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see Royal Dutch Shell Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden

see shell knew 3

Across the U.S., a dangerous movement is brewing, one that seeks to silence trans folks and push them into the shadows. One of its leaders is the Alliance Defending Freedom.

On May 20, the right-wing organization ADF sued Minnesota over its advocacy for trans rights. ADF argues that allowing trans girls and women in women’s sports discriminates against cis girls and women. ADF, a Project 2025 adviser, has been at the helm of several anti-trans initiatives, its lawyers authoring model bathroom bills that would force trans people into the bathrooms of their assigned sex at birth. In 2025, lawmakers have already passed more than 100 anti-trans bills across the U.S., including 13 bathroom bills.

But where is ADF getting money for its anti-trans advocacy? These days, it's almost impossible to tell due to regulations that allow nonprofits to hide their donors, but one verifiable source is the fossil fuel industry. Between 2013 and 2022, Shell USA Company Foundation donated $58,002 to ADF, per an investigation by the Guardian. Phil Anschutz, a billionaire who built his wealth on fossil fuels and now owns Anschutz Entertainment Group, Inc., which puts on live entertainment events like Coachella, also donated $110,000 to ADF between 2011 and 2013.

ADF isn’t the only anti-trans organization with financial ties to the fossil fuel sector. An independent analysis of 45 right-wing groups advocating against trans rights found that 80% have received donations from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. The analysis, conducted by two independent researchers in 2023 and not peer-reviewed, was shared exclusively with Atmos and HEATED. Through a qualitative search, the researchers identified 45 groups advancing anti-trans lobbying, events, and publications and checked reports about their donor disclosures for fossil fuel funding.

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https://payupclimatepolluters.org/blog/shell-oil-gretchen-watkins

...Public reporting has shown that Shell knew about the dangers posed by its fossil fuel products for decades, but engaged in a widespread campaign of deception to protect its profits

Shell now faces lawsuits from 20 states and municipalities that are seeking to hold the corporation accountable for lying about its products’ role in the climate crisis.

The American people deserve answers, and as Shell’s President, Watkins must testify. Here is just some of the evidence that members of the House Oversight Committee should ask her to explain:

Shell Knew About the Dangers of Climate Change as Early as the 1980s

Shell Opposed Climate Action and Publicly Denied the Threat While Preparing Its Own Assets for a Warming Globe

Shell Continues to Expand Drilling and Refining While  Falsely Depicting Itself as Committed to Climate Solutions

Shell Says Consumers Are Responsible For Lowering Emissions   

Shell’s Net Zero Nature-Based Plans Are Astonishingly Unrealistic 

no lnx

sust bix beat

Shell filed appeal against landmark Dutch climate ruling

Reuters

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LONDON, March 29 (Reuters) - Energy major Shell (SHEL.L) has filed its appeal against a Dutch court ruling that ordered the oil, gas and fuel producer to cut its emissions faster in a landmark win for activists turning to courts to force climate action.

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While Shell had set itself a target to reach net zero carbon neutrality by 2050, its intermediate targets were based on emissions intensity, which could in theory allow the group to increase fossil fuel output. read more

In last May's ruling on the case brought by seven groups including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Netherlands, the court said that Shell must cut emissions faster and reduce its absolute emissions by 45% by 2030. read more

Shell said at the time of the ruling that it would appeal. In a post on LinkedIn, Marjan van Loon, Shell's Netherlands President, said the appeal was filed on March 22.

The vast majority of Shell's emissions are so-called Scope 3 emissions from the use of its products by customers, such as when gasoline is combusted in a car or jet fuel on a plane.

Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden has argued that Shell can reach net zero only if society as a whole moves to net zero.

"The judgment holds Shell responsible for reducing the emissions of its customers from the use of its products," he said. "We question how Shell can have a legal obligation to reduce carbon emissions we do not control from customers who are not under a similar legal obligation to reduce their emissions.

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"If we decided to stop selling petrol, it would not mean that people would buy less petrol. Customers would buy it elsewhere."

Reporting by Shadia Nasralla and Kirstin Ridley Editing by David Goodman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

https://qz.com/1962079/oil-companies-are-dropping-oil-lobbies-over-climate-change/

by Samanth Subramanian

Looking into the Future of Capitalism

Published January 27, 2021

Earlier this month,oil major Total took the unusual step of abandoning the American Petroleum Institute (API), the influential trade group that has advocated for the industry’s interests in Washington for more than a century.

As an explanation for quitting the group, Total cited API’s support for the rollback of curbs on methane emissions, its opposition to electric vehicle subsidies, and its funding of electoral candidates who opposed the US’ participation in the Paris Agreement on climate change.

its departure is the starkest example yet of a broader shift of oil companies quitting their memberships in industry bodies and lobbying groups—particularly those that, like API, have been accused of obstructing climate change initiatives.

On its website, API commits to “delivering solutions that reduce the risks of climate change.” On the ground, however, it has been found to have repeatedly stymied new climate-friendly legislation and supported moves such as Donald Trump’s decision to invite drillers into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

In 2019, Total left the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a more niche lobbying group.Shell quit that group as well, as did BP,which additionally left the Western States Petroleum Association and the Western Energy Alliance.

Shell and BP remain members of API, however, as do other major companies such as Siemens Energy, Chevron, LafargeHolcim, and Echinor. A Shell spokesperson told Quartz that the company is “now updating and assessing its membership in 36 global trade associations (API among them)” but that groups like API aren’t expected to be “monolithic in their platforms or advocacy approach.”

A Siemens Energy spokesperson said the company supports decarbonization of the world’s energy system, but that this transformation would not happen overnight: “Natural gas will remain an important interim solution for our global energy system for years to come. Our customers and API share this vision.”

Megan Baldino, the head of corporate communications for BP, said the company monitors its trade association memberships, “especially those we view as only ‘partially aligned’ with us on climate-related issues. We remain committed to trying to influence those associations from within and will publish a trade association update” in the second quarter of this financial year.

Echinor, LafargeHolcim, and Chevron did not respond to a request for comment.

agnes Hall, the campaigns director for 350.org, an advocacy group pressing for laws to combat climate change, identified a buildup from activists and institutional investors as the driving force behind some of these realignments. This buildup has occurred over the course of several years, intensifying since 2015, when the Paris Agreementwas signed.That year, 25 institutional investors with more than £45 billion ($62 billion) in assets urged nine listed companies to quit European trade groups such as FuelsEurope and Cefic.

Investors and asset managers have also been demanding more transparency about trade group memberships and lobbying expenditure. Hall said that more than 1,300 investors worth over $14 trillion have pledged to divest from fossil fuels.

Evelyn Dietsche, a senior business lead at the research institute swisspeace, which studies companies in high-risk business environments, also pointed to frictions within firms as a reason for these shifts in stances. “Within these companies, you’ll have some people tasked with looking for the opportunities in the transition to gas or renewable fuels and the company’s future in that, and you’ll have others who, at least until recently, focused their attention on prolonging the status quo,” she said. “At some point, it should become untenable to gloss over that ambiguity.”

But Hall, at 350.org, called these publicly announced departures from trade associations “a clear greenwashing strategy.”

“If Total, BP, Shell, and the oil majors wanted to be coherent with what they try to pass as climate leadership, they would not only leave trade associations pushing back on ambitious climate policies, but they would also immediately start a rapid transition of their business model,” she said.

SHELL DEFECTOR (when was court loss?]

https://news.yahoo.com/1-shell-quit-u-refining-105931571.html

reuters

UPDATE 7-Citing climate differences, Shell walks away from U.S. refining lobby

By Ron Bousso

April 2, 2019

* Shell to leave AFPM in 2020 over climate "misalignment"

* Shell releases first report on links with industry groups

* Investor welcomes report as "industry first" (Adds comment from French oil major Total)

By Ron Bousso

LONDON, April 2 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc on Tuesday became the first major oil and gas company to announce plans to leave a leading U.S. refining lobby due to disagreement on climate policies, citing its support for the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

In its first review of its association with 19 key industry groups, Shell said it had found "material misalignment" over climate policy with the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and would quit the body in 2020.

The review is part of Shell's drive to increase transparency and show investors it is in line with the 2015 Paris climate agreement's goals to limit global warming by reducing carbon emissions to a net zero by the end of the century.

It is the latest sign of how investor pressure on oil companies, particularly in Europe, is leading to changes in their behavior around climate. Last year, Shell caved in to investor pressure over climate change, setting out plans to introduce industry-leading carbon emissions targets linked to executive pay.

Its chief executive, Ben van Beurden, has since repeatedly urged oil and gas producers to take action over climate and pollution, staking out a more radical position than the heads of other major oil companies.

"AFPM has not stated support for the goal of the Paris Agreement. Shell supports the goal of the Paris Agreement," the Anglo-Dutch company said in its decision.

"The need for urgent action in response to climate change has become ever more obvious since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015. As a result, society's expectations in this area have changed, and Shell's views have also evolved," van Beurden said in the report.

The company has disagreed with AFPM on a number of issues for some time, according to two lobbying sources. Shell said it also disagreed with AFPM's opposition to a price on carbon and action on low-carbon technologies.

Shell and AFPM have also been at odds in recent months over regulation over the use of renewable fuels. While Shell and other large refiners invested in cleaner fuel technology, AFPM has fought hard against standards requiring refiners to blend or subsidize the blending of biofuels into the gasoline pool - saying it hurts independent refiners.

Shell and rivals Exxon and BP have in recent years left the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative political group, over its stance on climate change.

AFPM Chief Executive Chet Thompson thanked Shell for its "longstanding collaboration."

"We will also continue working on behalf of the refining and petrochemical industries to advance policies that ensure reliable and affordable access to fuels and petrochemicals, while being responsible stewards of the environment," Thompson said in a statement.

AFPM counts around 300 U.S. and international members includingExxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp, BP Plc and Total SAthat operate 110 refineries and 229 petrochemical plants, according to its 2018 annual report.

French oil major Total said in a statement to Reuters that consensus required by organizations such as AFPM does not always reflect its position, and that it regularly monitors the relevance of its participation.

"In this case, Total takes a pro-active approach in order to convince its peers, particularly on climate issues. In case of differing points of view, Total publicly defends its position, and is ready to reconsider its participation in case of disagreement," the company said.

Total said it was fully aware of climate issues, has publicly recognized them and takes them into its strategy.

Shell's review was welcomed by Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, which invests in Shell and led discussions with the company over its climate policy.

"This is an industry first," Matthews said. "With this review Shell have set the benchmark for best practice on corporate climate lobbying not just within oil and gas but across all industries. The challenge now is for others to follow suit."

WALK AWAY

Shell also found "some" misalignment with nine other trade associations, including the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's main lobby.

Shell said that while it had some climate-related differences with theAPI, it welcomed the lobby's advocacy on a range of state and federal issues such as trade and transport, as well as the API's efforts to reduce methane emissions.

Shell said it will continue to engage with the API and other groups over climate policies and monitor their alignment.

Shell last month urged President Donald Trump's administration to tighten restrictions on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, instead of weakening them as planned.

(Reporting by Ron Bousso; Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in New York and Bate Felix in Paris; Editing by Louise Heavens, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Lisa Shumaker and Leslie Adler)

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/how-exxon-chevron-and-their-buddies-58986784/

fOOTNOTES:

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https://www.desmog.com/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap/

NO LNX grfx

‘All Rhetoric and No Action’: Oil Giants Spent $1 Billion on Climate Lobbying and Ads Since Paris Pact, Says Report

By Sharon Kelly on Mar 22, 2019

A new report by a British think tank estimates that since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies spent more than $1 billion lobbying to prevent climate change regulations while also running public relations campaigns aimed at maintaining public support for climate action.

Combined, the companies spend roughly $200 million a year pushing to delay or alter climate and energy rules, particularly in the U.S. — while spending $195 million a year “on branding campaigns that suggest they support an ambitious climate agenda,” according to InfluenceMap, a UK-based non-profit that researches how corporations influence climate policy.

InfluenceMap cites as an example ExxonMobil’s heavily-touted algae-biofuels research, which the oil giant says “offers some of the greatest promise for next-generation biofuels” with significant climate benefits and has made it the focus of its “The Tiny Organism” ad campaign.

InfluenceMap notes that “detailed disclosures from the company show its goal of 10,000 barrels of bio-fuel a day would equate to only0.2 percent of its current refinery capacity.”

“Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins, author of the new report, said in a statement. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

Today’s report updates the group’s 2016 report that estimated these companies spent $115 million a year lobbying against climate regulations — even policies companies said they supported.

“Say one thing,” said SenatorSheldon Whitehouse, as he described InfluenceMap’s 2016 research on the floor of the U.S. Senate, “do another.”

The new estimates suggest that spending to influence climate policy by the five oil giants has increased sharply over the last two years.

It also comes as global banks are investing more in fossil fuel projects since the Paris Agreement. In addition, the five oil companies are spending heavily on finding and producing more fossil fuels — and putting only a tiny fraction of their budgets into efforts to transition away from climate-altering fuels.

“This spending accompanies the expansion of the companies’ operations with combined annual sales of over $1 [trillion] and profits of $55 [billion in] 2018, the vast majority of which is oil and gas related,” InfluenceMap wrote. “Combined capital investment will increase to $115 [billion] in 2019 but only about 3 percent of this will go to low carbon investments, according to company disclosures.”

Lobbying One Message While Advertising Another

The report focuses on the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron, leaving out state-controlled oil giants like Saudi Aramco and China’s Sinopec.

InfluenceMap examined the extent to which each company’s branding efforts and advertising campaigns focused on climate change.

Shell's branded content about its emissions scenario in The New York Times

Shell’s branded content about its “Sky” emissions scenario in The New York Times.

“The research suggests that Total maintains the highest proportion of its branding activities on climate (29 percent),” the new report finds. “Following this, ExxonMobil, which has faced significant negative media attention in 2018, allocates 19 percent. Shell and BP followed with 16 percent and 14 percent respectively. Chevron appears far less concerned, using approximately 2 percent of its branding budget on climate issues in 2018.”

The think tank’s research also looked at what the companies were saying to government regulators, either directly or through industry groups funded by the oil majors.

“Since Paris, Chevron, BP andExxonMobil have led in opposition to a range of climate-motivated policy stands,” InfluenceMap wrote. “For example, in 2018 both BP and Chevron have directly lobbied U.S. policymakers for a rollback on U.S. methane requirements.” (Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and the major constituent in natural gas.)

The report credits Shell and Total for becoming “more positive on a number of climate policy issues” since 2015, but adds that they “continue to support policies that will extend the role for fossil fuels in the energy mix and remain part of highly climate-oppositional trade associations.”

Mixed Messages and Industry Trade Groups

At times, the public stances of a corporation’s leadership stand starkly at odds with the messages from industry groups funded by that same corporation.

For example, on electric vehicles, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden had a very direct and simple message in July 2018. “We need battery electric vehicles,” he said. And a year earlier, at the oil industry conference, CERAWeek, in 2017, he expressed support for “regulations that speed up investment in low carbon technologies and ? at the same time ? move consumer demand.”

Oil and gas lobbying on climate policies through trade associations. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

In May 2018, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. trade group for oil and gas, pushed the U.S. Congress to move in the opposite direction by rolling back incentives for electric vehicles.

“American Petroleum Institute (API) opposes mandates and subsidies,” API testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, according to InfluenceMap’s new report. The fossil fuel trade group voiced its opposition for subsidies for electric vehicles, adding that “the level of market penetration achieved by electric vehicles should not rely on government interference.”

The report also notes the difficulty in tracking corporate lobbying in the U.S. given the rise of so-called “dark money” groups and the lack of transparency surrounding political contributions in the U.S. “Political contributions that were made without full disclosure of their ultimate source totaled $539 [million] in the 2018 election cycle according to OpenSecrets.org,” the report says.

Social Influencers

InfluenceMap also dives deep into how companies usedsocial media to influence Americans during the mid-term elections last year.

“During this time ExxonMobil was by far the most prolific spender, racking up over $400Kin four weeks on over 360 individual political ads,” InfluenceMap wrote. “The ads urge rejecting specific ballot initiatives whilst promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production. Facebook’s data indicates that ExxonMobil’s ads made over 10 million ‘impressions’ in this time with users in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.”

Oil industry spending on Facebook and Instagram ads leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

All of this spending has implications for shareholders, InfluenceMap observed — and some shareholder groups appear to be listening.

“InfluenceMap’s research confirms a widely held suspicion that Big Oil’s glossy sustainability reports and shiny climate statements are all rhetoric and no action,” Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive of ShareAction, a UK charity focused on responsible investment, said in a statement accompanying the report. “These companies have mastered the art of corporate doublespeak — by boasting about their climate credentials while quietly using their lobbying firepower to sabotage the implementation of sensible climate policy and pouring millions into groups that engage in dirty lobbying on their behalf.”

DeSmog has reached out to ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron for comment.

“We firmly reject the premise of this report. We are very clear about our support for the Paris agreement, and the steps that we are taking to help meet society’s needs for more and cleaner energy,” Shell said in a statement provided to The Guardian. “We make no apology for talking to policymakers and regulators around the world to make our voice heard on crucial topics such as climate change and how to address it.”

“We have not been afforded the opportunity to review the data but we disagree with the assertion that Chevron has engaged in ‘climate-related branding and lobbying’ that is ‘overwhelmingly in conflict’ with the Paris Agreement,” Chevron said in a statement provided to DeSmog, adding that the company was taking “prudent, cost-effective actions” and seeking “balanced and transparent” policies to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. “We believe climate change is real and human activity contributes to it. We accept the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/companies-lobbying-against-infrastructure-tax-hikes-have-dodged-millions-in-taxes-report/

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President Joe Biden's American Jobs Plan proposal would raise the United States' corporate tax rate to 28% in order to pay for infrastructure projects. Some large corporations, journalist Akela Lacy stresses in an article published by The Intercept on September 6, have been aggressively lobbying against that proposal — and they include everything from pharmaceutical companies to financial firms, some of which dodged a fortune in taxes.

"Companies that…. lobbied earlier this year on issues related to tax rates in Biden's American Jobs Plan include Walmart, Oracle, Accenture, Bristol Myers Squibb, Shell and Walgreens, according to an analysis by Accountable.US, a nonpartisan watchdog group focused on public corruption," Lacy explains. "Executives at companies that have historically avoided paying taxes, like Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, FedEx, and DuPont, have spoken out publicly against Biden's proposed tax increases."

Lacy continues, "Shell and Walgreens lobbied earlier this year on corporate tax issues in the American Jobs Plan. Walmart hired a lobbying firm tasked with 'monitoring of tax proposals related to infrastructure' in the plan and proposed legislative efforts related to Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts. Accenture hired another firm to 'monitor the American Jobs Plan as it relates to corporate taxes.' Oracle and Bristol Myers Squibb, a multinational pharmaceutical company, used the same firm hired by Accenture to monitor and lobby on similar issues in the proposal."

Lacy goes on to note how successful some of these mega-corporations have been when it comes to dodging taxes — and not only in the United States.

"A Reuters report last year found that from 2018 to 2019, Shell reported $2.7 billion through offshore tax havens and avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes," Lacy writes. "In 2019, Australia charged Shell $755 million for six years' worth of taxes the company did not pay. The company reported that after getting tax refunds related to the closure of oil platforms, it paid no corporate income tax in the U.K. in 2018 on $731 million in profits."

Lacy points to Walgreens as another company that knows how to dodge taxes.

"Between 2008 and 2014," Lacy explains, "Walmart held more than $23.3 billion in offshore accounts and avoided paying more than $4.59 billion in U.S. taxes, according to a 2016 Oxfam report. In an arrangement internally known as Project Flex, the company routed money through an allegedly fictitious Chinese subsidiary, Quartz reported, which allowed it to avoid paying $2.6 billion in U.S. taxes between 2014 and 2017. The 2016 report from the U.S. PIRG, CTJ, and ITEP also found that Walmart reported zero tax haven subsidiaries despite having as many as 75."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/business/royal-dutch-shell-climate-change.html

a ]Dutch court ruled Wednesday that Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, must accelerate its efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to tackle climate change.

The District Court in The Hagueruled that Shell was “obliged” to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of its activities by 45 percent at the end of 2030 compared with 2019.

Shell has already adopted targets for emissions reduction, but the terms of the court’s decision could require the company to substantially accelerate the process of reducing emissions-producing fuels like oil and gas.

At present, Shell says it hopes to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, with a series of interim targets along the way.[cf intensity BS?]

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A spokesman said that the company expected to “to appeal today’s disappointing court decision.”

The ruling will likely only apply in the Netherlands, and it is unclear how it would be enforced. There was also a small consolation for Shell: The court found that the company’s current carbon dioxide emissions were not unlawful.

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320

https://www.ecowatch.com/shell-annual-report-2645549099.html

Dana Drugmand

Two years afterinternal documents surfaced showing that Royal Dutch Shell, like ExxonMobil, knew about climate dangers decades ago, the oil giant released its latest annual report outlining its business strategy and approach to addressing climate change. Despite clear warnings from scientists, global health experts and even central banks of impending climate-driven crises, Shell's report largely sends a message that everything is fine and the company's "business strategy is sound."

That is not to say that Shell is ignoring the challenges facing it and other oil majors. But overall Shell appears to be toeing the line between saying it is responding to the climate challenge and inevitable energy transition on the one hand, and maintaining its core oil and gas business model on the other.

Shell's 2019 Annual Report is filled with statements that reveal the company's perspective on the Paris agreement, the energy transition, and climate litigation and regulatory risk to its business. A few of these statements seem contradictory, and it is important to keep in mind the context of #ShellKnew when the company says now, in 2020, that it is committed to being part of the solution.

Shell’s Strategy

According to the report, there are three parts to Shell's overall strategy going forward: to thrive in the energy transition, to provide a world-class investment case, and to sustain a strong societal license to operate. That may sound good on paper, but in reality significant challenges are mounting for each of these pillars.

In terms of the energy transition, Shell appears to be paying lip service to it more than actually revamping its portfolio or overhauling its business model. Its core business remains oil and gas. Period.

The company may be ahead of some other oil giants like Exxon and Chevron in terms of adding alternative energies to its energy mix, but overall its commitment to clean energy is minimal.

Shell notes in its report that it spends "$1-2 billion a year until 2020 in different services and products from a range of cleaner sources," and "investments in power could grow to $2-3 billion a year on average" from 2021 to 2025. The vast majority of the company's capital expenditure ($24bn to $29bn in 2020) goes into oil and gas, and failure to replace proved reserves could have a "material adverse effect." Instead of aligning with the energy transition, Shell's business model is based on continual hydrocarbon exploitation.

In terms of a "world-class investment," the oil and gas sector is particularly vulnerable at the moment to financial pressure and investors are increasingly turning away from fossil fuels. Jim Cramer infamously dubbed fossil fuels "in the death knell phase." Shell acknowledges this risk. It notes in its report that fossil fuel divestment "could have a material adverse effect on the price of our securities and our ability to access capital markets."

Shell also recognizes its vulnerability to an eroding social license as the public and particularly younger generations start to scorn Big Oil.

"In 2019, many protested about climate change, sometimes directly targeting Shell," Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden wrote in the report. The company includes challenges to its reputation as a risk factor, noting, "There is increasing focus on the role of oil and gas in the context of climate change and energy transition. This could negatively affect our brand, reputation and licence to operate."

Shell did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the risk to its social license.

Shell Claims to Support Paris Agreement, Plans for Gradual Energy Transition

In its report, Shell says it fully supports the Paris agreement goal to limit warming well below 2 degrees C, and supports "the vision of a transition towards a net-zero emissions energy system." But, in contrast to fellow European oil major BP, Shell is not committing its own business to net zero emissions.

Shell says it has "no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio over our investment horizon of 10-20 years." Instead, Shell's Net Carbon Footprint "ambition" is to reduce emissions (including its customers' and suppliers' emissions) of its energy production and products by 20 percent by 2035 and by 50 percent by 2050. This is not aligned with climate science guidelines that say complete decarbonization or "net zero" is necessary by 2050 at the latest.

Shell's own business is therefore not aligned with the goal of the Paris agreement, and the company is facing a lawsuit over this in its home country of the Netherlands. Current emissions reduction plans or "Nationally Determined Contributions" (NDCs) submitted by countries under the Paris agreement are also inadequate. As Shell notes in its report, current NDCs amount to about 3 degrees C of warming. "In coming decades, we expect countries to tighten these NDCs to meet the goals of the Paris agreement," the report states. Shell's view appears to be that the world has decades to get its act together.

