For ten years, the latest interviewee on Informer—our series amplifying the voices of insiders and whistleblowers—consulted as a health and safety officer for the petroleum giant Shell, dealing with the psychological fallout of its voracious global expansion.
Their job was to listen to thousands of oil and gas workers airing their concerns about the professional hazards and mental and physical toll of working on the frontlines for a company like Shell. Some days, the job meant hearing from contracted workers in the Global South complaining that they hadn’t been paid. Other times, it would be counseling those driven into a state of extreme mental disrepair by allegedly working 31 days straight to keep the pipeline running.
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“There’d be times I would close my eyes to go to bed at night and I would just picture burning bodies bobbing around in a water that was on fire,” our Informer says at one point during the interview. “That was basically the nightmare they were talking about that could come true.”
Think your job is stressful? In our Informer’s first week at Shell, the company had to deal with a spill that created an oil slick the size of Belgium just off the Nigerian coast.
Heavy shit indeed. You can watch the film now at YouTube or in the player below.
Now, here’s an interview about the interview, with VICE director Alexi Phillips.
VICE: First of all, thanks for making this intensely depressing film for me to watch. I haven’t slept since.
Alexi Phillips: No worries.
How did the Shell informer first get in touch?
I can’t really disclose that.
Most of what’s talked about is disconcerting. How does this stuff stay out of the news?
Most of these spills happen in countries that don’t get much media attention. Every once in a while a massive event, like what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, makes the news but the fact that there are thousands of tiny spills every day is just seen as more of the status quo and not remarkable enough to be ‘breaking news.’
I was assuming the dangers of oil production would primarily be posed to the environment, or to members of the public whose lands or waters are suddenly destroyed by a big spill. I wasn’t expecting to hear that people actually working for these companies would be losing their lives, too.
Yeah, they are working in highly pressurized environments, with extremely combustible liquid and gas, so the risk is inherent—especially when they’re working offshore. But the danger is exacerbated by the crazy demands to continue pumping large quantities of oil, with a focus on profits above everything else.
What surprised you most about what the Shell informer had to say?
Sadly, I was not that surprised. In all honesty I think that was my big takeaway from the interview. There was nothing she could tell me about that industry that would shock me or that I couldn’t believe.
What changes do you hope these big oil companies to make in the future?
I hope they get more robustly regulated, as I think they have demonstrated they cannot be trusted with our future.
What changes do you expect these big oil companies to make in the future?
I expect that they will talk a big talk and walk a tiny walk.
You can watch the latest episode of Informer now at YouTube.
When contacted for comment, Shell said: “Respect for human rights is fundamental to Shell’s core values of honesty, integrity and respect for people. Our approach is informed by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and is embedded into our existing framework, such as our Shell General Business Principles and our Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct details how employees, contractors and anyone else acting on behalf of Shell must behave to live up to our business principles.”