Posts under ‘Shell Greenwash’

By John Donovan

The Financial Times reports today that the US oil industry is split on the question of climate change.

The split has been revealed from a leaked memo issued to its members by the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the US oil industry, including core members ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

According to the FT article, the memo leaked to Greenpeace outlined a plan to “deploy thousands of workers in so-called “Energy Citizen” rallies protesting against imminent climate change legislation” with members asked to “move aggressively to stage up to 22 public meetings, similar to the recent protests against President Barack Obama’s healthcare plans.”

However, some API members, including Shell, which has multiple greenwash convictions, have hedged their bets by cynically also becoming members of the US Climate Change Partnership “which supports many of Mr Obama’s environmental policies.”

Simultaneous membership of both lobbying groups, with such totally incompatible objectives on a fundamentally important subject, is a PR balancing trick which Shell and other oil giants, with a duplicitous foot in each camp, may find it difficult to sustain.

The American public is unlikely to be fooled by the two-faced approach from a company notorious for deceptive PR and misleading advertising, e.g. the spectacular example above of colorful flower petals emerging from smokestacks at a Shell refinery. So much more attractive than the deadly cocktail of toxic chemicals normally associated with such emissions.

This self-explanatory email correspondence is published simultaneously with the article: “Former Shell Group Auditor says Shell is a hoodlum organisation”

File of outspoken articles about Royal Dutch Shell published by this website since 2004.

Shell’s CEO designate Peter Voser would have to have been terminally naïve to assume that his extraordinary internal Email to staff would not immediately be placed in the public domain – as indeed it was within minutes of its transmission. Assuming that Voser knew exactly what he is doing let’s analyse what this message means for Shell’s battered stakeholders.

The fact that Voser chose to send out the Email when there is a still a month to go before he takes over as CEO is remarkable – and crassly insensitive to the feelings of the current man in charge Jeroen van der Veer. Van der Veer will no doubt also be aggrieved that the tone of the Email is so fiercely critical of the Shell of today – a Shell that has been moulded over the past six years by his efforts. Outside stakeholders will also want to ask why, if things at Shell are quite so bad as Voser says, van der Veer has been remunerated to the extent of around 10million Euros a year, why he is to receive a pension of well over one million Euros a year and why his contract with Shell was extended well beyond the normal Shell retirement age of 60.

Voser’s criticisms of the Shell that he inherits (and the Shell, let us not forget, of which he has been a senior executive director for many years) are scathing. Shell is no longer “… a company of firsts”. Shell is “organisationally too complex”. Shell’s culture is “too consensus-oriented”.  Shell needs to “regain our leadership position”. Shell needs a “greater focus on how we interact with resource holders and how we run our projects”. Shell needs to “increase accountability”, “speed up getting upstream projects on-stream, and improve project execution”, “change our approach from internal to external, raise our game in stakeholder management and better address non-technical risks”, “reduce corporate weight”, … and so on (and on!).

The goal of the organisational and cultural changes that Voser’s “transformation” predicates is hard to elicit from the Email  – quite what “a company that accelerates its ongoing top quartile plans” means I’ll have to leave it to a Shell insider to explain. Indeed all the objectives in Voser’s Email are eerily reminiscent of previous “transformations” – weasel words that mean little in concrete terms – other than the inevitability of staff reductions. “Here we go again” Shell veterans and survivors will no doubt cry. Underlying Voser’s decision to wash what he seems to see as Shell’s very grimy linen in public is his clear determination further to centralise decision-making. He wants less not more consensus and simplicity not complexity – this is barely disguised code for pulling all key decision-making back to the centre. 

Voser’s Email is an internal document and it will no doubt be the first of many such communications that are designed to stamp his personal authority on a corporation which he clearly believes is grossly dysfunctional and under-performing. Many of us would agree about the dysfunctionality – but not for the reasons that Mr Voser describes. Over the past years – in the era of Watts and van der Veer – it is Shell’s impact upon its external stakeholders which has been most open to criticism not so much its internal machinations. The health, safety and environmental record of the corporation has been abysmal – but HSE doesn’t get a mention in Voser’s 924 word message.   Shell’s brand has been damaged perhaps almost beyond repair – but the brand doesn’t get a mention either. Shell’s reputation in the outside world has been undermined by its cataclysmic errors of judgement in such projects as Sakhalin and Corrib, and in Canada and in Nigeria but Voser’s references to the need to restore this reputation are passing at best. Shell’s external communications have been the most disingenuous of any of the greenwashing oil majors – but there is no apology for these lies and obfuscations of the recent past and no plan as to how the recognised need for “improved relationships” with key stakeholders will be achieved. Shell’s directors have recently been revealed to be the fattest of fat cats but Voser seems oblivious of the paradox that over years when he clearly believes that the corporation has been grossly mismanaged Shell’s directors have paid themselves more and more!

