In order for Shell Corporation preserve its integrity and secure the welfare of its stakeholders and the environment, its management requires all Shell companies, including its contractors, to uphold Health, Safety and Environment [HSE] Policy and Commitment. The said policy aims for the prevention of any related accidents concerning the exploration and production of Shell Corporation thereby providing enough reason to say that the said company conducts its operation ethically.
Furthermore, in order for Shell Corporation to secure the preservation of environment and prevent any damages that it can give to the environment, Shell management launched the Group Health, Safety, Security and Environment [HSSE] Management System which ensures them to manage safety systematically and have the right resources, skills, tools, standards, and procedures in place. In addition to this, Shell Corporation has been implementing its Process safety Program which primarily aims to securing that the facilities of the said company safely operated and properly maintained (Shell. com, 2008).
Since most of the facilities of Shell Corporation happened on the road, it provided safety programs and trainings that would improve the skills, behavior, and compliance, as well as installing new equipment to manage driver fatigue. The banning of the use of mobile phones was imposed by Shell Corporation to its drivers through the introduction of company-wide road safety standard, which also covers route planning and driver training. Moreover, aside from safeguarding the welfare of its stakeholders, Shell Corporation also has the initiative to innovate their oil exploration and production through various programs and company-wide policies.
Since most of the time when an oil field already reached the end of its normal life, most of its oil is still left behind in the ground due to its expensiveness and difficulty to extract all of the oil which provides around 20-30 billion barrels of oil being left behind in the ground. In order to solve this, Shell implemented the “Enhanced Oil Recovery” strategy which reduces the viscosity of the oil to ease its flow, or it is just literally pushing the oil out of the pores of the rock through chemical injection, steam injection, or gas injection.
Through this, Shell can maximize the potential use of a given oil site which can later on provide enough rooms for a slower degradation of oil reserves around the world if it will also be implemented by other oil producing companies. In this regard, based from the policies and programs being implemented by the management of Shell Corporation in order to safeguard the welfare of its workers, one can say that the responses of the said company to environmental issues is a demonstration of its ethical business behavior.
On the other hand, one of the ethical issues that Shell Corporation had faced would be the oil spill happened in Nigeria that provided great losses on crops and fish stocks or various villagers of the said country. The Royal Dutch Shell is now facing legal problem, as its subsidiary company failed to take the responsibility for oil the said oil spill in Niger Delta (Ethical-insight. com, 2008). Furthermore, the Friends of the Earth, a non-government organization, argued that the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria failed in ensuring essential maintenance work that must be carried out on machineries and in cleaning up the oil spill.
Due to this lack of response of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, tremendous amount of crops and fish stock was damaged resulting to the loss of earnings of local people that depend their living in Niger Delta.
Though Royal Dutch Shell defended that the oil spill was caused by either sabotage or theft, but the fact that Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria failed to take action on the said oil spill immediately, then, they are still responsible for the looses that villagers on Niger Delta received.The Friends of the Earth plans to take the case to the court in Netherland.
References
Ethical-insight. com (2008). Villagers Sue Shell for Loss of Crops and Fish Stocks Caused by Oil Spills. Retrieved May 28, 2008, from http://www. ethical-insight. com/articles/1641/ Shell. com (2008). Personal and Process Safety. Retrieved May 28, 2008, from http://www. shell. com/home/content/responsible_energy/working_safely/personal_process_safety/personal_process_safety_03042008. html