Former Shell HSE Group Auditor says Shell is a hoodlum organisation

By John Donovan

Bill Campbell (above), the retired Shell International HSE Group Auditor has described Shell as “a hoodlum organization”.

The involvement of the website royaldutchshellplc.com in Campbell’s campaign for the safety of Shell North Sea employees has been widely reported, including articles in the Daily Telegraph (Pressure on Shell over safety of platforms), The Sunday Telegraph (Online revolutionaries) and the Daily Mail (“Shell on back foot as ‘gripe site’ alleges safety concerns“.

Extract from the Daily Telegraph article:

…Mr Campbell wrote to MPs at the end of July saying that Shell is putting “lives at stake.” He claimed to have a “vast amount of evidence” that Shell has failed to tackle health and safety concerns, but did not spell out the details in the letter. Mr Campbell, who has teamed up with a website that has been highly critical of Shell, appears to be of increasing concern to the company. A recent internal email admits that the website has thrown Shell “on the back foot”.

The most recent reference to the campaign was in an article in The Sunday Times published on 19 July 2009.

THE BRENT BRAVO SCANDAL

On 11 September 2003, two Brent Bravo platform workers, Sean McCue, 22, of Kennoway in Fife, and Keith Moncrieff, 45, of Invergowrie, Tayside, died after a sudden escape of gas in a platform leg where they were working. Shell admitted responsibility and was fined a record breaking $1.8 million under Health & Safety regulations for what a Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry determined was a preventable accident.

Campbell led a safety audit on the platform four years before the fatal accident. It revealed a “Touch F*** All” policy towards safety issues – a policy endorsed by Shell platform management. Even worse, safety records were falsified and repairs bodged. Campbell reported this to Shell senior management including Malcolm Brinded, the then Managing Director of Shell Exploration & Production. When Campbell voiced his concern that appropriate remedial action was not being taken, he was moved to another project. The fatal accident followed.

Shell management – specifically Malcolm Brinded – gave a higher priority to production than the lives of Shell employees.

A criminal investigation into serious allegations by Campbell relating to an alleged corrupt relationship involving Shell and the Health and Safety Executive is in progress.  Campbell has supplied to the legal authorities his taped conversations with high level Shell officials.

Campbell has the support of several eminent MP’s in his campaign.

Printed below is the content of self explanatory email correspondence we received yesterday from Mr Campbell and his current email correspondence involving Jorma Ollila, Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Michiel Brandjes, it’s Company Secretary and General Counsel Corporate.

EMAIL TO JOHN DONOVAN FROM BILL CAMPBELL: 23rd July 2009

I have been in correspondence recently with the RDS Chairman attempting to get him to be proactive in passing key information to the ongoing investigations by the CPS, the original message below is but one of the communications.

Given that Jorma Ollila is aware that these are criminal matters he can no longer allow RDS to issue statements that are untrue or more generally deny the factual situation for fear that he personally be named as an accessory after the fact.

Your readers may be interested in this and no doubt you will check this out with the RDS Company Secretary if you decide to publish.

I would be interested in any denials by Shell which will only -if they occur -fuel the speculation that the Chairman himself was party to a conspiracy to corrupt.  I will pass any such denials to the Lead public prosecutor.

I believe that Ollila has conceded – at least internally – that the statements made by Shell on 16th June 2006 ref the Brent Bravo follow up from the 1999 Audit etc were false and misleading and that failure to follow up on the audit recommendations from 1999 directly influenced the conditions on Brent Bravo which contributed to the deaths.

The reply from Shell copied to the authorities indicating their willingness to co-operate.  It remains to be seen if Michiel is a good guy because he also persisted over a prolonged period in extreme denial.  I have absolutely no doubt that Michiel and Jorma may be as much victims of a hoodlum organisation whose CEO and Executive Director lie on demand and have pressurised and coerced their own staff to remain silent or make false statements.  It would appear that no much has changed from the 1999 Shell organisation in Aberdeen which we described at the time as a hostile environment of extreme denial

CAMPBELL EMAIL TO ROYAL DUTCH SHELL CHAIRMAN JORMA OLLILA: 20 JULY 2009

—–Original Message—–

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: 20 July 2009 15:42

To: [email protected]

Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; Blake, Simon

Subject: A personal Note – Your reputation etc

I await an update from the Crown officials who are taking the lead in investigations of a criminal nature.  I have requested they contact you and ask for a copy of the Stausholm/Sykes investigation which I believe you will provide to them if a formal request is received.

