company’s conduct, the availability for the first time of a significant
number of Shell documents heralds
a potential step change in the speed
and scale of future revelations.
The greater attention paid to Exxon and other US oil producers also
arises, in part, precisely because they
are widely considered US companies – notwithstanding their own
global operations. This US presence
and identity makes Exxon and other
US oil majors of particular interest
to journalists, climate advocates,
and others interested in better understanding the oil industry’s decades-long campaign of climate denial and obstruction in the largest
emitting country on the planet.
By contrast, major carbon producers
headquartered outside the United
States have received less scrutiny.
Modest but compelling evidence
already exists that European oil majors were or should have been aware
of climate risks at the same time as
their US counterparts; that these
firms were members of US industry groups known to fund climate
denial; and that active denial operations were also conducted within
and across Europe.2 But this European evidence remains limited in
comparison to that available about
US companies. Here, again, the new
Shell documents represent a potential turning point.
Royal Dutch Shell: A
European and US Carbon
Major
To an arguably greater extent than
any other oil major, Royal Dutch
Shell is and always has been a truly global company. Despite its dual
origins in the Netherlands and the
A Crack in the Shell
|
United Kingdom, and its historic
leadership from within those countries, Shell has operated actively and
extensively throughout the world
for well over a century, including
the United States. Shell has operated
in the United States since the early
years of the 20th century, organized
its first US company in 1928,3 was
listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1954, and chaired the
American Petroleum Institute (API)
for the first time just a few years later, under British-born HMS Burns.4
ment stretching back to the 1950s.
It proves unequivocally that Shell,
like ExxonMobil, was on early and
explicit notice of potential climate
risks associated with the company’s
core products – fossil fuels. It documents that Shell, like ExxonMobil,
had at its disposal both profound
scientific expertise in relevant disciplines and the resources to deploy
that expertise to profoundly shape
long-term trajectories for both the
company itself and the world as a
whole.
As the API chairmanship suggests,
Shell has been an active and fully
embedded member of the US oil industry for nearly a century. As the
discussion herein demonstrates, that
engagement extends to every aspect
of the oil industry’s engagement on
air pollution generally and climate
change specifically. Significantly,
And this analysis sheds new light on
the often stark dichotomy between
Shell’s internal understanding of climate risk and its public characterization of and operational responses
to that risk.
Shell had at its disposal
both profound scientific
expertise in relevant disciplines and the resources
to deploy that expertise to
profoundly shape longterm trajectories for both
the company itself and the
world as a whole.
Smoke and Fumes: The Legal and
Evidentiary Basis for Holding Oil
Companies Accountable for Climate
Change details how actual or imputed awareness of a risk (Notice) establishes a critical link in the causal
chain across jurisdictions and under
in an array of legal domains, ranging
from tort to non-contractual liability to human rights law.5
that US history now provides a critical backdrop against which this new
cache of documents can be evaluated
and their significance for Shell and
for the world more fully assessed.
Significantly, the present analysis
shows how Shell’s internal and external documents from the 1980s
and 1990s built on – and in important cases ignored – a history of
climate science and climate engage-
3
|
1946-1979: Shell on Notice
of Climate Risks
Documentary evidence demonstrates that Shell had early, repeated,
and often urgent notice of potential
climate risks linked to its products
and operations.
As previously noted, Shell has actively engaged with API and other
industry groups for much of the last
century. Leaders from Royal Dutch
Shell were prominent in API events
from no later than the 1920s,6 and
API member lists indicate that Shell
was an active API member by no
Center for International Environmental Law