Wael Sawan

28 Years Later – Shell still trying to crush opposition

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28 Years Later – Shell still trying to crush opposition

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Some will rightly argue that Shell never embraced sustainable development, it only ever pursued long-term profitability at the expense of people and planet. The days of Mark Moody Stuart at Shell are long gone. The new boss at the helm is Wael Sawan, who joined Shell two years after the murder of the Ogoni 9 and Brent Spar, just at the time that Shell began to spin its image towards being a caring company.

Under Sawan’s leadership, Shell keeps courting controversy. Month by month, the company doubles down on fossil fuels, and sheds its last remaining veneers of being a company that cares about people and planet.

He has reversed what pitiful progress that Shell had made to address the scale of its CO2 emissions, angering climate campaigners and scientists. In June, the Guardian reported that Sawan “has rowed back on the oil giant’s climate commitments.” The paper added that since taking over, Sawan has emphasised financial returns for investors. He told financiers at the New York stock exchange that he wanted to “reward our shareholders today and far into the future.”

Greenpeace sign reads CHOOSE OCEANS, NOT OIL

In September, Reuters reported that Sawan “has come under pressure over his strategy from within the energy company after two employees issued a rare open letter urging him not to scale back investments in renewable energy.” The following month, in October, Sawan responded by cutting 200 jobs from the company’s low-carbon division to focus on high-earning oil profits.

And now, last week, the day before the Ogoni 9 anniversary, it was announced that Shell was suing Greenpeace for over $2.1million in damages. But that is just the start. The legal action also calls for an indefinite blocking against Greenpeace protests at all Shell infrastructure worldwide, otherwise, the claims could be as high as $8.6 million.

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The lawsuit, which the Guardian notes is one of the “biggest ever legal threats against the group”, was served by Shell after Greenpeace campaigners occupied one of Shell’s moving oil platforms earlier this year.

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Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

Whenever Shell cuts a climate commitment or threatens its critics, it loses its social license to operate. Day by day, it looks like a corporate Dodo. It may not happen tomorrow or even in the next decade, but Shell’s days are numbered. A just, equitable future does not include the bully boys from Shell who still threaten their critics. In our collective future, they will become extinct.

Greenpeace is running a fundraising campaign and also a petition related to Shell.

https://priceofoil.org/2023/11/21/28-years-later-shell-still-trying-to-crush-opposition/

Continue Reading28 Years Later – Shell still trying to crush opposition

$8.6 Million Shell Lawsuit Threatens Greenpeace’s Ability to Protest

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Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Four Greenpeace activists are pictured on a Shell vessel in the Atlantic Ocean on January 31, 2023.
Four Greenpeace activists are pictured on a Shell vessel in the Atlantic Ocean on January 31, 2023.

“I will stand up in court and fight this; and if Shell refuses to stop drilling, I refuse to stop fighting for climate justice,” one activist named in the suit said.

Oil giant Shell is menacing Greenpeace International and Greenpeace U.K. with a lawsuit that represents “one of the biggest legal threats against the Greenpeace network’s ability to campaign in its more than 50-year history,” the environmental group revealed Thursday.

The lawsuit comes in response to a protest in January in which activists boarded one of the Shell’s oil platforms while it was en rote to a North Sea oil field. Shell has given Greenpeace a choice between facing a full $8.6 million in damages or settling for a reduced charge of $1.4 million and a promise never to protest on Shell infrastructure again.

“Shell is trying to silence my legitimate demands: that it must stop its senseless and greedy pursuit of fossil fuels and take accountability for the destruction it is wreaking upon the world,” Yeb Saño, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said in a statement.

Saño, who is one of the activists named in the suit, attempted to board the platform and then met it in port in Norway to protest its arrival.

“I will stand up in court and fight this; and if Shell refuses to stop drilling, I refuse to stop fighting for climate justice,” Saño continued.

The protest that triggered the suit lasted from January 31 to February 12. Four Greenpeace activists used ropes to haul themselves onto the vessel while it was moving at full speed off the Canary Islands, Reuters reported. They stayed occupying the platform until it reached Norway. The platform was set to be used in the Penguins oil and gas field in the North Sea, which has not yet started production.

“He’s trying to crush Greenpeace’s ability to campaign, and in doing so, seeking to silence legitimate demands for climate justice and payment for loss and damage.”

The platform, the Penguins floating production storage and offloading unit, was the first new vessel that Shell had sent to the northern part of the North Sea in 30 years, Greenpeace said. While the protest was ongoing, Shell announced record 2022 profits of almost $40 billion. Greenpeace wanted Shell to stop extracting new oil and gas and to pay into a loss and damage fund to help vulnerable countries respond to the climate crisis. The activists carried signs reading, “Stop drilling—start paying,” The Guardian reported.