In that view, Shell says it is fully on board with the energy transition and plans to transform its own business "over time." The report includes statements like "Shell aims to become an integrated power player and grow, over time, a material new business", and, "for us, protecting the environment also means working to transform our product mix over time, for example, by expanding the choice of lower-carbon products we offer customers."

Yet, in a seeming contradiction to these statements, Shell says it "agrees with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5°C special report," which clearly warned that limiting warming to 1.5°C would require, as Shell notes, "an even more rapid escalation in the scale and pace of change."

While Shell claims to fully support the Paris agreement, in another seeming contradiction, the company states in its report that the government action necessary to meet Paris targets could harm its business: "Policies and regulations designed to limit the increase in global temperatures to well below 2°C could have a material adverse effect on Shell – through higher operating costs and reduced demand for some of our products."

Shell also says it is wary of governments actually taking climate action: "we believe measures taken by governments to control national energy transitions may also have unintended consequences."

Yet, at the same time, Shell says it expects to be subject to increasing regulation. "We also expect that GHG regulation, as well as emission reduction actions by customers, will continue to result in suppression of demand for fossil fuels, either through taxes, fees and/or incentives to promote the sale of lower-carbon electric vehicles or even through the future prohibition of sales of new diesel or gasoline vehicles, such as the prohibition in the United Kingdom (UK) beginning in 2035. This could result in lower revenue and, in the long term, potential impairment of certain assets," the report states.

Climate Litigation Risk

Shell, like other fossil fuel companies, has long been concerned about governments imposing climate policies or regulations that would affect its business. Shell and its industry peers are already facing climate lawsuits, and Shell is explicitly identifying climate litigation as part of a broader risk factor associated with "rising climate change concern."

In its report, Shell acknowledged the lawsuits could negatively impact its financial condition: "In some countries, governments, regulators, organisations and individuals have filed lawsuits seeking to hold fossil fuel companies liable for costs associated with climate change. While we believe these lawsuits to be without merit, losing any of these lawsuits could have a material adverse effect on our earnings, cash flows and financial condition."

Shell actually foresaw climate-related lawsuits as a possibility more than 20 years ago. One of the internal documents that a Dutch news organization first uncovered (and published on the site Climate Files) is a 1998 document of Shell planning scenarios where the company hypothetically envisions a series of violent storms battering the eastern U.S., which then spur environmental NGOs to bring "a class-action suit against the US government and fossil-fuel companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists (including their own) have been saying for years: that something must be done."

Shell Knew    

One statement from Shell's annual report rings particularly true: "Shell has long recognised that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the use of fossil fuels are contributing to the warming of the climate system."

Indeed, Shell has long known that fossil fuels are warming the planet and that the consequences would be of a huge magnitude.

One internal Shell document from 1988 called "The Greenhouse Effect" warned that GHG emissions would lead to warming over the next century, likely ranging from 1.5 C to 3.5 C. According to that document, "The changes may be the greatest in recorded history." Some parts of the planet may become uninhabitable, and there may be "significant changes in sea level, ocean currents, precipitation patterns, regional temperature and weather," it says. Impacts could be severe and "could have major social, economic, and political consequences."

What did Shell do with that knowledge? It started introducing doubt and giving weight to a 'significant minority' of 'alternative viewpoints' as the full implications for the company's business model became clear.

Shell was a member of the Global Climate Coalition, a fossil fuel industry-funded group that worked to undermine climate science and block climate policy internationally. The group formed in 1988 and Shell was a member throughout much of the 1990s.

During that time Shell was not exactly upfront with its own shareholders about potential risks climate change posed to its business. The first time Shell even mentioned climate change was in a 1991 annual report. But it wasn't until 2004 that Shell made a clear warning in its annual report about financial risk associated with fossil fuel investment.

Critics have for many years accused Shell's of greenwashing — acknowledging the climate threat and touting its "commitment" to being part of the solution, despite continuing to spend heavily on oil and gas with only minimal investment in alternative energy. Shell's latest annual report suggests the company isn't deviating far from that strategy.

==

PR cover on knew?

but

w/ senge et al

https://thesystemsthinker.com/building-communities-of-commitment/

royal dutch shell ugly sis --> scenario planning

==

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/16/polly-higgins-lawyer-taking-big-oil-s-crimes-against-humanity

Polly Higgins is a woman on the hunt. And you get the sense that, after decades of working towards holding powerful polluters to account, her prey may finally be in sight.

“When you're looking at any crime, you're looking at who are your suspects,” she tells me in a soft Scottish accent that belies the hard truths she regularly delivers. “Within a corporate context, you're looking at CEOs and directors. Within a state context, it is ministers and Heads of State.”

“They're the ones where final responsibility rests for making the decisions that can adversely impact many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and indeed — in the case of climate crime — billions of people.”

Climate activism is surging, with the school strikers chastising older generations for failing them, and Extinction Rebellion hitting headlines with its creative direct actions in the name of “climate justice”.

But Higgins has her own, more institutional approach to what she agrees is a looming climate crisis: making it illegal to deliberately destroy the environment. She is calling for the International Criminal Court in the Hague to recognise ‘ecocide’ as a crime against humanity, alongside genocide and war crimes. She explains:

“There's a growing recognition that a lot of campaigning is not getting us where we need to go, and just saying fossil fuel extraction should stop is not enough. It has to be criminalised.”

That’s why, in 2010, Higgins proposed an amendment to the Rome Statute — the treaty that established the International Criminal Court. It defined ecocide as “the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished.”

Some countries, such as the UK, have national climate change laws that set legally-binding emissions reduction targets. And many have regulations that are meant to protect the environment from corporate activities that could destroy ecosystems.

But none currently have sufficient legislation to allow companies to be taken to court, and treated as criminals, for damaging the environment purely for profit.

As Higgins points out: “We have laws that are protecting dangerous industrial activities, such as fracking, despite the fact that there is an abundance of evidence that it is hugely harmful in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and the catastrophic trauma it can cause communities that are impacted by it.”

But if there was an ecocide law, it would allow lawyers and campaigners to argue that such polluting activities were “a potential crime against humanity.”

Watch[DeSmog's interview with Polly Higgins video]

Shell Knew

That may seem like a lofty ambition, particularly when the charge is being led by a small team from a one-room office in the quaint, pastoral and pleasant surroundings of Stroud. But renewed activism has shown there is a growing appetite to hold to account those responsible for the current and future impacts of climate change.

A recent report from thinktank InfluenceMap showed the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies spent more than $1 billion lobbying to prevent climate change regulations — all while running public relations campaigns aimed at maintaining public support for climate action.

And the European Parliament last month held a hearing into Exxon’s decades-long support of climate science denial and lobbying, which followed fresh media revelations around Shell’s decades-old and hidden knowledge of the harm its products cause the climate.

Higgins is currently targeting Shell in particular. At the end of last year, her NGO, Mission Lifeforce, went to The Hague to announce that it would be undertaking an initial legal analysis to establish whether Shell could be guilty of ecocide.

She concedes that making that case won’t be easy.

“For us to establish that Shell — and indeed a whole industry — has undertaken a modus operandi that constitutes an inhumane act, there are a number of elements that we have to satisfy legally, one of them being intent.”

While the task will be difficult, Shell’s own actions could help to take it down. Citing the work of De Correspondent, the Climate Accountability Institute, and DeSmog, she says there are “a number of key points over time that suggest that Shell has decided to move forward with their industrial activities in the full knowledge of just how dangerous they are.”

She highlights recently-released documents that show Shell’s own internal scientific analysis revealed the dangers its products posed to the climate in the 1980s. Despite this, the company continued to fund groups that pushed climate science denial and failed to warn shareholders of the risks for decades.

Read DeSmog's ShellKnew investigation in full]

Motivation

It has taken years to get to what Higgins describes as “the first step” of holding these multi-billion dollar corporations to account. So what drives her to keep going — to keep taking on these hugely powerful opponents?

“I grew up in the countryside. I grew up loving the beauty of the wilderness of the west coast of Scotland. I spent my childhood holidaying in Wales. So I think it greatly informed what I'm doing now,” she says.

“It's just part and parcel of who I am, and I think if you fundamentally care about people and the planet then it's something you're just not going to be able to walk away from.”

She’s motivated by protecting the people affected by major polluters, just as much as she’s driven to protect the planet itself. That means facing up to some big political powers as well as Big Oil.

An international ecocide law “is not something that most western world governments will sign off on,” she admits. “This is something that small islands that are most adversely impacted will want to have legal redress for, which kind of plays into the David and Goliath aspect of it.”

“Although it will impact the whole of humanity, those on the frontline tend to be the small island states such as Tuvalu and Vanuatu. And, for them, climate collapse is an existential humanitarian crisis. So they're seeking ways to significantly abate the primary drivers of climate breakdown.”

That’s why she’s targeting the International Criminal Court, where each member has one vote, rather than more cumbersome and potentially unjust institutions like the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, where small countries can find themselves crowded out or bullied. Higgins sees a more permanent law, rather than delicate political solutions, as the best way to give calls for climate action some teeth.

Legacy

A few weeks after we speak, Higgins is diagnosed with aggressive terminal cancer. It makes her efforts to create something more solid — a law, rather than a political solution — seem all the more pertinent.

Pushing for ecocide to be acknowledged as a crime is her way of “recognising that there's a current absence of proper political leadership on this issue,” and “where political will fails then the law can prevail.”

“Ultimately all of this is preventable and that's really what ecocide law is about.”

“It is fundamentally unjust to sit back and watch the destruction occurring,” she says.

Higgins is very good at explaining why an ecocide law could be effective, in theory. But there remain few mainstream campaign groups or political parties that back her cause. The UK’s Green Party in 2012 passed a resolution giving “wholehearted support for an international law of ecocide”. No other party has yet followed the Greens’ lead.

Higgins says that’s in part because hers is a movement that doesn’t wholly rely on public awareness “because it's not the number one issue of concern,” she says.

Instead, she has worked on “discerning who are my allies in this, and how to take this forward working with them behind the scenes.”

That doesn’t mean public support for the idea isn’t useful — “it does help to have public support without a doubt,” she acknowledges — it just may not be necessary. If the International Criminal Court agrees with her, her job is done.

That’s why her focus is on forging a new tool for campaigners — an ecocide law — rather than courting them.

As she says: “Where do you go when NGO campaigns have failed? Where do you go when countless petitions to governments get you nowhere?”

Her work has laid the groundwork for a new answer to those questions: For decades, people have taken to the streets. Thanks to Higgins’ work, perhaps one day, they will be able to take the prime suspects in climate atrocities to the criminal courts.

==

 ==

UCS 519

For decades, fossil fuel companies have spent millions to spread climate disinformation and delay action on climate change, but now we're one step closer to holding them accountable. After months of public pressure,oil and gas giant Shell has given in to activist and investor demands. It has released a report on the climate policy lobbying of external groups that it funds and cut ties with one anti-climate group.

Unfortunately, other major fossil fuel companies, such as BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil, are still hiding their anti-climate lobbying behind trade associations. These trade associations, such as the American Petroleum Institute (API) and others, lobby against climate action on behalf of their members, allowing companies to feign support for climate action in public while doing just the opposite behind closed doors.

Tell fossil fuel companies to catch up with the competition: it's time for transparency in the fossil fuel industry.

This is a big deal. Lobbying by Big Oil often tips the scales on climate policy at the federal, state, and local levels—frequently under the cover of third-party groups they fund in secret. While some major fossil fuel companies no longer dispute climate science, most continue to hold leadership positions in industry groups like these that fight against science-based climate policy.

We need your voice to stop secret anti-climate lobbying. Tell fossil fuel companies to leave industry groups that lobby against their own positions on climate.

Shell's trade association report isn't perfect. The company did withdraw from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), unable to square AFPM's lack of support for carbon pricing and its push for a rollback of Environmental Protection Agency fuel economy standards with Shell’s own climate policies. However, it still maintains membership in two other trade groups that have played well-documented roles in spreading climate disinformation.

Shell's trade association report brings much-needed attention to the fossil fuel industry's political lobbying. It also puts pressure on other companies to follow suit. It's time for BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil to step up and improve on Shell's first step towards transparency and accountability.

see energy corps 2 for grafs and lnx

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap

all rhet

A new report by a British think tank estimates that since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies spent more than $1 billion lobbying to prevent climate change regulations while also running public relations campaigns aimed at maintaining public support for climate action.

