20/20 hindsight over Brent spar

Feb. 9, 1998
After spending 2 years and £20 million ($36 million) in search of a widely acceptable way to dispose of Brent spar, Shell U.K. Exploration & Production revealed its new plan (see related story, p. 30). Because of the amount of information made public by Shell during the search, the final choice came as no surprise. Also no surprise was the new rash of criticism of Shell with the benefit of hindsight.
David Knott
London
[email protected]
After spending 2 years and £20 million ($36 million) in search of a widely acceptable way to dispose of Brent spar, Shell U.K. Exploration & Production revealed its new plan (see related story, p. 30).

Because of the amount of information made public by Shell during the search, the final choice came as no surprise. Also no surprise was the new rash of criticism of Shell with the benefit of hindsight.

Greenpeace welcomed Shell's choice of re-use and onshore disposal, instead of dumping at sea, but criticized the company for taking so long and spending so much money before finding the answer.

Chris Rose, director of Greenpeace's Brent spar campaign, said, "Shell has taken over 2 years to accept what the public told it in 1995. You don't dump, you re-use or re-cycle."

London's Financial Times newspaper tagged its report: "Brent spar-end of an oil fiasco" and said, "For industry, the Brent spar had become a symbol of the dangers of trying to ride roughshod over public opinion."

Obvious

Heinz Rothermund, managing director of Shell Expro, explained that, while the choice of re-use and onshore disposal may look obvious today, in June 1995, deepwater disposal looked equally obvious.

"The environmental campaign led us to abandon our deep sea disposal option," said Rothermund. "Then we had to look at what we could do next.

"First we had to re-evaluate the contents of Brent spar, to get away from the controversy. We needed to prove that the spar isn't a toxic time bomb and clear up many myths.

"This was the starting point. We knew from then that we could not please everyone, but we wanted to get greater involvement in the decision-making process.

"We wanted to learn from our experience the first time around regarding accusations of secrecy. From then onwards, we worked in a completely open manner."

Lesson learned

Eric Faulds, Shell Expro's decommissioning manager, asked rhetorically: Why had a new plan emerged from the same search process?

"Importantly," said Faulds, "the spar will now be starting from a different location. Norway was not open to us in 1995. We approached Norway in 1992 to discuss the potential for dismantling Brent spar there, but the government said then such a plan was extremely unlikely.

"Norway's fjords offer the safe, calm, deep waters needed for safe upending of the spar. The new quay development near Stavanger is also a perfect fit with our new disposal schedule."

Faulds said the fundamental lesson Brent spar taught Shell is not about the environment but about the decision-making process: "We learned we must be more open, so we don't announce a decision and then have to defend it. This is how Brent spar will go down in history."

In hindsight, it is easy to criticize Shell for underestimating public opposition to dumping the spar. It is less easy to conceive how great a departure from conventional oil industry thinking was needed to find this new solution.

A question that interests me is: Given the initial protests, what would have happened if any other company had been the owner of Brent spar?

Would we have seen such an expensive public debate, with the inherent danger of further heavy criticism of such an outcome? I think not.

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