Shell Protest Rebuffed
San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, 1997

Oil firm promises to clean up image
Chronicle Staff and Wire Reports

London

Oil giant Shell fended off a motion yesterday from dissident shareholders demanding outside auditors determine whether the oil giant follows its own rules on environmental and social issues.

Shell Vice Chairman John S. Jennings promised to clean up Shell's image, badly tarnished in recent years as it tried to dump an old oil platform into the ocean and later came under intense fire over its investments in Nigeria. "I hope on this occasion you trust me," Jennings told shareholders at the annual meeting.

But the Rev. Christopher Hall, of the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility, said he might come back next year to try and force Shell to let outsiders examine whether the company goes along with its stated code of business practices around the world.

The dissidents lost by a margin of about 8 to 1.

"There's a sledgehammer here to crack a very small nut, to defeat this resolution," Hall told shareholders. "But this acorn has taken root and the landscape will be transformed."

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. has had a rough few years on the public relations front, as environmental and human rights groups attacked the oil giant as an irresponsible corporate citizen, raking in profits while people suffer the effects of its oil drilling in remote parts of the Third World.

The company says it is environmentally and socially responsible. Shell says it does not involve itself in local politics and often gets drawn into disputes merely because it is a high-profile target.

"A lot of newspapers have been sold on a lot of articles, and a lot of television programs have been made," Jennings said, charging that many of Shell's critics are "ill-informed and sometimes wrong."

Locally, two California groups published what they called an "Independent Annual Report" on Royal Dutch-Shell. It showed flames shooting from a natural gas well, the yellow-and-red Shell logo drenched in blood and three silhouettes of people being hanged.

Protesters handed out literature at the corner of Ashby and San Pablo avenues in Berkeley yesterday morning. Outside the Shell meeting in London, activists beat drum waved anti-Shell signs and chanted  "No blood for oil! People no profits!"

The barrage of criticism intensified  in November 1995 when Nigerian authorities hanged  environmentalist and playwright  Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists who had opposed the way Shell has conducted  business in the Ogoniland region of southeastern Nigeria.