Defying expectations – saying goodbye after 33 years at Shell

For those who have ever received an email from my Shell account, you may have noticed my sign-off reads: “Defy expectations and allow your assumptions to be defied”. I have sought to follow this maxim throughout my career – and I continue to do so today, in my last week at Shell, after more than 33 years at the company. This will be a big change for me, but change is all around us and it’s moments like this that give me an opportunity to reflect on my experiences. I hope that the images in this article help to illustrate some of the changes that are both personal and reflected in the wider world.

Strength in diversity

I am, by background, a geologist. I’ve always enjoyed problem-solving, which lent itself to a degree in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – subjects now known as STEM. But, when I graduated in the late 1980s, STEM was still a male-dominated field and this was certainly evident as I looked for my first job. As a gold miner by academic background, the oil and gas industry wasn’t an obvious first choice, but it let me work in the field rather than the research department. My only option in the mining industry – working underground as a female – was pretty much impossible.

Shell, however, was hiring women. I began my career as one of the first women working on a drilling rig in the North Sea. The rig had been specially modified to accommodate females by removing the need to ‘hot bunk’. My time onboard the Nedrill 4 was filled with moments of hectic activity, such as when we had Boots and Coots on board for a cryogenic well kill. There were also weeks of relative boredom as we drilled ahead, and periods of being stuck when the helicopters couldn’t fly due to snowstorms.

My time working in the North Sea was formative. It taught me the importance of properly assessing what you are asking the people in the field to deliver. This helped me to learn that despite all the planning, you are still dependent on what the physical earth gives you to work with. It also gave me a greater appreciation for the fact that skills and leadership can be found at all levels in the company. