BP and Shell are globally known, many would think, not for responsible management and regulation of the oil industry but rather for huge oil pollution in the USA and Africa…
Thursday 19th December 2013
From (Prof) Andrew Watterson
Your illuminating report on the fracking map for Scotland (18 December) highlights a number of major issues.
AMEC, the consultancy firm chosen by the UK government to assess the effects of fracking, is one that has done much work for oil companies such as BP and Shell.
BP and Shell are globally known, many would think, not for responsible management and regulation of the oil industry but rather for huge oil pollution in the USA and Africa and, in the former company, for lethal health and safety failures. Former BP staff are at the centre of the move to develop fracking.
The refrain from the UK government and advisors has been that shale-oil gas can be extracted because responsible management and effective regulation will apply. This is not supported in either case by the evidence available so far and we should be very wary of forgetting both the human and economic costs so recently incurred because of flawed financial regulation.
Successive Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats have presided over the deregulatory and “better regulation” agendas. Labour ran down the funding of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which is responsible for the workplace health and safety aspects of fracking in Scotland, and the coalition has cut and weakened the HSE even further as well as chopping staff and budgets in the English Environment Agency – the body that will have oversight of fracking pollution there.
Lest we forget too, the deregulatory push in the UK was begun by Margaret Thatcher and energetically continued by both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, causing significant public health damage on the way.
The Scottish Government has not gone so far down the same path and appears to have done less damage to those who will have partial responsibility for approving or controlling fracking in Scotland.
It also has an energy policy that makes more sense and is in some, but certainly not all, respects less polluting than that of England.
If we want to protect public health and worker health and safety in Scotland, we should ask some very direct questions of the Westminster politician about its policies on fracking and get better answers than have hitherto been available so we can sort out the politicians’ rhetoric from the reality.
(Prof) Andrew Watterson
Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group
University of Stirling
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