From shareholders to employees and from suppliers to pensioners – and in local communities from Ogoni-land to County Mayo Shell has almost contemptuously damaged its standing in recent times sometimes by neglect but more often by the errors of its decision-making. Many will feel that this damage has been done because of ever more centralised management and ever more cost control obsessiveness. The failure to stop flaring in Nigeria was not because it could not technically be done – it was because the money was not made available – just one example amongst many. But the causes of this damaged reputation  – centralisation and cost minimisation obsessions – are the very tools that Peter Voser now wants to use to “transform” the business under his hegemony.  The future looks very bleak for us all.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Jeroen van der Veer’s tenure as chief executive ends amid outcry over bonuses, environmental record and human rights abuses

SHELL BLOG POSTING

MUSAINT: Greenpeace & Friends of the Earth describe Shell “as the most polluting oil company”. Does this : (i) take into account that Shell is a larger worldwide operator than most? and (ii) take account that Shell has partners in most ventures? (i.e. is their partners % deducted from Shell’s numbers?). I bet as usual (aka Brent Spar) that Greenpeace have “expanded” their numbers to try and make a point! At the end of the day the biggest polluters by a long long way are China, India and America. What about attacking their policies rather than the usual onslaught at oil companies? – the usual reason perhaps? …… they are easier to get at (e.g. Shell Nigeria vs Nigerian Government). The likes of a left wing dross newspaper such as the Guardian really does write such nonsense. It’s a shame that again you have “expanded” your title to infer that the summit was hijacked by Shell. The Guardian states “polluters” in their title – I think you have again added more spice!! As I’ve said before our recent summers have been cold, wet and generally awful – a little warming up of the weather will be a nice thing. Hope this stirs up some response on this blog which has been rather quiet of late!!!

Headline by John Donovan. 

Comment by former Shell Exec Paddy Briggs on: “Climate change summit hijacked by world’s biggest polluter Shell, critics claim”

Paddy Briggs

on May 25th, 2009 at 9:36 am 

ASNS News

Monday, 25 May 2009

Shell was announced ”second” to a Swedish energy giant – Vattenfall as the winner of the Climate Greenwash Award 2009 (dissemination of misleading information to conceal its abuse of the environment in order to present a positive public image) at a ceremony in Copenhagen on Saturday May 23, on the eve of the World Business Summit on Climate Change. 

Some of the “key determinants for success’ of the oil giant is its continued adverts to mislead the public about what it is doing to tackle climate change and its activities in the Niger Delta that have devastated the local environment. 

The Climate Greenwash Awards were organised to highlight the way in which big business is increasingly turning to green spin to hide its polluting agenda. Energy companies, many of which once denied that climate change was happening, are now keen to portray themselves as green heroes in the fight against climate change.  

The awards organisers warn that many of the so-called solutions being put forward by business will not help reduce emissions. Companies are advocating unproven technologies such as carbon capture and storage and failed mechanisms such as carbon trading, to justify their continuing pollution.
 
The Climate Greenwash Awards were organised by Corporate Europe Observatory, Attac Denmark, The Climate Movement, ClimaX and Friends of the Earth Denmark.

For Shell: misleading adverts, devastating the Nigerian envrionment  In 2007 oil giant Shell was ordered to withdraw misleading advertisements in Europe after it was accused of greenwash.

Shell may have cleaned up its advertising, but it continues to mislead the public about what it is doing to tackle climate change.Royal Dutch Shell is a member of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, one of the convenors behind the Copenhagen Business Summit.

It has long boasted of its commitment to sustainable development and recognised the need to tackle climate change.

But despite its claims, Shell has pulled its investment in renewable energy, ditching its solar business in 2007 and pulling out of all renewables in 2009.Shell now talks about delivering “responsible energy”.

This includes dredging for tar sands in Canada – even though Shell admits this produces 15% more CO2 than crude oil. It also has a devastating impact on the environment.Shell’s responsible approach also allows flaring gas in Nigeria, despite court rulings ordering the company to stop. Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta have devastated the local environment.

Flaring gas – the practice of burning off the gas found alongside the oil – is the largest source of CO2 emissions in sub-Saharan Africa.

The gas could be captured for local use, but instead it is burnt, destroying the climate and damaging local people’s health.Shell also invests in agrofuels, including research in second generation technologies that it claims “do not compete with food crops” – although most second generation fuel sources do require vast areas of land.

Shell currently markets ethanol made from wheat and sugar cane, contributing to rising food prices. Shell has diverted investments in wind and solar to agrofuels.

In 2008, Shell emitted 75 million tonnes of greenhouse gas (CO2 equivalent) – and aims to cut emissions by just 5% by 2010.Shell actively lobbies through International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) and EUROPIA to minimise the costs of emissions trading, by blocking moves to auction permits for refineries under the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Shell’s chief executive chairs the Energy and Climate Change Working Group of the European Roundtable of Industrialists.

Vattenfall, which won with 39% of the vote, was nominated for its mastery of spin on climate change, portraying itself as a climate champion while lobbying to continue business as usual, using coal, nuclear power, and pseudo-solutions such as agrofuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The energy company also played a key role in setting up the World Business Summit on Climate Change through the Combat Climate Change - a lobby group established by Vattenfall to promote the climate-friendly technologies such as carbon capture and storage and nuclear power, which are the company’s preferred options for tackling climate change. 

The Danish Government was also given a special award for its role in  helping establish the World Business Summit on Climate Change – which is expected to attract some of the world’s most polluting companies;  for providing business lobbyists with direct, privileged access to  negotiators ahead of crucial UN Climate Change talks in December; and  for withdrawing support for Danish wind energy and failing to meet its Kyoto targets
 
Close to 2000 votes were cast; after winner Vattenfall (39%), the  runners-up were Shell (19.3%) and DONG (14.4%).

Source Article

Big oil companies like Shell and BP may be in full retreat from renewable energy. That’s not stopping them from touting green credentials wherever they can.