Combined, the companies spend roughly $200 million a year pushing to delay or alter climate and energy rules, particularly in the U.S. — while spending $195 million a year “on branding campaigns that suggest they support an ambitious climate agenda,” according to InfluenceMap, a UK-based non-profit that researches how corporations influence climate policy.

InfluenceMap cites as an example ExxonMobil’s heavily-touted algae-biofuels research, which the oil giant says “offers some of the greatest promise for next-generation biofuels” with significant climate benefits and has made it the focus of its “The Tiny Organism” ad campaign.

InfluenceMap notes that “detailed disclosures from the company show its goal of 10,000 barrels of bio-fuel a day would equate to only 0.2 percent of its current refinery capacity.

"

[algae tiny vid]

Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins, author of the new report, said in a statement. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

Today’s report updates the group’s 2016 report that estimated these companies spent $115 million a year lobbying against climate regulations — even policies companies said they supported.

“Say one thing,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as he described InfluenceMap’s 2016 research on the floor of the U.S.Senate, “do another.”

The new estimates suggest that spending to influence climate policy by the five oil giants has increased sharply over the last two years.

It also comes as global banks are investing more in fossil fuel projects since the Paris Agreement. In addition, the five oil companies are spending heavily on finding and producing more fossil fuels — and putting only a tiny fraction of their budgets into efforts to transition away from climate-altering fuels.

“This spending accompanies the expansion of the companies’ operations with combined annual sales of over $1 [trillion] and profits of $55 [billion in] 2018, the vast majority of which is oil and gas related,” InfluenceMap wrote. “Combined capital investment will increase to $115 [billion] in 2019 but only about 3 percent of this will go to low carbon investments, according to company disclosures.”

Lobbying One Message While Advertising Another

The report focuses on the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil, Shell,BP, Total, and Chevron, leaving out state-controlled oil giants like Saudi Aramco and China’s Sinopec.

InfluenceMap examined the extent to which each company’s branding efforts and advertising campaigns focused on climate change.

Shell's branded content about its emissions scenario in The New York Times

Shell's branded content about its “Sky” emissions scenario in The New York Times.

“The research suggests that Total maintains the highest proportion of its branding activities on climate (29 percent),” the new report finds. “Following this, ExxonMobil, which has faced significant negative media attention in 2018, allocates 19 percent. Shell and BP followed with 16 percent and 14 percent respectively. Chevron appears far less concerned, using approximately 2 percent of its branding budget on climate issues in 2018.”

The think tank's research also looked at what the companies were saying to government regulators, either directly or through industry groups funded by the oil majors.

“Since Paris, Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil have led in opposition to a range of climate-motivated policy stands,” InfluenceMap wrote. “For example, in 2018 both BP and Chevron have directly lobbied U.S. policymakers for a rollback on U.S. methane requirements.” (Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and the major constituent in natural gas.)

The report credits Shell and Total for becoming “more positive on a number of climate policy issues” since 2015, but adds that they “continue to support policies that will extend the role for fossil fuels in the energy mix and remain part of highly climate-oppositional trade associations.”

Mixed Messages and Industry Trade Groups

At times, the public stances of a corporation’s leadership stand starkly at odds with the messages from industry groups funded by that same corporation.

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For example, on electric vehicles, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden had a very direct and simple message in July 2018. “We need battery electric vehicles,” he said. And a year earlier, at the oil industry conference, CERAWeek, in 2017, he expressed support for “regulations that speed up investment in low carbon technologies and ? at the same time ? move consumer demand.”

Oil and gas lobbying on climate policies through trade associations. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

In May 2018, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. trade group for oil and gas, pushed the U.S. Congress to move in the opposite direction by rolling back incentives for electric vehicles.

“American Petroleum Institute (API) opposes mandates and subsidies,” API testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, according to InfluenceMap’s new report. The fossil fuel trade group voiced its opposition for subsidies for electric vehicles, adding that “the level of market penetration achieved by electric vehicles should not rely on government interference.”

The report also notes the difficulty in tracking corporate lobbying in the U.S. given the rise of so-called “dark money” groups and the lack of transparency surrounding political contributions in the U.S. “Political contributions that were made without full disclosure of their ultimate source totaled $539 [million] in the 2018 election cycle according to OpenSecrets.org,” the report says.

Social Influencers

InfluenceMap also dives deep into how companies used social media to influence Americans during the mid-term elections last year.

“During this time ExxonMobil was by far the most prolific spender, racking up over $400K in four weeks on over 360 individual political ads,” InfluenceMap wrote. “The ads urge rejecting specific ballot initiatives whilst promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production. Facebook’s data indicates that ExxonMobil’s ads made over 10 million ‘impressions’ in this time with users in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.”

graf:

Oil industry spending on Facebook and Instagram ads leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

All of this spending has implications for shareholders, InfluenceMap observed — and some shareholder groups appear to be listening.

“InfluenceMap’s research confirms a widely held suspicion that Big Oil’s glossy sustainability reports and shiny climate statements are all rhetoric and no action,” Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive of ShareAction, a UK charity focused on responsible investment, said in a statement accompanying the report. “These companies have mastered the art of corporate doublespeak — by boasting about their climate credentials while quietly using their lobbying firepower to sabotage the implementation of sensible climate policy and pouring millions into groups that engage in dirty lobbying on their behalf.”

DeSmog has reached out to ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron for comment.

“We firmly reject the premise of this report. We are very clear about our support for the Paris agreement, and the steps that we are taking to help meet society’s needs for more and cleaner energy,” Shell said in a statement provided to The Guardian. “We make no apology for talking to policymakers and regulators around the world to make our voice heard on crucial topics such as climate change and how to address it.”

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“We have not been afforded the opportunity to review the data but we disagree with the assertion that Chevron has engaged in ‘climate-related branding and lobbying’ that is ‘overwhelmingly in conflict’ with the Paris Agreement,” Chevron said in a statement provided to DeSmog, adding that the company was taking “prudent, cost-effective actions” and seeking “balanced and transparent” policies to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. “We believe climate change is real and human activity contributes to it. We accept the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Updated: This article has been updated on March 22, 2019 to reflect a statement from Chevron.

==

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/03/the-us-is-accused-of-blocking-global-action-against-plastic-pollution/

Environmental groups involved in talks at a United Nations conference in Kenya have accused the US of blocking an ambitious global response to plastic pollution.

Representatives of countries at the UN environment conference in Nairobi this week agreed to significantly reduce single-use plastics over the next decade but the voluntary pledges fell far short of what was required, according to green groups.

Norway, Japan and Sri Lanka had put forward proposals for a legally binding agreement for nations to coordinate action against plastic litter in the oceans and microplastics. India also suggested strong action with a resolution to phase out single-use plastic across the world.

But a coalition of environmental groups at the conference condemned the US for blocking the ambitious attempts to tackle plastic pollution at source as well as downstream.

An initial ministerial statement at the beginning of the event had proposed a commitment to “phase out single-use plastics … by 2025”, a far stronger promise than the compromise nations reached.

On Friday, a series of non-bindingproposals were agreed, including the adoption of an action plan by the International Maritime Organization’s marine environment protection committee to reduce plastic litter from ships, and suggestions for better global management of data on plastic pollution. A final statement said countries would “address the damage to our ecosystems caused by the unsustainable use and disposal of plastic products, including by significantly reducing single-use plastic by 2030”.

In response, environmental groups including Break Free From Plastic, IPEN, Plastic Change, No Waste Louisiana and Coare said the proposals did not go far enough.

“Despite sweeping agreement by the majority of countries that urgent, ambitious and global action is needed to address plastic across its lifecycle, from production to use to disposal, a small minority led by the United States blocked ambitious text and delayed negotiations,” they said in a statement.

Countries most affected by plastic pollution including the Philippines, Malaysia and Senegal were against the resolution being watered down.

Large oil firms in the US are investing billions of dollars in petrochemical production over the next decade, particularly shale gas.

The new facilities, which are being built by ExxonMobile Chemical and Shell Chemical, among others, will help fuel a 40% rise in plastic production in the next decade, according to industry experts.

The world already produces more than 300m tonnes of plastic a year.

“It’s hard to find one solution for all member states,” Siim Kiisler, the president of the UN environment assembly, told Agence France-Presse before the final decision. “The environment is at a turning point. We don’t need verbose documents, we need concrete commitments.”

When asked whether the US had pushed to have the commitments watered down during the week’s negotiations, Kiisler said: “I will not answer that question.”

David Azoulay, from the Center for International Environmental Law, condemned the weakening of the commitment.

He said: “The vast majority of countries came together to develop a vision for the future of global plastic governance. Seeing the US, guided by the interests of the fracking and petrochemical industry, leading efforts to sabotage that vision is disheartening.”

==

2016

Companies like Pepsi, DuPont, and Google might say that they support climate action, but in reality, they are funding lawmakers opposed to President Obama’s climate agenda, according to a Reuters report released Tuesday morning.

Over the last year, more than 150 companies have signed on to the “American Business Act on Climate Pledge,” a commitment created by Obama to encourage businesses to adopt sustainable practices and show their support for the Paris climate agreement. But in looking at the 25 largest donations made during the 2016 election cycle by the political action committees of the 30 largest publicly traded companies involved in the pledge, Reuters found a discrepancy between the businesses’ outward support for climate action and their private political spending.

13 Giant Companies Just Made Big Climate Pledges]

**Twenty-five of the thirty companies funded campaigns of lawmakers considered climate deniers** byOrganizing for Action, a nonprofit created by former Obama staffers. According to a Center for American Progress Action Fund report released in March, 182 members of Congress do not accept the mainstream scientific consensus on man-made climate change.

Pepsi and DuPont are the biggest funders of climate deniers out of the companies that have signed the president’s pledge, according to Reuters. Both companies gave more than half of their largest donations in support of lawmakers that qualify as climate deniers. In the 2016 election cycle, Pepsi PAC gave $56,500 to climate deniers, while DuPont’s PAC gave $40,000.

Lawmakers that received funds from some companies on the list include legislators like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) who infamously brought asnowball onto the Senate floor in February of 2014 to disprove global warming, and Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Donald Trump’s energy adviser and self-declared “climate skeptic.”

Reuters noted that it’s not uncommon for companies to spread their donations across the political spectrum, but quoted Jon Lukomnik, head of the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute, in saying that companies which support climate action but fund those opposed to it might need to have a better oversight and “a process that looks at these issues.”

Environmental groups have long cautioned against the concept of greenwashing, where a company uses public pledges to obfuscate their questionable environmental record. Greenwashing was a major issue at the Paris climate talks last December, which were funded in large part by companies like Engie, a massive energy company that, as an entity, emitted as much greenhouse gases in 2014 as the entire country of Belgium.

Companies in the United States have also been trying to bolster their green image by leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Koch-funded organization that has worked to oppose pro-renewable legislation across the country. In 2014, a handful of tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft all left ALEC due to its opposition to climate action — and last summer, oil and gas giant Shell followed suit,refusing to renew its membership with the council over the council’s climate policy. Dropping ALEC did not stop Shell, however, from pursuing its highly-controversial bid to drill for oil in the Arctic — exploration that eventually ceased in September of last year.

https://carbontracker.org/shell-funded-energy-transitions-commission-lacks-credibility/

sept 2015

key research project proposal appears to put world on course for 4˚C of warming

LONDON/NEW YORK, 28 September 2015 – The new Shell-funded Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) to be unveiled on Monday lacks credibility and does not appear to be serious about limiting climate change to the UN 2˚C target, the London-based Carbon Tracker Initiative said today.

One of the Commission’s first proposed projects, to study how to fuel only half the power sector with “zero-carbon energy” by 2050, would put the world on course for 4˚C of warming, according to analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The ETC lists the following as one of its initial areas of research in the next year: “How to take zero-carbon energy sources to scale in the power sector? What would it really take for these sources to achieve 50% by 2050?”

If we take zero-carbon to mean non-fossil fuels, then this level of ambition fits precisely with the trajectory of the IEA’s 4˚C pathway in its Energy Technology Pathways (ETP). A 2˚C power pathway, according to the IEA, would mean that fossil fuels would need to be reduced from 68% in 2012 to 50% by 2027 and to 20% by 2050.

Anthony Hobley, CEO of Carbon Tracker, said: “We question the credibility and independence of an Energy Transitions Commission funded by fossil fuel incumbents. Shell’s track record on climate change does not inspire us with confidence and plans that would see half our power generated by fossil fuels in 2050 risk seeing us go way over the UN’s 2˚C climate change target.

