THIS STATEMENT BY MR BILL CAMPBELL, RETIRED HSE GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL, WAS SUPPLIED TO ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC COMPANY SECRETARY AND GENERAL COUNSEL CORPORATE, MR MICHIEL BRANDJES IN ADVANCE OF ITS PUBLICATION TODAY. THUS SHELL HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEEK AN INJUNCTION TO PREVENT PUBLICATION
By Bill Campbell, statement embargoed for publication on 11 September 2013
Death by Sandblasting – how production concerns, versus safety of employees, caused offshore deaths
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The Shell Chairman and his Legal Counsel accepts that the evidence held by police that offshore staff were afraid to raise permits and had been conditioned by onshore managers to ignore safety procedures over a prolonged period is authentic
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This story is about behaviour, bad behaviour. It is about how offshore workers were bullied, coerced, harassed by onshore management to keep oil and gas production going at all costs and over a prolonged period of time. It’s about how operators will do what is expected of them if they are put under unreasonable pressure. It’s about how under these conditions deviation, or bending of rules, leads to breaking rules, and eventually to ignoring rules altogether. Ignoring rules, despite the consequences, becomes just the normal way of doing things in the Brent oilfield.