The Haunting Nightmare Confessions of a Former Shell Consultant

For ten years, the latest interviewee on Informer—our series amplifying the voices of insiders and whistleblowers—consulted as a health and safety officer for the petroleum giant Shell, dealing with the psychological fallout of its voracious global expansion.

Their job was to listen to thousands of oil and gas workers airing their concerns about the professional hazards and mental and physical toll of working on the frontlines for a company like Shell. Some days, the job meant hearing from contracted workers in the Global South complaining that they hadn’t been paid. Other times, it would be counseling those driven into a state of extreme mental disrepair by allegedly working 31 days straight to keep the pipeline running.