From Brent Spar to Just Stop Oil, Shell has spent decades at the centre of environmental protests. The latest demonstration outside its London headquarters suggests the battle over its future is far from over.
- Climate campaigners staged a theatrical protest outside Shell’s global headquarters in London on 29 July, using fake oil and firefighter costumes to symbolise what they describe as the company’s role in worsening climate-driven wildfires. The demonstration took place immediately before Shell’s quarterly earnings announcement. Morning Star
- Protesters argued that expanding North Sea oil and gas production, including Rosebank, is incompatible with climate goals. Shell has consistently maintained that it supports the energy transition while continuing to invest in oil and gas to meet current energy demand.
- This latest action is only the newest chapter in a much longer history of protest against Shell.
A Company Long Familiar With Protest
Shell has repeatedly found itself at the centre of environmental and human-rights campaigns, including:
- the Brent Spar controversy in 1995;
- worldwide outrage following the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine;
- the Corrib gas protests in Ireland;
- Greenpeace’s Arctic campaigns;
- Just Stop Oil demonstrations;
- and continuing climate litigation and shareholder activism. Wikipedia
Whatever one’s view of these campaigns, few multinational companies have faced such sustained public opposition across so many decades and countries.
Timing Was No Accident
Campaigners deliberately chose the eve of Shell’s financial results.
Major earnings announcements increasingly attract protests because they provide a stark contrast between strong corporate profits and campaigners’ arguments that fossil-fuel companies should be accelerating investment away from hydrocarbons.
Shell’s Perspective
Shell has consistently argued that the world will continue to require oil and gas during the energy transition, and that it is investing billions in lower-carbon technologies while also supplying the energy on which modern economies currently depend.
The company has also obtained court injunctions designed to prevent unlawful protests at Shell facilities, stating that the safety of employees, contractors and customers is its priority. Shell
Editorial Comment
Whatever readers think of the tactics employed by climate protesters, today’s demonstration illustrates a broader reality.
Thirty years after Brent Spar, environmental protest remains inseparable from Shell’s public identity.
The names of the campaigners have changed.
The slogans have changed.
The issues have evolved from offshore disposal to climate change.
But Shell continues to occupy the same uncomfortable position: one of the world’s largest energy companies operating in an era when every barrel of oil and cubic metre of gas is increasingly scrutinised not only for its economic value, but also for its environmental cost.
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