Saño said he had a personal reason to object to Shell’s business model.

“I have lived through the devastation caused by Shell and companies like them,” he said in a statement. “Ten years ago I spoke at COP global climate talks while my brother was still missing in the fallout from Super Typhoon Haiyan. Incredibly, he survived, but he helped carry the bodies of 78 innocent people who tragically did not.”

During the occupation itself, Shell and platform builder Fluor promised to seek more than $120,000 in damages. However, in a document seen by Reuters, Shell is now demanding $2.1 million in damages related to shipping delays, security, and legal costs, and Fluor is seeking $6.5 million. The suit was filed in London’s High Court.

“The right to protest is fundamental, and we respect it absolutely. But it must be done safely and lawfully,” a Shell spokesperson said in a statement reported by The Guardian. “Shell and its contractors are entitled to recover the significant costs of responding to Greenpeace’s dangerous actions.”

While Shell has offered to reduce the damages if Greenpeace stops protesting its infrastructure, Greenpeace answered that it would only agree if Shell promised to obey a Dutch court order to cut its emissions by 45% of 2019 levels by 2030.

Greenpeace said that negotiations between it and Shell had wrapped up and the organization had been waiting for details, or “particulars,” from Shell since November 1.

Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace U.K., said the lawsuit reflected the climate-polluting direction of Shell under new CEO Wael Sawan, who took the reins in early 2023. Under his leadership, Hamid said, “Shell’s abandoned any pretence of good intentions, and is brazenly embracing a sinister strategy that’s not just risky for shareholders, but completely devastating for people on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Sawan’s ditching green policies, sacking former colleagues from his renewables division, and he’s gaslit the world by claiming a retreat from fossil fuels would be ‘dangerous.'”

“Now he’s trying to crush Greenpeace’s ability to campaign, and in doing so, seeking to silence legitimate demands for climate justice and payment for loss and damage,” Hamid continued. “We need this case to be thrown out and for Shell to be regulated by the government because it’s clear Sawan is hell-bent on profit, regardless of human cost.”

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Greenpeace image, sign reads CHOOSE OCEANS, NOT OIL
Greenpeace image, sign reads CHOOSE OCEANS, NOT OIL

Continue Reading$8.6 Million Shell Lawsuit Threatens Greenpeace’s Ability to Protest

Campaigners Rip Shell CEO’s ‘Cynical Case’ Against Ditching Fossil Fuels

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A large display from the environmental group Fossil Free London is seen during a climate protest

A large display from the environmental group Fossil Free London is seen during a climate protest in London on April 24, 2023.  (Photo: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)

“The only ‘danger’ Shell would see in cutting production is to their eye-watering profits,” said one campaigner.

Two days after scientists recorded the hottest day on record and warned that the milestone is the latest clear sign that all fossil fuel production must be urgently phased out, the CEO of multinational oil and gas giant Shell claimed that transitioning to renewable energy sources is what would endanger the world and expressed what campaigners called “cynical” concerns for the well-being of the Global South.

Wael Sawan, who took over the U.K.-based company last year, told the BBC Thursday that the world’s energy system “continues to desperately need oil and gas,” contrary to evidence put forward by the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and other experts.

“I think what would be dangerous and irresponsible is actually cutting out the oil and gas production so that the cost of living—as we saw just last year—starts to shoot up again,” said Sawan.

Cost-of-living increases have raised alarm in communities around the world following the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—but numerous analyses have pointed to corporate greed and price-gouging, not the decreasing supply of oil and gas, as primary drivers of financial hardship for working people.

Shell reported record-breaking profits of nearly $40 billion last year, doubling its total for 2021.

“The only ‘danger’ Shell would see in cutting production is to their eye-watering profits,” Alice Harrison of the international human rights group Global Witness told The Guardian Thursday. “Whether blinded by the pound signs or simply willfully ignorant, Shell’s CEO is wrong. Ending our dependence on fossil fuels and transitioning to green energy will serve both the planet and provide energy security for all. Shell [has] once again made their loyalties clear—profit over people and planet.”

Guterres is among the critics who have warned that companies that continue to invest in fossil fuels will not continue to see enormous profits forever, and as Common Dreams reported last week, research from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that public pensions in the United States have lost tens of billions of dollars due to their refusal to pull out of the oil, gas, and coal sectors.

“Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” Guterres said earlier this year. “Such investments will soon be stranded assets—a blot on the landscape and a blight on investment portfolios.”

In his comments to the BBC, Sawan suggested his concern is not with his own company’s future, but that of the Global South—where people are suffering disproportionately from the effects of the climate crisis and planetary heating, despite causing a tiny fraction of the fossil fuel pollution that originates in wealthier countries.

He said the distribution of benefits from the use of renewable energy must be “globally responsible” so the Global North doesn’t hoard energy sources such as solar and wind power.

