Current, former Shell employees publicly challenge company's climate strategy

A group of current and former employees of Shell is publicly challenging the oil giant’s climate strategy at its shareholder meeting in London on Tuesday, warning that the company’s continued focus on oil and liquefied natural gas could expose both the business and investors to major long-term risks.

The group, made up of five current and 19 former employees with an average of 20 years of experience at Shell, submitted a resolution questioning how the company plans to remain profitable if climate policies reduce global demand for oil and gas.

“A scenario that has become more urgent because of tensions in the Middle East and a global call for greater energy independence,” Arjan Keizer, one of the resolution’s authors, told RTL.

The employees represent only a small fraction of Shell’s roughly 8,000 workers in the Netherlands and 80,000 worldwide, but they said support inside the company is broader than what is publicly visible as many workers fear being identified.

RTL Nieuws said it spoke with several current Shell employees who also believe the company should become more sustainable but declined to support the resolution publicly. “It is very daunting to take part in this,” Keizer said. “You have to submit your name with the resolution, and it becomes known to the Shell secretariat.”

Former Shell employee Bas Kikkert, who worked for the company for 28 years across multiple divisions, said many current and former senior staff privately support the initiative but remain reluctant to speak publicly because they still work with Shell through customers or suppliers. “I know of at least 20 to 25 people who are seriously considering this, but find it difficult to bring it out into the open,” Kikkert told RTL.

The group said its concerns go beyond sustainability and include financial risks tied to Shell’s current business strategy, particularly its investments in LNG infrastructure.

Evert van der Heide, who spent 33 years at Shell and worked in research developing technologies such as hydrogen, said the company was taking “an extreme risk” by expanding LNG investments.

“The entire infrastructure for that remains in place for 30 years,” Van der Heide said. “But we also know that the world will look completely different in 10 years than it does today.”

Van der Heide said he became disillusioned under current CEO Wael Sawan, whose strategy, according to him, keeps oil production steady while increasing gas production. “That does not align with lower emissions, and I struggled with that,” he told the newspaper.

Keizer, who worked at Shell for seven years after a career at McKinsey & Company, said he had once proudly spoken about Shell projects including offshore wind farms, home and highway charging stations, as wall as the biofuels plant.

But he said the company shifted direction after Sawan took over in 2023, with green technologies increasingly coming under pressure. Construction of the biofuels plant was halted, he said.

“All of this was reversed, and then I felt this no longer matched my personal norms and values,” Keizer said. “So I thought it was better to leave.” Despite their criticism, the former employees said they still consider Shell “a beautiful and good company."

Keizer said he only fully immersed himself in climate issues about three years ago and was shocked by the urgency of the crisis. He said his motivation now is his children and how they may judge his actions in the future. “If the situation has worsened in 20 years, they will probably ask me: ‘Dad, what exactly did you do when this became known?’” he said. “I know that I will be able to tell them that I took action. And I hope that can also motivate others.”