

Shell will save an estimated 600,000 EUR/per year as a result of the use of this blatant discrimination and blatant flouting of a judgement by the Dutch regulatory authority.

The publication of the article on this website caused a wave of concern at Shell.

Last week, just a few days after publication, Mr Gatti received a request for a meeting from a manager belonging to the CP (contracting and procurement), the business unit to which he belongs. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the article we published. The manager requested that he remain anonymous in order to respect his privacy. He did not want to be identified in any article.

During the meeting, the manager confirmed on behalf of Shell their intention not to comply with the ruling from the Equal Treatment Commission.

The main reasons for the meeting/interrogation were to clarify:

1. Where did John Donovan get his information for the article?

3. Was there a security issue?

2. If the source was Mr Gatti, could he arrange to have the names of the HR and legal people involved in the case deleted from the article.

Mr Gatti made it plain that he is not in a position of control over publication of articles on the RoyalDutchShellplc.com website, or disclosure of anything about the source of information supplied to me, which is almost entirely, already available on the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission website. He also pointed out that there are so many individuals involved in the discrimination issue from various departments, including HR and legal, that the source could be anybody.

Mr Gatti said that HR manager, Miss Jeanine van Barlingen, should not feel ashamed of the answer she had given in her letter, if she believes it is the best choice in line with Shell’s business principles. Why hide it?

Mr Gatti, who apparently is highly regarded in his department, must be concerned about the prospect of retaliation by Shell management as a result of the public exposure arising from Shell’s discrimination against him.

Shell in turn must be concerned about the consequence of any such retaliation/harassment, which would further publicize and inflame the whole situation.

One the one side is an individual arguing on a point of principle involving a very small sum per individual. On the other, a greedy oil giant raking in billions of dollars per quarter in profits from high oil prices, while evading moral and legal obligations in relation to anti-discrimination law. A company routinely hiding its predatory practices behind sham business principles used to bolster confidence in fraudulent Form 20F filings with the SEC.

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

JANUARY 10, 2012, 6:10 P.M. ET

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)-Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA, RDSA.LN) Tuesday reported an emissions event caused by a leak in overhead piping at the company’s joint-venture refinery in Deer Park, Texas.

In a filing to Texas state environmental regulators, the company said the emissions were routed to the appropriate safety flare system and that refinery personnel depressured and isolated the leak from the Debenzenizer 1 column in just over 10 minutes.

The Debenzenizer and Hydrotreater 2 were listed as sources of the emissions.

It is not clear whether the event had an impact on production at the 327,000-barrels-a-day refinery that Shell Oil, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, operates in partnership with PMI Norteamerica S.A. de C.V., a subsidiary of Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex.

-By Rose Marton-Vitale; Dow Jones Newswires, 201-264-4185, rose.marton@dowjones.com

SOURCE ARTICLE

RELATED ARTICLES

Shell Reports Release of Deadly Benzene Chemical at Deer Park Refinery

Extract: Bloomberg News has reported the release of an unknown amount of the deadly chemical benzene at its Deer Park refinery in Texas.

Shell to Pay $500,000 for Pollution in Texas

Extract: The settlement was reached after Harris County accused Shell Chemical, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, of failing to notify officials about the toxic releases

Shell reports release of sulfur dioxide at Convent Refinery

EXTRACT: LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Income performance at Motiva Enterprises LLC’s Convent refinery near Baton Rouge in Louisiana has been dismal since July 2008 and the company needs to cut costs to return to profitability, according to an internal email from part-owner Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) which was leaked to a blog critical of the company. “We are getting our costs in line at Convent in order to become competitive in a tough business environment,” the email sent to Motiva staff by manager David Brignac said. “We are considering reductions in operator positions, but no final decisions have been made on operator staffing levels,” he writes in the email posted Friday on royaldutchshellplc.com.

Forbes: Shell refineries settle with government: Associated Press, 03.31.2010, 02:40 PM EDT

Extract: ST. ROSE, La. — Two Shell chemical companies have agreed to install $6 million in pollution reduction equipment at two petroleum refineries in Louisiana and Alabama and upgrade a terminal in Puerto Rico as part of a Clean Air Act settlement with the federal government. Shell Chemical LP and Shell Chemical Yabucoa, units of Royal Dutch Shell PLC ( RDSA – news – people ), also will pay a combined $3.3 million civil penalty to the federal government, Alabama and Louisiana.

