Last week, safety consultant Caroline Dennett went viral on LinkedIn after publishing a bombshell open letter explaining why she chose to sever ties with oil & gas giant Shell.
Speaking with COS, she says that ultimately, her decision to stop working with Shell stemmed from “the realization that, in my heart of hearts, I couldn’t continue working with a company that I perceived as pretty responsible for climate change.”
“I’ve battled internally with myself over that for quite some time. And because of the work that I’ve been doing – which has been very safety focused – you stick with it, because you think that for as long as they’re operating that needs to be as safe as it can possibly be. People need to be protected. People need to have a voice in safety improvement.”
But, she says, you get to a point where the internal conflict is too great – and it feels morally wrong to continue.
Dennett – who is director of UK-based consultancy CLOUT – had been working with Shell for around 11 years doing safety culture assessments. The company reached out in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
At the time, she says that the industry had more of a focus on personal harms rather than process safety, but Shell was looking closely at process safety and wanted to drive a positive operational culture around this. So Dennett was approached to design a process safety culture survey for the company. Dennett and her agency worked with engineers and...
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