A senior safety consultant has quit working with Shell after 11 years, accusing the company of causing "extreme harms" to the environment and having a "disregard for climate change risks".
Caroline Dennett announced her resignation as a contracted consultant in an open letter sent to Shell executives and 1400 employees. In an accompanying video posted to LinkedIn, she said she had quit because of the fossil fuel producer's "double-talk on climate".
Dennett accused Shell of "ignoring all the alarms" of climate change and "not putting environmental safety before production".
"Shell's stated safety ambition is to 'do no harm' - 'Goal Zero', they call it - and it sounds honourable but they are completely failing on it," she said.
"They know that continued oil and gas extraction causes extreme harms, to our climate, to our environment and to people. And whatever they say, Shell is simply not winding down on fossil fuels."
Dennett, who works for the independent agency Clout which specialises in evaluating safety procedures in high-risk industries, said Shell had been a major client of hers over the years. She began working with Shell in the aftermath of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
She said it "pained" her to end the working relationship with the company, which she had "greatly valued".
"I can no longer work for a company that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the risks of climate change and ecological collapse," she said.
"Because, contrary to Shell's public expressions around net zero, they are not winding down on oil and gas, but planning to explore and extract much more."
Dennett urged Shell executives to "look in the mirror and ask themselves if they really believe their vision for more oil and gas extraction secures a safe future for humanity".
A Shell spokesperson told the Guardian that they are determined to deliver on their global strategy to be net-zero by 2050.
"We have set targets for the short, medium and long term, and have every intention of hitting them," they said.
"We're already investing billions of dollars in low-carbon energy, although the world will still need oil and gas for decades to come in sectors that can't be easily decarbonised."