About $193 will go to Louisiana organizations for environmental education, teacher workshops and emergency operations. The new pollution control equipment will be installed at Shell Chemical refineries in St. Rose, La., and Saraland, Ala. The settlement was announced Wednesday by the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

NASDAQ: Shell To Pay $9.5 Million In Settling Clean Air Act Allegations: Mar 31, 2010 | 3:00PM

Extract: DOW JONES NEWSWIRES: Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA, RDSA.LN) has agreed to pay $3.5 million in penalties and spend an estimated $6 million to install pollution-reduction equipments at three U.S. refineries to reduce harmful air emissions. The equipment is intended to cut output of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by more than 1,450 tons a year at the facilities in Louisiana, Alabama and Puerto Rico. Assistant Attorney General Ignacia Moreno said the settlement is an example of businesses’ effort to comply with government environmental regulations. “We will continue to work with industry to achieve compliance under the Clean Air Act to remove harmful pollution from the air we breathe,” she added. -By Jodi Xu, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-3037; jodi.xu@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires 03-31-101334ET Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Los Angeles Times: Shell refineries reach Clean Air Act settlements: By Associated Press March 31, 2010 | 12:02 p.m.

Extract: ST. ROSE, La. (AP) — Two Shell chemical companies have agreed to install $6 million in pollution reduction equipment at two petroleum refineries in Louisiana and Alabama and upgrade a terminal in Puerto Rico as part of a Clean Air Act settlement with the federal government. Shell Chemical LP and Shell Chemical Yabucoa, units of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, also will pay a combined $3.3 million civil penalty to the federal government, Alabama and Louisiana. About $193,000 will go to Louisiana organizations for environmental education, teacher workshops and emergency operations. The new pollution control equipment will be installed at Shell Chemical refineries in St. Rose, La., and Saraland, Ala. The settlement was announced Wednesday by the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Unauthorised venting and flaring of gas by Shell in USA

Extract: On 5 August 2003, the United States Department of Justice announced ^[19] that Shell Oil Company had agreed to pay $49 million USD “to settle claims under the False Claims Act and various administrative provisions relating to its unauthorized venting and flaring of gas…” at its Auger platform, located some 150 miles (240 km) off the coast of Louisiana and at other Shell facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. The settlement also resolved claims that Shell had failed to properly report, or pay royalties on the vented and flared gas. This was the third case settled by Shell Oil Company in the period 1999 to 2003 alleging that it had underpaid royalties owed to the United States. In 2000, Shell agreed to pay $56 million to settle claims that it undervalued gas produced from federal leases. Shell paid $110 million in 2001 to settle ^[20] US Department of Justice claims that it undervalued crude oil extracted from federal lands.

Shell Reports ‘Unplanned’ Flaring At Martinez Refinery: 26 February 2011

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)

12 December 2011

The oil industry has been warned that cyber-attacks could “cost lives” and cause “huge damage”.

Ludolf Luehmann, an IT manager for Shell, told the World Petroleum Conference in Doha that the company had suffered an increased number of attacks.

He said the hacks had been motivated by both commercial and criminal intent.

Security researcher David Emm said that such attacks were “not only possible, but they’re now real”.

Mr Luehmann said Shell and others in the industry were experiencing a “new dimension” of attack which could leave physical machinery at serious risk.

He made reference to Stuxnet, a targeted “worm” which was designed to attack industrial systems in the summer of 2010.

Mr Luehmann said Stuxnet showed energy giants that cyber-attacks could have a real-world consequence on business processes.

“If anybody gets into the area where you can control opening and closing of valves, or release valves, you can imagine what happens.

“It will cost lives and it will cost production, it will cost money, cause fires and cause loss of containment, environmental damage – huge, huge damage.”

He added: “We see an increasing number of attacks on our IT systems and information and there are various motivations behind it – criminal and commercial.”

Dramatic change

When contacted by the BBC, Shell said it would not comment further on Mr Luehmann’s statements.

BP, itself a target of high-profile cyber-attacks following the Gulf oil spill, said it did not speak publicly about security issues as a matter of company policy.

Dennis Painchaud, director of international government relations at Canadian energy company Nexen, said targeted attacks such as Stuxnet and the more recent threat Duqu form a “very significant risk to our business”.

“Cybercrime is a huge issue. It’s not restricted to one company or another – it’s really broad and it is ongoing.

“It’s something that we have to stay on top of every day. It is a risk that is only going to grow and is probably one of the pre-eminent risks that we face today and will continue to face for some time.”

Moscow-based security experts Kaspersky, said the past 18 months had seen a dramatic change in how cyber-threats were perceived by large companies.

“The scene used to be dominated by speculative attacks – people being at the wrong place at at the wrong time, but it was nothing personal,” Mr Emm told the BBC.

“But we certainly are in a different world than where we were 18 months ago. What we’re starting to see is an increase in targeted attacks. We know critical systems, like those in oil production, are vulnerable to attack.

“A lot of countries now are pumping money into research – the last 18 months have shown these people are after not just the public’s money, but they’re after larger organisation’s information.

“Organisations like Shell and others are hopefully taking steps to minimise that risk.”

SOURCE ARTICLE