Shell’s negative impact on Climate Change
Shell is a multinational oil and gas company with headquarters in London and various operations around the world, with operations in 99 countries in the world and producing 3.7 million barrels of oil per day with 44 thousand service stations around the globe, Shell is the second largest investor-owned oil and gas companies in the world by revenue behind Exxon Mobil according to Fortune Global 500.
The company is responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions through its operations, innovation, supply chain and investment in fossil fuel extraction and production, which contribute to the worsening of climate change and various environmental degradation around the world.
Shell’s Operations that Impact Climate negatively
The largest contributor to global climate change is fossil fuels that are extracted from the earth’s core as petroleum ore an operation Shell is actively involved in and processed into several forms like Petrol, gases, kerosene, bitumen, and lubricating oil, this fossil fuel when burnt produces the largest of the greenhouse gases which is carbon dioxide and other impurities, CO2 escapes into the atmosphere, blankets the earth’s atmosphere and trap sun heat from leaving the atmosphere of the earth which leads to global warming and climate change, fossil fuels accounts for over 75 percent of the global greenhouse gases. More importantly, the carbon dioxide that is produced by fossil fuels is the major contributor to climate change, it accounts for 72 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions.
A major part of the operation at Shell involves exploration and production, which is the methods and processes for locating the potential sites for oil and gas drilling and extraction and is part of what is called the Upstream operation, the process involves Search and exploration that involves geologic testings and land surveys, well construction that involves drilling of rock and insertion of pipes, extraction and finally the abandonment of the well after a considerable amount of oil has been extracted.
This exploration part contributes to climate change apart from the burning of fossil fuel, a large amount of land is needed to extract oil, to set up a base for extraction and the whole production, According to Wilderness.org in order to produce fossil fuel 12 million acres of land is used which is the equivalent of six Yellowstone National park in the USA. In doing so a large number of trees and animal natural habitat needs to be destroyed to achieve this. Trees serve as a carbon sink and a natural way for the earth’s ecosystem to reduce greenhouse gases, by cutting down these trees and exposing the vegetation Shell increases the amount of the earth’s greenhouse gases in exponential figures. Exponential in two ways; the trees if alive and not cut down would serve as a carbon sink since it uses carbon dioxide for respiration, the second way is that all the carbon dioxide stored by these trees for over a thousand years will be exposed to the atmosphere.
The Shell operation in Nigeria practices gas flaring, this practice involves burning off the gas that accompanies the petroleum that is extracted from the ground. Flaring gases expose the atmosphere to greenhouse gases and also cause serious respiratory problems for residents of the affected area, In Nigeria, it was reported that during the Shell operation of more than 40 years, the pollution from the flares has had a serious effect on the Delta residents. Natural gases emit methane a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, even though carbon dioxide stays longer in the earth’s atmosphere, methane is 80 times more dangerous because it traps more heat due to the arrangements of its molecule.
Innovation
Another very dangerous way Shell oil extraction contributes to climate change is the rising of the earth’s temperature by heat that is escaping from under the earth’s surface, the mineral deposits under the earth such as coal and petroleum ore act as insulators and blankets that disallow heat from the earth core to getting to the earth surface, when these minerals are removed it creates a void filled with water which can not do the insulating work these minerals will do due to difference in density, the density of water and its insulating power is small compared to minerals under the earth. This theory is evident in the arctic region where oil exploration happens in very large quantities, more than 400 oil and gas fields have been developed in the arctic circle and the region has recorded an average increase in the temperature of. 0.6°C since 1978. This is different from the Antarctic where oil exploration is totally banned and has just recorded an average increase of 0.1°C temperature. Scientists have also studied that the groundwater that escapes from beneath the earth comes with a very high temperature(water vapor) and increases the temperature of the earth’s water.
Supply Chain
The transportation of oil creates one of the biggest carbon footprints in the world in both the transport of the crude internationally and the distribution of its product as compared to other transportation of commodities in the world according to USEPA, for example, the annual seaborne crude flows are totaling an estimated 12 billion barrels while Oil tankers make up 13% of maritime emissions or approximately 114 million tonnes of CO2, that’s a lot of emission from the transportation industry.
Shell has been accused so many times of causing Climate wreckage and not even abiding by the Paris agreement, Milieudefensie, in a lawsuit at the International Court are demanding that the company reduce its greenhouse gas output by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels, the 2019 figure was 70 million tons as reported by Shell. If the global climate crisis is going to end large corporation like Shell has to cut down drastically their production of fossil fuel, and implement clean innovations and supply chain processes.
