GreenBiz.com: What Matters Most: Shell Oil’s CSR Crisis in the North Sea: “Shell’s actions — and Greenpeace’s reactions — had created a full-scale international incident.”: “What Greenpeace had helped Shell to realize what that its reputation was a far more valuable and perishable commodity than the Brent Spar itself”
Posted 19 Sept 04
The following is an excerpt from “What Matters Most: How a Small Group of Pioneers Is Teaching Social Responsibility to Big Business, and Why Big Business Is Listening.” The book, by Jeffrey Hollender and Stephen Fenichell, examines in detail how companies have successfully handled public-relations crises related to corporate responsibility.
For 15 years, Royal Dutch Shell’s 460-foot-tall oil storage tanker and loading platform the Brent Spar floated inconspicuously at anchor in the North Sea, 120 miles off the island of Shetland, of no particular concern to anyone outside the company. But in 1991, having outlived its useful life, the platform was decommissioned. For the next two years, an independent committee of scientific and engineering advisors retained by Shell pondered the problem of what to do with it, which came down to how best to get rid of it.