TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS
Running Shell and living with its facilities are far apart

Our new constitution says we have a right to a clean and healthy environment.

Bobby Peek, 2001
Durban, South Africa

Phil Watts and Bobby Peek live in two different worlds. Phil Watts lives in London; Bobby Peek in Durban, South Africa.

Watts was born in Leicestershire, England and was educated at Leeds University.

Bobby Peek grew up in the hard-scrabble industrial basin that is south Durban, a coastal city in South Africa made up of poor black, Indian, and mixed-race colored communities. Beyond their differences in background, however,

Phil Watts and Bobby Peek both have something in common: the Royal Dutch Shell Company, the world’s second largest oil company. Watts runs it; Peek lives with it.

Bobby Peek is a thirty-something director of a non-profit group called groundWork that seeks to improve the quality of life of disadvantaged groups and communities throughout southern Africa. Founded in mid-1999 by Peek and seven others, the group works on air quality issues, toxic chemical concerns, and medical and industrial waste issues. groundWork also offers assistance to citizen and community groups, runs a web site, and provides the public with needed background information on environmental and public health matters.

Phil Watts is the 56-year-old chairman of Shell Oil – the vener-able, 105-year-old British/Dutch oil colossus that does business practically everywhere. Watts presides over a corporate empire that stretches over 143 countries with more than 90,000 employees. In 2001, the global sales of this goliath were $150 billion, a figure that exceeds the GNP of most countries.

South Africa also figures prominently in Shell’s social history and its coming to terms with a human rights policy.

For by the 1980s, when the apartheid spotlight had been fully shown on South Africa, Shell continued to do business there despite an international chorus of protest, including major companies that pulled out of the country to help force a change in existing practices.

In South Africa, however, the memory is long on apartheid, and many there do not forgive Shell for staying in the country at a time when the highest form of moral support and solidarity with progressive South Africans was to sever all business ties with the racist government.

Bobby Peek grew up under apartheid and came of age during the struggle to overthrow it. Today, Peek sees the polluted industrial landscape of south Durban as a product of apartheid – an environmental racism from the past that is simply continued today in current practice.

"But the third world is different," said Desmond D’Sa, a south Durban community leader. "Our lives are cheap."

D’Sa, in fact, had checked out Shell’s operations in Europe. "I went to a Shell refinery in Denmark and there was no smell at all. And when we looked at the data we found that there was 85 percent less pollution from the refineries in Denmark than here."

Shell’s Standards?

Phil Watts, meanwhile, says that Shell is a company that adheres to high standards. Shell is committed to sustainable development – an ethic of business practice that embraces responsible economic, social, and environmental principles. "It is important that your business principles remain constant, wherever you operate," says Watts. But Shell isn’t perfect, Watts will be the first to admit.

A Case in Point:

Shell’s South African Refinery
The Shell refinery, located on the coast of South Africa south of Durban, began its operations in the 1960s. Today, it is the largest crude oil refinery in South Africa, capable of processing over 185,000 barrels a day, and employing a total of 1,150 staff and contract workers. In addition to the refinery proper, there are also seven pipelines

radiating out from the refinery in various directions. The Island View tank terminal, north of the refinery at Durban Harbor, is directly connected to the refinery via pipelines, and includes a number of big aboveground storage tanks as well as its own internal network of pipelines. Island View is also a servicing terminal for merchant ships which use Shell bunker fuel. For most of its history the Shell refinery and associated facilities have pretty much operated on their own, without stringent government oversight. Apartheid-era laws gave many South African companies a free hand, with little environmental accountability. Since the 1960s, there have undoubtedly been spills and accidents at these facilities, but few have been publicly documented. In the 1990s, however, some refinery accidents and pollution have been documented.

Record of Shell’s South African Operations:

March 2000 Local manager of Shell’s Durban, South African joint venture refinery, SAPREF, admits the refinery has been under-reporting sulfur dioxide emissions to government authorities by as much as 25 percent over the past five years.

23 Mar 2001 Shell’s Durban, South African joint venture refinery, SAPREF, has leak of 25 tons of tetra ethyl lead from a rusty storage tank at the Island View Tank Terminal at Durban Harbor, some of which travels into adjacent residential area.

July 01 Shell’s Durban, South African joint venture refinery, SAPREF, confirms major leak of nearly 1 million liters of petrol from rusty underground pipeline near and beneath residential area and Bluff nature reserve.

Five families leave their homes after high levels of benzene are detected (see Chapter 1).

August 01 Shell’s Durban, South African joint venture refinery, SAPREF, confirms leak in fuel pipelines along Tara Road on the Bluff.

14 Oct 01 Oil spills into Durban Harbor, South Africa during refueling of a ship at the Island View Tank Terminal, part of the Shell joint venture, SAPREF.

Amount spilled is disputed by SAPREF, but one estimate by Portnet puts the amount at 2,000 liters.

30 Dec 01 Fifteen-thousand liters of oil spills into Durban Harbor, South Africa during refueling of a ship at the Island View Tank Terminal, part of the Shell joint venture, SAPREF. Oil spills from a SAPREF line.

14 Jan 02 Three-thousand liters of oil spills inside the Island View Tank Terminal, at Durban Harbor, South Africa, part of the Shell/BP joint-venture refin-ery, SAPREF.

April 02 Water-pressure testing reveals another corroded pipeline at the Island View Tank Terminal, at Durban Harbor, South Africa, part of the Shell joint venture refinery, SAPREF.

For a copy of the book send e-mail to info@shellfacts.com