“Let’s be clear, companies like Shell are fueling both the climate crisis and the soaring cost of energy,” Jamie Peters of Friends of the EarthtoldThe Guardian. “They are profiting from the misery of ordinary people while destroying the planet, and they’re making a cynical case to continue locking us into the volatile fossil fuel markets that are the root cause of the energy crisis.”

As environmental journalist Harry Cockburn noted on social media, for all Sawan’s claims of concern for people in the Global South, he made clear that Shell’s profits are his top priority as the interview concluded.

“Cutting production is only dangerous in the kind of upside-down world where profit rules over everything,” said the grassroots coalition Stop Cambo, which pressured Shell to pull out of the Cambo oil field off the coast of Scotland in 2021. “Even as the planet burns and people are forced to choose between heating and eating.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingCampaigners Rip Shell CEO’s ‘Cynical Case’ Against Ditching Fossil Fuels

In ‘Climate-Wrecking’ Reversal, Shell Ditches Plans for Oil Production Cut and Hikes Dividend

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By JAKE JOHNSON Jun 14, 2023

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.

“It will always be profit over people and planet for polluters,” said one campaigner. “Shell simply cannot be trusted—with either their own meager targets or our futures.”

Shell announced Wednesday that it is raising payouts to wealthy shareholders and scrapping plans to cut oil production by up to 2% annually, a move that environmental groups said lays bare the futility of relying on fossil fuel corporations to voluntarily curb their climate-destroying activities.

The London-based company, which more than doubled its annual profits last year, said in a press release that it now intends to “achieve cash flow longevity” by keeping oil production stable until 2030 and boosting gas production, even as scientists say a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels is necessary to avert global climate destruction.

“It is unacceptable that Shell is betting on even more short-term returns to appease shareholders,” said Sjoukje van Oosterhout, Climate Case Shell’s lead researcher. “Shell is now throwing in the towel on reducing oil production and even scaling up gas production.”

Shell also announced Wednesday that it is hiking its dividend by 15%, a change that’s set to take effect this quarter. In an additional gift to shareholders, the company said it plans to buy back at least $5 billion of its own stock in the second half of 2023.

“Record profits, off the back of the energy crisis, should be boosting up green investment,” Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said in a statement Wednesday. “Instead it’s shareholder pay-outs and a doubling down on climate-wrecking fossil fuels.”

Shell had previously said its oil and gas production would fall by 1-2% each year through 2030. But as Bloombergreported, Shell justified the newly announced shift by claiming it “achieved its initial output-reduction plan—announced in 2021 amid a focus on cutting carbon emissions—faster than anticipated.”

Noronha-Gant called Shell’s announcement a “climate bombshell” that “exposes the hollowness behind the setting of such a target.”

“It will always be profit over people and planet for polluters,” Noronha-Gant said Wednesday. “Shell simply cannot be trusted—with either their own meager targets or our futures.”

Others responded with similar outrage. Climate scientist Bill McGuire wrote on Twitter that Shell CEO Wael Sawan “knows exactly what the consequences of this decision are.”

“People will die—are already dying,” McGuire tweeted. “I want to see him jailed—along with all the other CEOs who have been unequivocally complicit in crimes against humanity. And so should you.”

https://twitter.com/CJAOurPower/status/1668944856012451841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1668944856012451841%7Ctwgr%5Eec05d99c9db872b46c10035937ed391a9d054200%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fshell-ditches-oil-production-cut

Shell’s announcement comes weeks after Carbon Brief released an analysis highlighting the oil giant’s tacit admission that limiting warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century means an “immediate end to fossil fuel growth.”

“Shell had previously claimed that oil and gas production could rise for another decade, even as warming was limited to 1.5°C,” Carbon Brief observed. “The dramatic shift in its new ‘Energy Security Scenarios’ is not explicitly acknowledged, but… is hidden in plain sight.”

“The immediate end to fossil fuel growth in Shell’s new 1.5°C scenario marks a dramatic shift from its earlier work, which had squared the circle between limiting warming to 1.5°C and continuing to expand oil and gas production by invoking implausibly-large forest expansion,” Carbon Brief added.

Shell insisted Wednesday that it is “aiming to achieve near-zero methane emissions by 2030” and “net-zero emissions by 2050,” but research released earlier this week showed that such commitments are often meaningless because companies rarely outline specific steps they plan to take to achieve their stated targets.

Last month, Friends of the Earth Netherlands published a report accusing Shell of overstating its spending on renewable energy solutions by including “the sale of flowers and sandwiches at its gas stations” in the total, along with “biofuels with a high carbon footprint.”

“The company continues to contribute to catastrophic climate change,” the group concluded.

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIn ‘Climate-Wrecking’ Reversal, Shell Ditches Plans for Oil Production Cut and Hikes Dividend