“The time for talking is past. Now is the time for action, based on genuinely independent quantitative analysis. Unless we start the radical transformation needed we are not going to achieve a climate-secure energy system in time. The proliferation of talking shops increases the risk that we continue to procrastinate by kicking the can down the road.

“Carbon Tracker will be watching and will provide independent oversight to hold the incumbents to a clear 2˚C benchmark backed up with quantitative analysis.”

The Commission, whose sponsors include Shell and BHP Billiton, has been set up to provide analysis on energy transitions, according to its website www.energy-transitions.org. Shell’s Chairman Chad Holliday and BHP’s Chief Commercial Officer Dean Dalla Valle are among the commissioners appointed and other energy incumbents have also been approached.

The Commission states that one of its aims is “to limit climate change to the 2°C threshold agreed by the international community”. However, Shell has stated that “there is a high degree of confidence that global warming will exceed 2°C by the end of the 21st century.”

Fossil fuel companies are sitting on huge resources of coal, oil and gas that cannot be burned without breaching the UN commitment of limiting climate change to 2°C. This gives them a vested interest in arguing for business as usual.

James Leaton, Carbon Tracker’s Research Director, said:

“The incumbents need to entertain a world where in a growing number of markets renewables are better and cheaper than fossil fuel options, resulting in demand destruction for their product. Analysis shows that this future is also better for our economies, meaning it is a false choice being offered between economic growth and tackling climate change.”

Time for Action, New Voices and New Thinking

An Energy Transitions Commission, funded by the energy industry, lacks independence and credibility. There is a question of trust if we are asked to rely on data, analysis and views from a self-appointed, industry-backed group.

Incumbents seldom see the technological disruptions coming and neither do they see the consequences in climate terms. We should be wary of calls for an oil-and-gas-rich transition that may eventually end in low carbon industries but with a world well above two degrees.

Shell has been producing scenarios for decades and has had the knowledge and capital to drive an energy transition, but has never delivered. It continues to cycle capital back into ever more expensive and carbon intensive hydrocarbon options.

The 2⁰C UN target threatens business as usual for fossil fuel companies because they cannot explain how decarbonisation of the energy system fits with growing their businesses for decades to come.

The G7 committed this year to cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by 40% to 70% by 2050. At the December 2014 Lima Climate Summit around 100 governments called for a zero net carbon target by 2050.

Citibank recently published its Energy Darwinism II report, which concluded it is cheaper for the world to align with 2⁰C than continue business as usual. The Track0 initiative supported by a range of countries and companies, which has produced Deep Decarbonisation Pathways, as has Stanford University’s Solutions Project.

Given the increasing levels of response by the energy sector to the issues of ‘unburnable carbon’ and stranded assets, it’s critical that independent groups like Carbon Tracker continue to assess alignment with staying within the carbon budget.

Shell Positions

Shell has acknowledged the need for urgent climate change, but has stated that the world will fail to meet the internationally agreed warming target of 2°C. In 2014 it stated “there is a high degree of confidence that global warming will exceed 2°C by the end of the 21st century”. (See Shell’s letter to shareholders about stranded assets May 16, 2014)

Our risk analyses to date have shown that many oil companies, including Shell, are betting on high demand and price scenarios. Having analysed Shell’s capital expenditure plans we believe its approach is based on dismissing potentially weaker demand for its oil due to tougher climate policies, technological advances and slower economic growth.

After spending $7bn on offshore exploration in Arctic Alaska Shell announced a halt “for the foreseeable future” citing high costs and “challenging” regulation.

In 2014, Carbon Tracker found that over the next decade Shell could invest some $77 billion in high-risk, high-cost projects (needing over $95 per barrel to give investors a decent return).

Shell’s CEO Ben van Beurden defended drilling in the Arctic by saying that the company expects demand for energy to double by 2050. He said he could foresee a transition to a carbon neutral energy system but it would be a “multi-decade transition.” (Sources BBC and Daily Mail)

Shell has dismissed the likelihood of political action on climate change, ignoring the growing list of national and regional emissions measures being legislated and the growing calls and potential for greater energy efficiency worldwide (See Carbon Tracker’s 2014 response to Shell’s statement on stranded assets)

In an open letter to Shell’s chief executive this year, John Ashton, the UK’s former top climate envoy said the company’s strategy was not serious about transition, pointing out that it “foresaw no change ‘in the longer term’ in the drivers of supply and demand for oil”; and that it would therefore be a transition that involved “no structural consequences for the energy system itself, or at least for the markets on which your business model depends.”

Shell’s Oceans & Mountains scenarios and its current outlook see fossil fuel’s share of the energy supply remaining above 70% in 2040 – meaning less than a 10% market share shift from 2010 levels over three decades.

Shell prefers to focus on ‘today’s energy realities’, but relies on Carbon Capture & Storage as a panacea to combat climate change. Carbon Tracker’s 2013 research showed this can only provide a limited extension (14% at the time of writing) of the carbon budget to 2050, if it is implemented at scale post-2030.

We note that Shell recently parted ways with the influential climate change body, the Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group it helped co-found.

We note that Shell only recently cut ties with far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) because of the body’s continuing denial of the science of climate change. But why did it take so long?

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E&E

Lobbyists for Shell Oil Co. told members of Congress this year that Shell supports a nationwide carbon tax and encouraged lawmakers to price greenhouse gas emissions, E&E News has learned.

The company's in-house lobbyists met with lawmakers in the Senate and the House, including Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who introduced a carbon tax bill last month.

In a lobbying disclosure form dated last month, Shell said its representatives had taken part in "discussions in support of a robust, transparent federal carbon price" in the second quarter of the year.

"We see carbon pricing as an essential policy tool to tackle climate change and pave the way for a smooth energy transition," a Shell spokesman said in a statement.

"Shell has long supported a strong and stable government-led carbon pricing framework," the spokesman said. "It's our view Government-led carbon pricing mechanisms are the lowest cost way to develop low carbon technologies for a low carbon economy."

A small but growing number of conservative advocacy groups and energy companies have talked openly about their support for a U.S. carbon tax, in particular in exchange for rolling back environmental regulations. The chance of passing carbon tax legislation is remote in the Republican-led Congress, but Shell is quietly laying the groundwork for similar bills in the future.

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shell knew desmog UK

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/08/20/exclusive-company-docs-show-shell-secretly-studied-climate-risks-10-years-warning-investors

It took oil company Shell more than 16 years to directly warn its shareholders that climate policy posed a financial risk to the company's business model despite knowing — in private and for decades — about the relationship between its products and climate change.

Shell started commissioning confidential work about the impact of burning fossil fuels on the global climate as early as 1981. However, analysis by DeSmog UK and DeSmog found that Shell did not start mentioning the possibility of climate change to shareholders in annual reports before 1991 — 10 years after the company started a research stream to study climate change.

Analysis of Shell’s annual reports and financial records at the time show the company did not give a clear warning to its shareholders about the financial risks “related to the impact of climate change” and attached to their investments until 2004.

DeSmog UK and DeSmog have worked through Shell companies’ annual reports submitted to the UK’s Companies House and 10-K’s and 20-F forms filed under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) throughout the 1990s and early 2000s to compare what the company knew in private at the end of the 1980s and what it told its shareholders about the environmental and financial risks attached to their investment during the following decade.

Early Days

What Shell knew about climate change at the end of the 1980s is well-established and revealed in a confidential report commissioned by and for Shell called “The Greenhouse Effect”.

The report was dated 1988 and made public for the first time this year after being uncovered byJelmer Mommers of*De Correspondent* and published onClimate Files. It reveals the company’s examination of climate change had already been ongoing for at least seven years.

The 87-page report warned Shell that its own products were responsible for global warming and that “there is reasonable scientific agreement that increased levels of greenhouse gases would cause a global warming”.

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https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-13-2018/

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https://www.desmog.co.uk/shellknew

Shell knew climate change was going to be big, was going to be bad, and that its products were responsible for global warming all the way back in the 1980s, a tranche of new documents reveal.

Documents unearthed by Jelmer Mommers of De Correspondent, published today on Climate Files, a project of the Climate Investigations Center, show intense interest in climate change internally at Shell.

A “CONFIDENTIAL” 1988 document titled, “The Greenhouse Effect”, details Shell’s extensive knowledge of climate change impacts and implications. It also reveals an internal Shell climate science program dating back to 1981, well before the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded.

Royal Dutch Shell is jointly registered in the UK and the Netherlands. It is currently facing court action unless it brings its business model in-line with the Paris Agreement's two degrees goal.

Doing one thing while knowing another is pretty much par for the course these days. Speaking of which, we've just published the next in our series about what #ShellKnew about climate changesince the 1980s. This time, on climate migration.

A tranche of documents show that despite private briefings thirty years ago on how climate impacts could force people to leave their homes, the big oil company continued to tell the public that burning fossil fuels was the best way out of poverty.

This ability to tell a compelling story to its own profitable ends might explain why the industry has been so succesful in securing government subsidies all these years. In a new report, the UK was ranked first on its commitment to end fossil fuel subsidies but last on transparency. The government claims it gives no "inefficient subisidies to the industry, but refuses to share any analysis that shows this — all the while giving fossil fuel companies millions in tax breaks and foreign credit.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05042018/shell-knew-scientists-climate-change-risks-fossil-fuels-global-warming-company-documents-netherlands-lawsuits

Internal company documents uncovered by a Dutch news organization show that the oil giant Shell had a deep understanding, dating at least to the 1980s, of the science and risks of global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions.

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They show that as the company pondered its responsibility to act, Shell's scientists urged it to heed the early warnings, even if, as they said, it might take until the 2000s for the mounting evidence to prove greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were causing unnatural climate change.

"With the very long time scales involved, it would be tempting for society to wait until then before doing anything," company researchers wrote in a 1988 report based on studies completed in 1986. "The potential implications for the world are, however, so large that policy options need to be considered much earlier. And the energy industry needs to consider how it should play its part."

Otherwise, a team of Shell experts said, "it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation."

For the next decade—as the emerging science was becoming increasingly robust, and as international efforts to curb heat-trapping emissions gained steam and calls for action grew more urgent—the company persisted in emphasizing the lingering uncertainties of climate science and the costs of ambitious policies, the documents show.

Shell's own "review of the scientific uncertainty and the evolution of energy systems indicates that policies to curb greenhouse gases beyond 'no regrets' measures could be premature, divert economic resources from more pressing needs and further distort markets," a February 1995 management brief advised.

The documents were unearthed by the journalist Jelmer Mommers of De Correspondent, whose investigative article was published on Thursday in Dutch. Many of the documents, along with explanatory notes, were released on the Climate Files website, where researcher and climate advocate Kert Davies maintains extensive archives. To get their work before a broader audience, they shared embargoed copies of the documents.

What Shell Knew & What It Means for Lawsuits

Just like researchers at other oil and gas companies, notably Exxon, Shell's scientists and managers understood, before the general public, that uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions could eventually put its core businesses at risk—and alter ecosystems and put much of the world's population in peril.

The accretion of evidence complicates the industry's position as Big Oil defends itself in a broadening array of climate-related litigation.

On Wednesday, Dutch environmentalists said they plan to sue Royal Dutch Shell to force it to cut its oil and gas investments and production. Donald Pols, director of Friends of the Earth Netherlands/Milieudefensie, said the company "should take its responsibility to stop wrecking the climate."

Responding to the litigation, Shell said that it has long embraced climate change science and strongly supports the Paris climate agreement aimed at limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less. But it said that meeting that target is a complex social challenge, that energy is important to the global quality of life, and that the issues should not be tackled in court. Rather, it called for sound government policy and a cultural shift toward green energy.

Shell is already a defendant in other court cases.

The key legal question in much of the litigation is whether the companies understood risks of global warming well enough, and early enough, to be held accountable for damages that are already occurring and are likely to grow.

'Major Social, Economic, Political Consequences'

The Shell documents released so far don't address in significant detail questions of liability or whether Shell was properly disclosing risks to shareholders.

Litigators are sure to note a brief, but telling, remark in the 1988 document: The fossil fuels Shell consumed and sold at the time "account for the production of 4 percent of the CO2 emitted worldwide from combustion." Two tables broke the data down.

