By Katie Herzog on 14 Mar 2016
Shell Oil released its 2015 annual review last week, and the most surprising thing in it may be how concerned the company is with climate change. It’s hardly what you’d expect from Big Oil, and yet the words “climate change” occur 15 times in the 228 page report. While this may seem minor, it’s a hell of a lot more than climate change is discussed by most other oil monsters (Looking at you, Exxon). Shell, unlike many oil giants, actively acknowledges and even embraces climate action — at least, on paper. “It was encouraging to see governments reach a global climate agreement in Paris in December,” the report reads. “The agreement should now encourage countries to develop policies that balance environmental concerns with enabling a decent quality of life for more people.”
Sounds great, right? But before you get too excited about the prospect of Shell transitioning to a solar company, they go ahead and ruin it: “We know that understanding the world’s future energy needs will help us improve our competitiveness. We have evolved over the last few decades from a company focused almost entirely on oil to one of the world’s leading suppliers of gas, the cleanest-burning hydrocarbon.”
While that may be true that gas is the “cleanest-burning hydrocarbon,” it’s still a hydrocarbon. That means, it still contributes to sea level rise, worsening storms, refugee crises, overseas war, epic drought, and more. Not only that, our means of extracting natural gas — fracking — is linked to cancer, earthquakes, and contaminated groundwater. A Pennsylvania company was just ordered to pay $4.2 million in damages to two families for contaminating their well through fracking. Yes, this is the business Shell wants to be in.
And it makes sense for them to acknowledge climate change, at least financially. As DesmogUK points out, “Last May, the oil company’s shareholders voted unanimously in favour of a resolution that forced Shell to consider the possibility of a 2C world in its forecasting. Until that time Shell had been using a 4C to 6C global warming scenario to guide future business operations (twice the level of warming considered safe for the planet).” Besides, the price of oil is at record lows, and Shell lost $7 billion in a failed attempt to find oil in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea the past few years — a move that has reportedly forced the coming retirement of CEO Marvin Odum, a Shell employee for over 30 years. In a recent Washington Post interview (which you should read in its entirety), Odum said:
“Through geology and seismic surveys, we had reduced the risk to where the only way to reduce it more was to put down a well,” Odum said, adding that Shell put it “where we thought there was the highest prospect” of a discovery. If they had been correct, Odum said, the reward could have been fields as rich in oil as the Gulf of Mexico, which produces 1.6 million barrels a day worth $22 billion a year, even at today’s depressed prices.
“The size of the prize was always big enough to take that next step and find out for sure,” he said.
While Shell’s decision to pull out of the Arctic was widely heralded by environmental groups, it probably had less to do with bad press created by protests than it did the bottom line. That’s the thing about oil companies: Some, like Exxon, are actively destructive, and some, like Shell, may be in denial. But we’ve yet to find an oil company that’s substantially different.
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: 
MORE DETAILS:
A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
well i don’t know about katie herzog but i don’t have a car, if i would buy one again it would be an electric car; or with hydrogen maybe;
Tesla vs Toyota; unfortunately we can’t fly airplanes yet
without hydrocarbons (will be solved at a later stage)
I wonder if Katie Herzog drives a car?
If so is it a solar powered car?
I find this kind of journalism sickening.