The Squeeze: Oil, Money and Greed in the 21st Century. Tom Bower

Чтение книги онлайн.

       FOUR The Casualty

      Shell’s directors congratulated themselves on scoring a hit against those disrupting the Brent oil trade. There was a shared pride among the company’s long-time employees about their company’s probity and purpose. Built by Dutch engineers and Scottish accountants, nothing was decided in haste. Decisions were taken only after all the circumstances and consequences had been considered and the benefit to the value chain was irrefutable. Although BP might produce more oil, Shell earned higher profits.

      Reared on that tradition, Chris Fay was bullish. With 23 years’ experience in Nigeria, Malaysia and Scandinavia, Fay had become the chairman of Shell’s operations in Britain. Shell’s ten oil-producing fields in the North Sea and others under development were his responsibility. Among the problems he inherited in 1993 was the fate of Brent Spar, a platform in the North Sea used to load crude onto tankers. Erected in 1976, the 65,000-ton, 462-foot-high structure had been decommissioned in 1991, and by 1994 was no longer safe. Dismantling it was a problem. There was no suitable British inshore site, while dismantling at sea would cost $69 million. Shell’s engineers had considered 13 options offered by different organisations, and Fay had discussed the alternatives with Tim Eggar, the Conservative minister for energy. With the government’s public approval, Fay confirmed on 27 February 1995 that the platform would be towed 150 miles into the Atlantic and, using explosives to detonate the ballast tanks, would be sunk in 6,600 feet of water. The cost would be $18 million. The only downside of the apparently uncomplicated process was that the metal, alongside innumerable shipwrecks on the sea bed, would take 4,000 years to disintegrate. Neither Fay nor Eggar was concerned. Over a hundred similar structures had been dumped by American oil companies in the sea without protest, creating artificial reefs off Texas and Louisiana. ‘This is a good example of deep-sea disposal,’ claimed Eggar, anticipating that the Brent Spar’s disposal would be followed by that of 400 other North Sea structures.

      Two months later, at lunchtime on 30 April 1995, four Greenpeace activists jumped from the Greenpeace ship Moby Dick and occupied the derelict Brent Spar. The rig, announced Greenpeace, was filled with 5,500 tons of toxic oil which would escape and contaminate the sea and kill marine life if it was sunk. Media organisations around the world were offered film of the occupation, with close-ups of Shell’s staff aiming high-pressure water hoses at the protestors. Any viewer who doubted that Shell was the aggressor was reminded by Greenpeace about the company’s poor environmental record. In March 1978 the Amoco Cadiz, a tanker carrying a cargo of 220,000 tons of oil, broke up in the English Channel, contaminating the French coastline. Shell owned the oil and was blamed for the disaster, a tenuous link motivated by anger at Shell’s refusal to boycott South Africa during the apartheid era and by its supply of oil to Rhodesia’s rebellious white settlers despite international sanctions after they declared independence in 1965. The accumulated anger against Shell took Fay and his co-directors in London and The Hague by surprise, especially the accusation that Shell was untrustworthy. Taking the lead from Lo van Wachem, the former chairman of Shell’s committee of managing directors, who remained on the board of directors, Shell had already declared its ambition to lead the industry in the protection of the environment. In advertisements and meetings, directors mentioned the possibility of withdrawing from some activities to avoid gambling with the company’s reputation. This commitment had been disparaged by Greenpeace. To gain sympathisers, the environmental movement was intent on entrenching its disagreements with the oil companies.

      Fay and his executives knew that Greenpeace’s allegations were untrue: the platform contained no more than 50 tons of harmless sludge and sand. Greenpeace, they were convinced, had invented the toxic danger as part of its long campaign that mankind should stop using fossil fuels. The battle lines had been drawn after Shell’s spokesmen, in common with Exxon’s and BP’s, had dismissed any link between fossil fuel and damage to the environment. Convinced that the truth would neutralise the Brent Spar protest, Fay appeared on television. But, unprepared for Greenpeace’s counter-allegation that Shell was deliberately concealing internal reports describing the toxic inventory, he visibly reeled, fatally damaging Shell’s image. His personal misfortune reflected Shell’s inherent weaknesses, especially its governance.

      The historic division of the Anglo-Dutch company had never been resolved. In 1907 Henry Deterding, a mercurial Dutchman who had gambled with oilfields, investing in Russia, Mexico, Venezuela and California, had negotiated the merger between his own company, Royal Dutch, and Shell Transport, a British company, on СКАЧАТЬ