"In the light of the possible effects of an increase in greenhouse gases, it is important to examine the likely political responses to expressions of environmental concern," Shell's report said.

The emerging problem "could have major social, economic and political consequences," it said—a powerful enough upheaval to be "the greatest in human history."

By then, Shell had to be acutely aware of the growing political repercussions of its contribution to the climate problem. After all, the 1988 document was circulated just as NASA scientist James Hansen testified in Congress that global warming had already arrived and had to be dealt with urgently.

Shell's What-If Scenario: East Coast Hurricanes

Over the decades, Shell spent considerable effort generating what-if scenarios to help it grope its way forward.

In one, a 1998 planning document carrying the acronym TINA (for "there is no alternative"), the company even imagined events in the year 2010 after violent and damaging storms wreaked havoc on the East Coast of the U.S.

"Although it is not clear whether the storms are caused by climate change, people are not willing to take further chances," the document speculates. "After all, two successive IPCC reports since 1995 have reinforced the human connection to climate change."

"Following the storms, a coalition of environmental NGO's brings a class-action sit against the U.S. government and fossil-fuel companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists (including their own) have been saying for years: that something must be done," the scenario states.

How Shell's Thinking on Climate Changed

Shell's documents of the era, like papers from Exxon at the time that were published in 2015 by InsideClimate News, are full of passages about the uncertainties that surrounded the emerging science. A nuanced reading suggests that Shell, then as now, gave more attention to the need for global action on climate, and did so earlier, than Exxon.

To this day, the company opens the door a bit wider to a more responsive approach to the climate crisis. But its current thinking continues to generate debate over whether its vision is ambitious enough.

The Dutch archives trace the evolution of the company's thinking over years of considerable climate policy turmoil.

For example, Shell participated in the work of the Global Climate Coalition, founded in 1989 to fight the Kyoto Protocol, only to leave it 10 years later over irreconcilable differences over the protocol's emissions targets, which Shell embraced.

All the while, concentrations of carbon dioxide moved inexorably upward. Children born since that time have never lived through a year in which the world's climate was cooler than the previous average.

One passage from 1988, even though written in a dry corporate style, reads now like an evocation of this perspective across the generations.

"The changes in climate, being considered here, are at an unaccustomed distance in time for future planning, even beyond the lifetime of most of the present decision makers but not beyond intimate (family) association," it said.

In other words, it said you might not see the results of your decisions, but your children and grandchildren might.

In the Mid-1990s, Straddling the Line

In a 1995 "management brief" on climate change that stressed its "major business implications for the fossil fuel industry," Shell conceded the "general consensus" of its human causes while making a nod to what it called "well-grounded scepticism." It said "a definitive, unequivocal position on the science of global warming ... quite simply is beyond current capabilities."

Still, it suggested that "over the next decades, renewable forms of energy can gradually become competitive," and it projected that "CO2 emissions could peak at about 10 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC) a year before the middle of the next century and decline." (The figure Shell predicted for the eventual emissions peak is equivalent to 36.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e). Global emissions from energy and cement reached 32.5 GtCO2 last year.)

The next year, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was publishing its second major assessment of climate science, Shell found itself in a delicate balancing act between accepting the scientific consensus and arguing that there was still too much uncertainty to dictate aggressive action.

"Although climate change is a long term issue, today's responses do not have to be long term," Shell argued. "'Irreversible' actions need to be avoided."

'An Evolutionary, Not a Revolutionary Process'

In hindsight, it's possible to say that this ambivalence would prove costly.

And the litigation over who should pay these costs will hinge on how jurists today read this kind of document from the past—along with any more evidence yet to emerge from these lawsuits.

It's not so much that any one document contains a smoking gun. It's rather that the steady accumulation of documents, which is bound to continue, will build up the weight of the evidence.

In that way, the legal question resembles the scientific question Shell addressed in a 1995 document called "Is Climate Change Occurring Already?"

"Detection of a human induced change in the earth's climate will be an evolutionary and not a revolutionary process," it said. "It is likely that a slow accumulation of evidence, rather than a 'smoking gun,' will indicate man-made emissions as the cause of some part of the observed climate change."

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https://www.ecowatch.com/big-oil-divestment-2553608299.html

By Andy Rowell

New Golden Age for Big Oil or a Golden Goodbye?

Goldman Sachs, the investment bank at the heart of the global economy still doesn't get it.

The bank, once famously described as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity," has a blinkered and fundamentally flawed vision when it comes to the future of the oil industry.

Monday, Bloomberg reported that the hugely influential investment bank had issued a report on the "Seven Sisters," the world's largest oil companies and the bank argues that having "survived a life-changing crisis," the companies are "now poised to reap the rewards."

Having shed costs as prices plummeted, Big Oil is now "in a sweet spot with rising oil prices and low operating costs, leaving them with the biggest cash-flow growth in two decades and boosting earnings," according to Goldman's report.

Goldman's Michele Della Vigna told Bloomberg: "We see this as the start of a new golden age for Big Oil's reborn Seven Sisters," with a "favorable environment for returns in the commodity."

This analysis is dangerously defective in that it seems to envisage a world where Big Oil can carry on drilling unimpeded for decades. But the bank has forgotten about climate change, stranded assets, shareholder actions and the growing number of lawsuits against Big Oil for their role in climate change, widely seen as the #Exxonknew scandal. Indeed, recently Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was planning on suing the companies for "murder."

Furthermore, the website Business Green reported last week about another report, produced jointly by the environmental think tank E3G and the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme. The top line says it all: "New research released today suggests the only commercially viable future for oil majors in a carbon constrained world is a gradual winding down of their operations or a quick sell off of assets."

The report had simulated a scenario under which the Seven Sisters had to shift their business models in line with what was agreed in Paris—a 2 C warming—which could put a whopping $2.3 trillion of oil and gas industry projects at risk as they are "incompatible" with a 2 C world.

As Business Green reported "It found that oil firms' best chance of commercial survival is to rapidly diversify from fossil fuels into alternative technologies such as renewable energy, and gradually retire upstream fossil fuel assets."

This is far from a new dawn as you can get. "Out of five possible strategies, only 'managed decline' and 'first one out' are commercially viable options for International Oil Corporations," said Business Green.

Indeed, Monday one of the Seven Sisters,Royal Dutch Shell, produced its annual "Sky scenario" report which outlined how we might collectively achieve the Paris agreement emission targets.

"Introducing Sky—an ambitious scenario to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 C. This requires a complex combination of mutually reinforcing drivers being rapidly accelerated by society, markets and governments," said Shell.

Shell outlines, amongst others, "a change in consumer mindset means that people preferentially choose low-carbon, high-efficiency options to meet their energy service needs," a "step-change in the efficiency of energy use," plus carbon pricing, a massive increase in renewables, and unprecedented expansion of Carbon, Capture and Storage and vast reforestation.

No doubt others will pick apart Shell's plans for being unrealistic and flawed, especially around its own continuing investment in fossil fuels and issues such as carbon pricing and Carbon, Capture and Storage, but the main point is that the company's own analysts believe that the days of Big Oil are numbered.

And pressure is building day by day for the companies to divest: Monday, the Financial Times reported that shareholders are "preparing a renewed push" for Shell to "adopt more ambitious goals for tackling climate change." The company is expected to face a shareholder resolution at its AGM calling for a "radical shift" away from fossil fuels.

Mark Van Baal of Follow This, who is leading the shareholder action, told the Financial Times: "More and more institutional investors want companies they invest in to commit to Paris. Because they foresee that they cannot make a decent return on their capital in a world economy disrupted by devastated climate change."

Maybe someone should tell the Goldman Sachs vampire squid that too, before they advise too many investors about this wonderful new golden era for Big Oil. Because that era is now history.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Oil Change International.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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ew

Will Shell Turn From Big Oil Into Big Energy?

By Andy Rowell

On the surface, the good times are back for Big Oil. Later this week, Shell is expected to unveil its biggest profits in a decade since the oil price crash.

As the oil price recovers to over $65 a barrel last year, so do Shell's fortunes, with reported earnings of nearly $16 billion.

The days of Shell being on the rocks—pummeled by a low oil price—seem over. So much so that the company even has Big Oil's number one, Exxon, in its sights. Exxon's reported earnings are expected to be slightly lower than Shell's at a still significant $15.7 billion.

As Shell's CEO Ben van Beurden recently said, "At the moment we are number two and we are closing in on number one. We almost have the tiger by the tail."

As the two Big Oil companies battle it out for the number one spot, it is worth taking a step back and worth asking who will win the energy war not just in the next year, but in the decades ahead, which will be dominated by the upcoming renewable revolution, stranded assets and climate change. Many would argue that short term profits hide Big Oil's longer term problems.

In the medium term, Shell is betting big on gas, despite the fact that environmentalists argue is it no solution to climate change. For example, you can read OCI's report on gas here.

There are signs that the company is also taking some small steps into carbon disinvestment: As Reutersreported this week, "Royal Dutch Shell has spent over $400 million on a range of acquisitions in recent weeks, from solar power to electric car charging points, cranking up its drive to expand beyond its oil and gas business and reduce its carbon footprint."

Before we all get too excited by this, there are two fundamental problems. One is that the investments are small change, as Reuters pointed out: "The scale of the buying spree pales in comparison to the Anglo-Dutch company's $25 billion annual spending budget. But its first forays into the solar and retail power sectors for many years shows a growing urgency to develop cleaner energy businesses."

In total, according to analysts, Big Oil has invested just over $3 billion on renewables acquisitions over the past five years, predominantly on solar. Again it is peanuts compared to the tens of billions the companies spend looking for oil.

And the other problem is the one we have just mentioned, gas. As Reuters noted, "The investments are not limited to renewables such as biofuels, solar and wind. Shell, as well as rivals such as BP, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, are betting on rising demand for gas, the least polluting fossil fuel, to power the expected surge in electric vehicles in the coming decades."

Indeed, Shell may be betting on gas just at a time when the future of gas is in trouble. "The end of natural gas is near" is the title of an article this month on GreenBiz by Danny Kennedy from the California Clean Energy Fund. It states:

"Natural gas is no longer a contender or pretender, just a relic of the past, likely to fall as far and as fast as Old King Coal, and maybe faster … But I think it's important to reflect that in 2017, for all its other problems in the clean-energy industry and our nation more broadly, the gas industry became, if not dead, at least a dead man walking."

It is questions like these—is the market for gas in trouble?—that are supposed to be predicted by Shell's long term planning unit. A really interesting article by Fortune looks at how this Big Oil dinosaur is desperate not to die out in the coming decades.

All the oil majors have scenario planning and Shell has been doing some serious head scratching. As Jeremy Bentham, Shell's scenarios leader, said, "I am tasked with making sure that Shell isn't a dodo." So will Shell become extinct in the upcoming energy transition or dominate the new energy landscape?

The article argues that when Shell disinvested from most of its stakes in the tar sands last year, it was over long term fears over the oil price, rather than climate, that was the real concern.

The Shell scenarios team, Fortune noted, concluded that "global demand for oil might peak in as little as a decade—essentially tomorrow in an industry that plans in quarter-century increments."

Hastened by the quickening uptake of renewables, Shell executives were alarmed by the dropping oil price:

"When the oil-demand peak came, Shell believed, petroleum prices might begin a slow slide, dipping too low to cover the costs of oil-sands production. This wouldn't be just another oil-price cycle, a familiar roller coaster in which every down is followed by an up. It would be the start of a decades-long decline of the Oil Age itself—an uncharted world in which, in a phrase gaining currency at Shell, oil prices might be 'lower forever.'"

As Fortune noted, "If Shell failed to prepare for this new energy landscape, it could wind up saddled with massive stranded assets: buried oil and gas that its shareholders paid billions to find, but that, because of softening demand, the company found itself unable to profitably drill and sell."

Ben van Beurden, Shell's CEO, told Fortune, "We won't be sitting ducks. We are going to adapt."

But adapt to what? "What is a challenge at the moment," Beurden said, "is that we don't know anymore where the future will go." Beurden, Fortune said, is making strategic bets to transform "Big Oil into Big Energy."

Finally it seems Big Oil has got the message. In response, many will argue it it too little, too late. Environmental groups have been telling the oil companies for decades of the need to disinvest from fossil fuels due to climate change, not just deny the problem of climate change.