As you are aware they are privy to your reply to me on behalf of the Board of Royal Dutch Shell and I recently passed to them just some of the correspondence I sent to you when I asked that you arrange an investigation of my claims that your officials, namely the then CEO and Executive Director had purposefully covered up the results of your own internal investigation (in 2005) into the follow-up of a major audit carried out in Aberdeen in 1999.

You refused to do this.

I believe they are fully satisfied that over a prolonged period of time from 1999 till September 2003 there was a sustained degradation in the essential controls, not only on Brent Bravo, but on 16 other installations as per the findings of a Shell internal technical investigation (started immediately after the fatalities occurred and reported to Shell Directors in Aberdeen by 5th November 2003) and from data on improvement and prohibition Notices served on Shell by the HSE over the same prolonged period.

Your Company have continually refuted this and have not to date never accepted that your Production Director (Hill) at the time (November 2003) presented these findings to HSE officials.

It is this stark contradiction of the facts that I believe motivated the Crown officials to commence a detailed investigation.

I want to record that some weeks ago I updated you on all this and asked you to submit a statement from Shell apologising for the false and misleading statement and the personal remarks made about me in June 2006.

It seems to me morally reprehensible that you continue to be reluctant to do this particularly given your stature as a business leader (see the link below) and also as someone who has been vocal on the faults of others in the business community.  There is also a criminal element to this.  It appears to me that this reluctance, i.e. your continued behaviour in covering up the facts makes you personally complicit after the fact in what are alleged serious criminal offences not only carried out by HSE officials but by your Directors.

In the recent correspondence I asked you to raise any objections to my statements that you were personally involved, an accessory, and to date you have not raised any objections.

I do not think it unreasonable that you admit that there were significant shortcomings after 1999 and that these shortcomings contributed to the deaths in that the four principal causative factors apparent in 2003 were verified to exist in 1999.

I want your failure to do so (If this is indeed the case) to support my case against you.

However my preference would be that you display some semblance of decency, of being at least a touch honourable by issuing such a statement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorma_Ollila

Bill Campbell

EMAIL RESPONSE FROM MICHIEL BRANDJES ON BEHALF OF JORMA OLLILA

Dear Mr Campbell,

Thank you for your email of 20th July to Mr Olilla. As I indicated to you in my email of 5 September, 2008, as this matter has been referred to the Grampian Police and the Procurator Fiscal, it would be wholly inappropriate for us to engage in any direct communication with you in relation to it. We are, of course, happy to cooperate fully with the relevant authorities in any investigation.

Best Regards,

Michiel Brandjes ?Company Secretary and General Counsel Corporate ?Royal Dutch Shell plc

EMAIL REPLY FROM BILL CAMPBELL 23rd JULY 2009

Michiel

Thanks for your reply, it is refreshing to see that you plan to co-operate, words as they say however do not carry the same conviction as deeds, why don’t you just make life easier for everyone by attaching the Stausholm findings onto an e-mail and send it to the copied parties. It will only take a couple of minutes.

It will give them some confidence that you mean what you say.

The Jorma Ollila reply on behalf of the Board now seen and accepted by the investigation team and by the Chairman to be false and misleading discredits both him and RDS and any statements eminating from your organisation must be suspect because of that.

So when we are at it, you have repeatedly ‘absolutely refuted’ that your officials unduly influenced, bribed or otherwise corrupted HSE officials or the PF Depute ref Brent Bravo FAI etc but you did not investigate these claims also, so how can you be so confident?

If you have information that the HSE officials acted alone and in their own vested self interests then you are duty bound to assist the investigation team by furbishing them with any evidence that collaborates what you say and/or incriminates them.

Bill Campbell