Shell's HSE data open to scrutiny

Royal Dutch/Shell is the first petroleum company to have its health, safety and environment (HSE) performance verified by auditors. This week, the company published HSE data from roughly 250 operating companies and major plants worldwide, including joint ventures, after having them audited by London offices of KPMG and Price Waterhouse. Last week, a consultant seeking a way to benchmark social performance of oil companies said she suspected some tried to disguise their HSE and social impacts

July 20, 1998

3 min read

David Knott
London
[email protected]

Royal Dutch/Shell is the first petroleum company to have its health, safety and environment (HSE) performance verified by auditors.

This week, the company published HSE data from roughly 250 operating companies and major plants worldwide, including joint ventures, after having them audited by London offices of KPMG and Price Waterhouse.

Last week, a consultant seeking a way to benchmark social performance of oil companies said she suspected some tried to disguise their HSE and social impacts (OGJ, July 13, 1998, p. 34).

Any doubters of the sincerity of Shell's post-Brent spar openness will find in this latest report a few statistics that would make public relations officials in many other companies choke on their gin-and-tonics.

Here's one: "We deeply regret to have to report that 60 contractors and seven employees of the reporting companies lost their lives in work-related accidents in 1997. This is an increase of 17 on 1996."

Accidents at working sites have declined-road accidents are the main cause of the deaths. Shell gives drivers medical checks and training but says "road accidents remain an exacting challenge, especially in developing countries."

Sabotage

Here's another to make most PR types blanch: Shell's total spillage of crude oil, products, and chemicals amounted to almost 25,000 metric tons in 1997.

The 1996 total was 10,000 tons spilled worldwide. Shell is aiming to reduce the total to 8,000 tons this year and to 4,000 tons in 2002. Significantly, the company notes that the targets exclude spills resulting from sabotage.

"In 1997," said Shell, "it is estimated that the volume of sabotage-related spills in Nigeria alone was over 60% of the exploration & production total (of 14,000 tons).

"There were some 1,900 accidental/corrosion spills in E&P. After these projections were prepared, a single spill of some 2,200 tons was reported in Nigeria."

The report also breaks out Shell's emissions of volatile organic compounds, CO₂, SO₂, NO_x, plus refinery energy consumption, gas flaring, and discharges to surface water, and it sets targets for improvement.

Learning

Cor Herkströter, RD/Shell chairman, said, "The verification in itself might sound unremarkable, but consider it in the context of an organization of our complexity, size, and geographical spread, and the progress of such verification elsewhere.

"Those involved in the verification will attest to the difficulties in this truly pioneering effort. There were no templates to copy, because as far as we know, no other worldwide organization has attempted such a large and thorough job before."

Herkströter said the process was as rigorous as a financial audit, and it revealed weaknesses in the way some units collect and present data. To remedy this, the group aims to have externally certifiable HSE management systems in place by 2000.

Of course, the report is not all negative. It details groundbreaking moves, such as Shell's push into sustainable development and its stance on climate change, for example.

Previously, Shell's PR reps have had to get used to controversy and recognize the benefit of openness; any claims about environmental or social good works now will ultimately be reinforced by an honest approach to negative data.