But only now, when their very own corporate future is threatened by companies such as Tesla, have the oil companies finally decided to act. Will it be too late for them and us? Will Shell become a Dodo? Only time will tell.

https://www.ecowatch.com/shell-nigeria-amnesty-2513278575.html

ogoni

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https://www.ecowatch.com/drill-arctic-artificial-island-2498548130.html

shell plan

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http://www.ecowatch.com/shell-climate-video-2290679999.html

Oil giant Shell also knew of the dangers of climate change decades ago, while it continued to lobby against climate legislation and push for fossil fuel development, a joint investigation by The Guardian and the Dutch newspaper The Correspondent revealed Tuesday.

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Shell created a confidential report in 1986 which found that the changes brought about by global warming could be "the greatest in recorded history" and warned of an impact "on the human environment, future living standards and food supplies, [that] could have major social, economic and political consequences."

The company also made a 28-minute educational film in 1991, Climate of Concern,that warned oil extraction and use could lead to extreme weather, famines and mass displacement, and noted that the dangers of climate change were "endorsed by a uniquely broad consensus of scientists." The film was developed for public viewing, particularly for schools.

"Our energy consuming way of life may be causing climatic changes with adverse consequences for us all," the video states.

"If the weather machine were to be wound up to such new levels of energy, no country would remain unaffected," it continues."Global warming is not yet certain, but many think that to wait for final proof would be irresponsible. Action now is seen as the only safe insurance."

Despite its own warnings, Shell invested billions of dollars into tar sands operations and exploration in the Arctic. It has also devoted millions to lobbying against climate legislation.

The revelations about Shell come after a separate investigation into ExxonMobil revealed that company had also been waging a climate science suppression campaign and burying its own reports on the global warming impacts of fossil fuel use for decades. Exxon, whose former CEO is now U.S. secretary of state, is currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and state attorneys general for allegedly lying to investors about the risks of climate change.

In 2016, a group of lawmakers asked the Department of Justice to look into Shell's knowledge of global warming as well.

"They knew. Shell told the public the truth about climate change in 1991 and they clearly never got round to telling their own board of directors," Tom Burke of the green think-tank E3G, told the Guardian on Tuesday. "Shell's behavior now is risky for the climate but it is also risky for their shareholders. It is very difficult to explain why they are continuing to explore and develop high-cost reserves."

Bill McKibben, co-founder of the environmental advocacy group 350.org, added:

The fact that Shell understood all this in 1991 and that a quarter-century later it was trying to open up the Arctic to oil-drilling, tells you all you'll ever need to know about the corporate ethic of the fossil fuel industry. Shell made a big difference in the world—a difference for the worse.

Patricia Espinosa, the United Nations' climate change chief, said action by fossil fuel companies is critical to combating climate change.

"They are a big part of the global economy, so if we do not get them on board, we will not be able to achieve this transformation of the economy we need," she said.

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/07/people-win-over-shell/

frack

steingraber NY

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http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-inside-story-of-shells-push-to-drill-in-the-arctic/

yeoman

Last May, four months before the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell suspended exploration in offshore Alaska, Christopher Putnam needed to get something off his chest.

Putnam is 44, originally from Texas, a trained wildlife biologist who also served as an Army infantry sergeant during the Iraq War. For almost six years, he has worked in Alaska for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, protecting marine mammals. It has been his job to ensure that Shell’s plans to drill more than 60 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea — the wild Arctic water between Alaska and Siberia — wouldn’t harmPacific walruses, particularly the juveniles, calves, and nursing mothers that dominate the Chukchi during the drilling season.

Putnam’s relationship with Shell had always been amicable — until the company began insisting that walrus protection should take a backseat to economics and efficiency, and making it clear that it would fight any regulatory speed bumps placed in its way. That kind of determination made Shell a regular caller at the White House: Company president Marvin Odum was a guest there at least six times in the administration’s first two and a half years, and lobbyist Sara Glenn visited even more frequently, according to a 2012 *New York Times*article. In light of his “all of the above” strategy to foster energy independence, President Obama obliged by creating a task force to help clear Shell’s path through the bureaucracy, the Timesreported.

Odum met in 2014 with then-presidential counselor John Podestato discuss Chukchi drilling, though the exact details are unknown. The following year, Putnam began noticing leaders within the USFWS’s parent agency, the Department of the Interior, discussing in conference calls how to accommodate Shell’s demands. “Some people were working on various options — how we could interpret our regulations in such a way that were favorable that would allow Shell to do what they wanted to do,” he says. “When there’s discussion about changing the meaning of the regulations specifically to accommodate a company like Shell, then that started to become concerning for me.” By law, rule-making is a public process. “These discussions that were taking place behind the scenes, with no input or public accountability, were getting to the point that I simply wanted to put on the record that I had concerns.”

In a May 26 email, Putnam unloaded. “Shell has clearly stated that they think minimizing disturbance to walruses is irrelevant,” he wrote to his then-boss, Mary Colligan, who is now the USFWS’s Alaska assistant regional director.“Shell insists it is not they who must comply with federal regulations, but we who should change the regulations to accommodate Shell.”

Putnam then addressed the “voices” within the Interior Department that he says wanted to reinterpret the rules without involving the public. “I think it would be disingenuous, mendacious, and unethical,” he wrote. “Such a course of action may even be illegal.” If Shell were successful at skirting walrus-protection measures, what would come next? Would oil companies quietly try to lift industrial noise limits in the Arctic? Or weaken measures protecting denning polar bears? “Where,” he wrote, “would it end?”

After Shell received its approvals and started drilling in July, its first well came up dry, leading the company to withdraw from offshore Alaska “for the foreseeable future.” In its September pullout announcement, Shell laid some of the blame on the “challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment.”

But an Audubon investigation based on government documents — some filed in court and others obtained by Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, through the Freedom of Information Act — points to a regulatory system that, while tougher than before the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, still cut corners and stretched its own capacity in order to accommodate Shell’s drilling timeline. While USFWS scientists fought to protect marine mammals, they did so under crushing time constraints and at the expense of other conservation efforts. Meanwhile, at the Interior agency tasked with approving Shell’s oil leases and exploration plan, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), decision makers authorized overtime, weekend, and holiday work to deliver Shell a speedy decision, while failing to keep pace with climate and ecosystem science.

These findings mirror, in part, a new investigative report, released Dec. 7 by Interior’s Inspector General’s office. It detailed how some BOEM employees considered the agency’s timeline so aggressive that, in the words of one professional, a key environmental analysis was “absolutely compromised” and “full of errors.”

These efforts to accommodate a multinational energy company happened under the watch of President Barack Obama, who is reviled, ironically, by drilling advocates and eager to cement his legacy as a climate warrior.

Shell declined several requests for interviews for this article. “This story is not relevant anymore,” wrote spokesperson Curtis Smith.

In fact, though, the story is just as relevant as ever. In October’s third-quarter earnings call, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden emphasized that while the first foray proved unpromising, “there are of course other potential prospects in our Chukchi leasehold, as well as other areas offshore of Alaska.” And after the current leases expire in four years, there could be more to come. A BOEM draft plan calls for new Arctic lease sales starting in 2020. Legislation pending in Congress at press time would requireregular sales starting in 2023, even as new science cautions against Arctic drilling. Things might be quiet off the Alaskan coast right now, but that tranquility could very well prove temporary.

When Shell won the vast majority of the drilling rights in the 2008 Chukchi lease sale — aka Lease Sale 193 — it called its $2.1 billion acquisition a victory for energy independence. “This is an opportunity to develop a proven and prolific basin to supply energy security for North America,” company vice president Annell Bay told reporters.

Conservationists couldn’t imagine a worse place to drill, a place more fertile, more unspoiled, more vulnerable to climate change. Along with walruses, the Chukchi teems with polar bears, ringed seals, and bowhead and beluga whales. “Coming from the Lower 48, you don’t see areas like this, that are untouched by development,” says Leah Donahey, senior campaign director for the Alaska Wilderness League. Donahey recalls flying over the Chukchi in 2011 and watching thousands of belugas swimming below her. Inland she saw bears running on the tundra, and massive herds of caribou. There were no roads, no infrastructure — “just these small communities and then vast ocean.”

Those communities rely on the ocean’s bounty: Subsistence hunting of marine mammals feeds many native Alaskans. “If we don’t have the animals to provide for our nutritional needs, we won’t survive,” says Faith Gemmill, executive director of Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), a grassroots organization. “It’s not just about food security. We’re talking about our entire way of life.” In Iñupiat villages, during traditional whale hunts, she says, “the stories are taught. The values are taught. Knowledge is passed down from the elders to the younger people.”

Even before Shell bought its leases, REDOIL and the Alaska Wilderness League joined other groups, including the National Audubon Society, in suing the Bush administration to stop the sale. The 2008 lawsuit, filed by Earthjustice, noted that rising temperatures are already stressing polar bears and walruses. (The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the planet as a whole.) The Interior Department, said the plaintiffs, was selling leases without fully gauging the impacts on climate change, the likelihood of a spill, or the damage to wildlife caused by the deafening air guns used during seismic surveys. Nor, they added, did the government adequatelyconsider harm to Steller’s and Spectacled Eiders, both threatened ducks.

It was the first of several hard-fought legal cases over drilling in the Chukchi — cases that continue today, outlasting Shell’s pullout announcement.

As the litigation meandered through the courts, two disasters gave ammunition to critics of Arctic drilling. First, the BP oil spillexposed lethal flaws in the regulatory system. It prompted new safety regulations and President Obama’s dissolution of BOEM’s predecessor, the Minerals Management Service, where staffers infamouslyaccepted gifts from, and indulged in sex and cocaine with, their energy-industry contacts. Second, Shell itself threw the perils of Arctic drilling into focus when it suffered a series of setbacks during its first season of exploration in 2012, culminating in the grounding of the drill ship Kulluk on Sitkalidak Island as it was towed through the Gulf of Alaska during a storm.

In January 2014, the Ninth Circuit issued a key decision in Earthjustice’s lease-sale challenge — and highlighted the government’s efforts to help clear Shell’s path. The judges noted that BOEM based its environmental analysis on the “lowest possible amount of oil that was economical to produce.” By estimating just 1 billion barrels, the agency lowballed the possible impacts on habitat, climate, and bird populations. “BOEM considered only the best case scenario for environmental harm,” the court wrote. The decision led BOEM to revise its studies. For the environmental impact statement (EIS) finalized in February 2015, it chose a new and more reasonable estimate of 4.3 billion barrels — and, based on that, calculated a 75 percent chance of “one or more large spills” during the 77-year Chukchi production cycle.

BOEM maintains that such an accident would probably not be “catastrophic” in scale; its “likely” projected large spill from a production platform, based on the median size of similar spills, is 214,200 gallons, or less than 1/600th the volume of the BP disaster. But experts note that cleaning any discharge in the Chukchi would be a formidable, even impossible, task. Unlike the Gulf Coast, the region lacks basic infrastructure: There are no roads connecting villages or even rooms to house cleanup workers. The nearest Coast Guard station is a thousand miles away. There’s little research about how to keep marine mammals away from a spill — and only enough equipment to clean five oiled polar bears at a time. And, perhaps most alarming, there’s no comprehensive method for ridding icy water of oil; most cleanup studies have focused on temperate climates.

“We’re talking about killing the environment,” says Robert Bea, a professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California-Berkeley, who spent decades working for Shell and other energy companies. “Just think about an ice slushie with oil, with beluga and bowhead whales swimming around. If you do harm, it’s going to be extensive and it’s going to be long-term.”

With delays piling up, Shell was nonetheless resolute about resuming exploratory drilling in 2015. Two months after the Ninth Circuit ruling, in April 2014, company president Odum sent a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, whose department oversees BOEM. He asked her to “devote the resources necessary to removing, expeditiously, any current regulatory obstacles” that might slow down his company’s plans. Odum encouraged Jewell to “obtain any necessary additional resources to complete the work” on Shell’s schedule, which the company outlined in a one-pager called “Getting to Yes 2015 — Must Have Timeline.”

Numerous internal agency emails and memos suggest that BOEM — while not promising Shell a specific outcome — did its Chukchi drilling evaluation at a breakneck pace. “We are keeping to this schedule to allow Shell the opportunity to make a decision about next year’s open water drilling season,” Assistant Interior Secretary Janice Schneider said in August 2014, according to an email byBOEM’s Alaska regional director, James Kendall.

