Touch Fuck All policy
The Touch [...] All policy (TFA) refers to an alleged policy of Royal Dutch Shell regarding offshore oil platforms in the North Sea, whereby top directors of Shell Expro in Aberdeen, the UK arm of the Anglo-Dutch group, allegedly sanctioned a policy instructing offshore installation managers to stop any maintenance work or safety inspections with the potential to cause unplanned shutdowns, i.e. to "touch [...] all".
In June and July 2006, over a dozen articles were published by the news media revealing serious allegations by Bill Campbell, a former Shell International Group Auditor, whose name, as a result, is now inextricably linked with the Brent Bravo story.
Campbell’s allegations were the subject of a programme broadcast by BBC Scotland's investigative current affairs BBC 1 TV programme Frontline Scotland in a feature entitled: “The Human Price of Oil”. An article relating to the programme was published by BBC News under the headline “Shell ignored accident warning”, one of a number of BBC news reports on the subject. The Guardian newspaper published three articles, the first with the headline “Shell accused over oil rig safety”; the second entitled “Call for inquiry into oil rig safety regulator and the third “Shell confesses to poor North Sea safety record and pledges reform” A series of articles was also published by Upstream Online a respected weekly petroleum industry publication which also operates a related petroleum news website.
The following paragraph is also taken from the same article by UpstreamOnline entitled "Shell in the safety firing line".
- "The allegations levelled by Campbell against Malcolm Brinded, Shell’s group chief executive for global E&P, who was in charge of the UK business at the time, and his oil director Chris Finlayson, who is now country president of Shell Russia, claim the two men ran an operation where production took priority over safety concerns".
Shell was quoted as rejecting Campbell's charges. Shell said "The allegation regarding operating with high-risk levels is untrue and we absolutely refute (sic) this. Safety is and will remain our first priority offshore".
On 31 August 2007, The Guardian newspaper published an article profiling Jeroen van der Veer, the Chief Executive of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The article by Guardian journalist Terry Macalister stated in reference to Van der Veer: "He also makes clear he was hurt by the coverage of another fiasco - when a Shell consultant, Bill Campbell, blew the whistle on safety breaches in the North Sea."
An article published by The Guardian on 29 March 2007, under the headline “Van der Veer - a safe pair of hands?” stated in reference to Van der Veer, “The one big area where he has fallen down is safety”. It went on to remind readers that the newspaper had revealed a few weeks earlier that Shell had “continued to receive warnings from the Health and Safety Executive that it is acting illegally with regard to safety in the North Sea”. The article concluded that “Mr van der Veer needs to bring a halt to this, and so does exploration and production boss Malcolm Brinded if he wants to stand any chance of taking over the top job”.