Posts Tagged ‘Shell Employee Safety’

LEAKED SHELL INTERNAL WARNING FROM ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC CHIEF ETHICS & COMPLIANCE OFFICER RICHARD WISEMAN (RIGHT) REGARDING THE LEAK OF THE SHELL GLOBAL ADDRESS BOOK:

I do not feel that there is any need to be alarmed

Colleagues,

I am writing to inform you of an incident involving misuse of company data.

It has become clear recently that the Global Address List, containing contact information of everyone in Shell and some contractors, joint ventures and other third parties, has been downloaded without authorisation and distributed to some external parties.  We do not know who did this.   We are investigating and are raising this theft of information with the relevant data protection authorities.  The incident is receiving some media coverage.

I do not feel that there is any need to be alarmed.  However, as a precaution, if you receive any nuisance telephone calls or e-mails then please contact your line manager, HR or security.

Whilst writing about this incident, I would like to take the opportunity to remind us all of the requirements of the Code of Conduct relating to Information Management, including data privacy and communications.

Richard Wiseman
Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer

COMMENT BY JOHN DONOVAN

I note an important inconsistency between what Richard Wiseman is saying to Shell employees compared with what he has said to me in email correspondence.  Mr Wiseman claimed in an email that there is a risk to the personal safety not only to Shell employees but “considerable numbers of people not employed by Shell but who are employed by third parties”.  Contrast this with his message to Shell employees published above. Mr Wiseman does not mention any personal risk to the safety of people listed in the directory. Instead, the worst potential consequent of the database leak is downplayed to the possibility of the listed people receiving nuisance phone calls. So who is Mr Wiseman attempting to mislead: me, or over 100,000 people in the Global Address List?

By John Donovan

As is plain from the Wikipedia article Royal Dutch Shell safety concerns, Shell has an appallingly bad track record in relation to protecting the safety of its employees. Shell’s notorious “Touch F*** All” safety culture resulted in the deaths of Shell offshore employees in an explosion on the Brent Bravo North Sea platform, and a huge fine imposed on Shell by the Scottish courts. 

Bill Campbell, the former Health and Safety Group Auditor of Shell International has campaigned against what he considers to be criminal negligence by Shell management in putting profits before safety. He has written to every UK Member of Parliament. 

The Wikipedia article cites many pledges by senior Shell management to address Shell’s abysmal safety record. 

On 31 August 2007, The Guardian newspaper published an article profiling Jeroen van der Veer (above), the Chief Executive of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The article by Guardian journalist Terry Macalister stated in reference to Van der Veer: “He also makes clear he was hurt by the coverage of another fiasco – when a Shell consultant, Bill Campbell, blew the whistle on safety breaches in the North Sea.”

The admittance’s of wrongdoing and being stung by criticism, makes the news published recently on the London Fire Brigade website even more astonishing. Under the headline: “Shell fined record sum for fire safety breaches”, a press release reports that Shell International has received a record-breaking fine of £300,000 plus £45,000 in costs after pleading guilty to serious breaches of fire safety regulations. That’s over $550,000 USD. 

The safety lapses at the Shell Centre in London were so severe that the London Fire Brigade served a prohibition notice on Shell which restricted the use of the building. Assistant Commissioner Steve Turek said;

“Shell failed to respond properly to their risk assessment for three and a half years and had it not been for the fires which led to the inspection, it could have been considerably longer. Had Shell acted upon the findings of the 2003 risk assessment at the time, they would have avoided putting their staff at risk.”

Sentencing of Shell International Limited took place at Inner London Crown Court on 2 June 2009 after Shell pleaded guilty to three breaches of safety regulations.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Shell senior execs should spend time dealing with employee safety issues rather than devoting it to inflating and trying to defend Fat Cat pay packages, including unearned bonus payments and grossly inappropriate pension pots. Unfortunately, greed wins out over the lives of mere employees. 

Some of the above are extracts from the London Fire Brigade Press Release. There are also extracts from the Wikipedia article. 

When asked if the refinery could possibly be criminally liable if safety lapses are discovered, Fryer said that would be up to the Contra Costa County District Attorney to decided.

Shell – investigated by the HSE 207 times in the past three years – insisted that safety remains “paramount”. A spokesman said: “Our reliability trends, hydrocarbon release trends and spill trends have improved year-on-year since 2004, reflecting the increased levels of investment and operational scrutiny.”

The Financial Times reported last month that Royal Dutch Shell had the highest mortality rate of any large western oil company, with two employees and 28 contractors dying in the line of duty in 2007.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA LN): Europe’s largest oil producer last year suffered more workforce deaths than any other large western oil company, the Financial Times reported, citing figures the newspaper compiled from company reports. Shell advanced 5 pence, or 0.3 percent, to 1738 pence.

BLOOMBERG ARTICLE

Last week Shell and service player Amec were each fined £150,000 ($230,000) after an Amec worker died during operations at Clipper. An inspector with the UK’s Health & Safety Executive said in a report accident had been caused by the two companies “failing to manage well-known and readily foreseeable hazards”, and said that, had adequate risk assessments been carried out, the “accident could have been avoided”.

Shell said: “We are deeply saddened by these losses. Of these fatalities, 17 happened in our upstream business, mainly on the roads, or at high-risk locations like Nigeria, where two lives were lost due to assaults and a third died as a result of a fire caused by criminals stealing oil from a pipeline.”