The agency drew up its own timetables, filled with various notations. “This schedule includes working overtime and weekends and holidays,” said one footnote. Requests for annual leave, training, and even office visitors would face “critical review.” Environmental analyses would receive “compressed review time.” And the hastened process, noted an agency document, might interfere with other major tasks like developing new air-quality regulations.

In August, Kendall sent an after-hours email to BOEM deputy director Walter Cruickshank.B2] “Yes, its [sic] Saturday night and I’m in the office. … But I’m not alone, others are here as well,” he wrote. Kendall reported on a conversation with Assistant Secretary Schneider, aboard a government airplane, about the plan for completing the environmental impact study on time. “She … expressed her view (repeatedly) to me of just how absolutely difficult this was, almost bordering on impossible … and that it was obvious that there is absolutely NO WIGGLE room.

“Folks are exhausted, blurry eyed, working long hours,” Kendall continued. “There are a number of folks on the floor with me as I type this. Emotions are running high. … Given the fact that folks will now have to run a marathon at a sprinters [sic] pace for some months now, we are working out a strategy for crossing the finish line on time.”

Not everyone crossed the finish line. According to the recent Inspector General’s report, Interior knew of at least six BOEM employees who quit or retired early because of the EIS race. One fish biologist said the process was so “crushed” that she didn’t have time to review her own work for consistency or to peer-review others. She retired early, in October 2014, to preserve her own “personal and scientific integrity.” Another biologist said his collaboration with colleagues was limited to 15 to 45 minutes for a 700-page document. A sociocultural specialist said her section on public health was “gutted.”

The Inspector General concluded that BOEM officials did not alter scientific findings. But the attorneys at Earthjustice, in a brief filed in U.S. District Court in August 2015, nonetheless identified two fundamental flaws in the EIS that was released in 2015 after the Ninth Circuit decision.

First, BOEM decided, because of its fast-tracked schedule, not to place certain sectors of the Chukchi, which scientists had recently identified as ecologically important, off-limits to drilling. Interior had begun its first environmental review a decade ago, when “information about the Chukchi Sea environment, habitat, and marine life was starkly limited,” wrote the lawyers. Since then the research has evolved, particularly about Hanna Shoal, a large, shallow area where the ice persists late into summer. Bowhead whales feed there, and great herds of walruses forage for clams. BOEM itself calls the shoal a “biological oasis,” and last year President Obama protected some of it from future, but not current, lease sales. Yet in its court-ordered update to the EIS, BOEM decided not to consider a new drilling footprint that would exclude Hanna Shoal. The agency said “sufficient protections” exist to safeguard marine mammals. Earthjustice points out in its brief that there’s a big difference between reducing harm and barring drilling from an area altogether.

Second, Earthjustice charged that BOEM all but ignored what advances in climate science have revealed about the impact of drilling. It insisted there was “no reliable methodology” to determine how Lease Sale 193 would affect global energy consumption. The EIS didn’t mention, even in its 69-page bibliography, a January 2015 paper from the journal Natureconcluding that “all Arctic resources” must stay in the ground to keep the planet within 2 degrees C of pre-industrial temperatures. “The impact of a single discrete project’s contribution to climate change cannot be covered in more detail due to scientific uncertainty,” the EIS said, adding that recent papers calling for undiscovered hydrocarbons to remain undeveloped “are noted.”

Contacted for an interview, BOEM referred questions to the Interior Department, which declined the request without offering a reason. In a short emailed statement, BOEM spokesperson Connie Gillette said her agency conducted a “robust and rigorous” environmental review “consistent with a court-ordered timeline.” In fact, the court did not impose a timeline but rather directed BOEM to develop its own. In the Inspector General’s report, Interior officials acknowledged the rush. They said it wasn’t designed to help Shell but rather to shield the department from “blame” if Shell missed out on drilling in 2015.

Former and current Interior staffers say BOEM’s efforts to accommodate Shell are not unusual. “Once you’ve granted a lease, there is internal pressure to propagate the regulatory process,” says Paul Bledsoe, who was an aide to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during the 1990s and more recently advised President Obama’s national commission on the BP oil spill. “There’s certainly pressure from the industry.” Others say the agencies regulating offshore production tend to draw employees sympathetic to drilling — environmentalists rarely study petroleum engineering. Add to that President Obama’s support for Arctic oil, and his desire not to be seen as stifling production, and the scale ends up being tipped.

BOEM, according to those who interact with it, is a more responsible operation than its predecessor, the Minerals Management Service, where former staff scientists say their work was suppressed and where, in 2010, Alaska employees enjoyed a cake decorated with the words “Drill, Baby, Drill.” Environmental protection is, in fact, written into the agency’s mandate. Still, “science-based” energy management — leasing fossil fuel reserves and approving drilling plans — are at that mandate’s core.

“Even though some of the names shifted around, a lot of the culture of the agency remains the same,” says attorney Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a plaintiff in the Earthjustice case. “The deep reforms that a lot of us were hoping to see after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were in name but not actually in practice.”

One of Shell’s hardest-fought battles in the Chukchiwas over the rules protecting Alaska’s estimated 129,000 Pacific walruses. According to the USFWS’s Mary Colligan, concentrated industrial activity can cause grave harm to marine mammals, including walruses. “At the extreme, if they avoid an area because the disturbance is so high, and have to feed somewhere else, maybe the prey base isn’t as calorie-rich,” she says. That, in turn, can jeopardize survival or reproduction. Industrial noise can damage hearing and impede vocal communication.

In 2013, the USFWS developed regulations governing exploratory drilling in the Chukchi. One rule mandated a minimum 15-mile separation between active rigs. That buffer would help reduce the risk of hearing loss among walruses and give them safe passage if they needed to escape. Christopher Putnam, the wildlife biologist and Iraq vet — and Colligan’s colleague — helped craft that rule.

Shell fought the 15-mile rule. The Chukchi well sites were tightly clustered within a 300-square-mile prospect, and the company wanted to position its rigs at the two most promising sites — just nine miles apart. It would already be spending the resources for a second rig because, in its exploration plan filed with BOEM, Shell had agreed to have a backup vessel in the vicinity to drill a relief well in the event of a blowout. According to Robert Dillon, a senior adviser to Alaska’s senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, Shell didn’t want that rig sitting idle when it could be drilling for oil.

However, if the activity would affect certain marine mammals, Shell couldn’t drill until the USFWS issued a letter of authorization. Like their colleagues at BOEM, Fish and Wildlife staffers felt compelled to make their decisions in time for the 2015 drilling season. “We understood how important it was for Shell,” says Colligan. “They certainly communicated that to us very clearly.” Colligan calls this a courtesy the USFWS extends to all drillers because of the complex timing of their operations. “They’ve got ships staging here and there,” she says. “They’ve got decisions they have to make. That’s the environment that we were in.”

The company conceded that drilling two wells located within nine miles of each other would flood more of the sea with noise, but pushed to prioritize other considerations. “Various distances may be required between rigs to effectively, efficiently, and economically explore the geological positioning of the oil and gas resources,” said an analysis Shell filed with the USFWS in April 2015. “Spacing of the rigs needs to be determined by these characteristics rather than an attempt to further minimize potential behavioral disturbance of walruses.”

With that the oil company put its foot down. “Shell, as part of their 2015 proposed drilling operations, indicates it is not willing to comply with all required mitigation measures,” said a USFWS document. The company’s absolute stance struck Putnam as odd. “It’s not their decision,” he says. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’re the federal government.”

Shell claimed, in an April 2015 letter to Fish and Wildlife, that a nine-mile separation would have “negligible impact” on the animals. USFWS biologists remained unconvinced. They said Shell had undercounted the walrus population and failed to factor in such disturbances as the Sikorsky S-92 helicopters flying by 40 times a week. “The S-92,” Putnam wrote in an email to an Interior Department lawyer, “is one of the loudest helicopters on earth.”

With that much air traffic, Putnam says, a helicopter could startle thousands of animals resting on the ice. “They stampede into water, and you’ve got how many dead or injured walruses.” Chronic stress from loud noise could potentially trigger hormonal changes that threaten population size, he adds.

Dealing with Shell’s insistence became a full-time job for Putnam. “I lost half a year,” he says. “Our entire department was almost exclusively focused on that one company, that one issue, for the entire period of time.”

Putnam says he was supported by his Alaska colleagues in holding firm to the regulations. “We were reaching up the chain to make sure everyone was aware,” he says. “As you go higher and higher up, people become less and less aware of the details and nuances of the issue.” Hence the conference calls where Interior officials were groping for new interpretations of the rules, he says.

He found one call particularly upsetting. An Interior staffer he had never met suggested that the Alaska office was misinterpreting the intent of the mammal-protection rules — rules that Putnam himself had helped author. “It was a little bit offensive,” he says, “for someone who’s never been involved to tell me what I was thinking at the time when I wrote them.”

Shell would not be deterred by the USFWS’s scientists. It enlisted Sen. Murkowski, a drilling advocate, whose staff contacted the Interior Department to press the case. “That’s our job: to be the advocates for Alaska,” says Murkowski spokesperson Dillon.

Then, in May, Allyson Anderson, associate director of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, emailed her boss about a phone call with an Alaska colleague. “Shell intends to take the wildlife issue all the way up through the White House via murkowski [sic],” she wrote.

Dillon says that, to his knowledge, Murkowski did not take the walrus issue that far. “I believe they [Shell] may have raised it with the White House,” he says — a plausible notion given the company’s past access — adding that that’s how Washington works: “Environmental groups clearly take their case directly to the White House on a regular basis. The right to seek the assistance of one’s government without fear of punishment or reprisals is enshrined in our Constitution.”

What eventually preserved the 15-mile mandate in Shell’s drilling authorization, Colligan says, was “procedural”: There was no system for waiving the rule. Fish and Wildlife did promise to “consider making appropriate changes” to the rule through a public process, though that wouldn’t come in time for the 2015 season.

In the end, notes Putnam, Interior officials narrowly defined “active” rigs as those actually drilling. As a result, Shell was allowed to locate its rigs nine miles apart as long as they didn’t drill simultaneously. The problem, according to Putnam, is that a non-drilling rig is still staffed and “active”: It requires helicopter support, noisy anchoring operations, icebreakers, and generators. In other words, there were still two industrial operations within nine miles of each other.

In a bigger sense, though, the 15-mile rule might have been a deciding factor in Shell’s decision to pull out of offshore Alaska — because the Arctic’s short drilling season ended up limiting the company’s activity to a single well in 2015, and that one was a dud. After seven years of political and legal wrangling, countless raucous grassroots protests, and $7 billion in Arctic investments, Shell’s foray into Lease Sale 193 halted rather suddenly. Drilling supporters like Lisa Murkowski placed the blame for Shell’s pullout partly on the Obama administration’s “destructive pattern of hostility” toward energy production. “We’re seeing decisions out of the Interior that are really destroying our hope to be independent as a state,” Murkowski said at an October meeting of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which she chairs. She was displeased with Interior’s cancellation of two upcoming Alaska lease sales because of low industry interest, and with its refusal to extend Shell’s current leases.

The federal government plans oil and gas lease sales in five-year increments. The next plan, set to be finalized this year, will cover 2017–22. The current draft calls for sales in the Beaufort in 2020 and the Chukchi in 2022. Beyond that, Murkowski’s proposed Offshore Production and Energizing National Security Act of 2015 (Senate Bill 2011) would require Interior to sell three Chukchi and three Beaufort leases during every five-year program, starting in fiscal year 2023.

But drilling opponents see Shell’s withdrawal as a chance to take a breath and rethink the country’s approach to the Arctic’s energy reserves. They consider it a window of time available to overhaul the regulatory system further to reflect a post-BP world, and to examine whether the industry’s Arctic drilling ambitions should be scaled back or abandoned altogether. “The United States has been myopic for far too long in making decisions about the Arctic,” says Peter Van Tuyn, an Alaska attorney who has represented environmental and native Alaskan groups in challenging drilling. “Why not take the opportunity for the Obama administration to do a big-picture planning effort in the next year?

“We have a fresh opportunity,” Van Tuyn continues. “For the first time in the Obama administration’s seven years in office, they do not have to make a decision about the future of the Arctic with some existing weight on the development side of the scale.” The $7 billion that Shell invested to drill a single well made for quite a heavy weight. “Now,” Van Tuyn says, “that scale can be leveled.”

Since 1905,Audubon,America’s leading advocate for conservation — and for birds — has used explanatory and advocacy journalism, as well as stunning original photography,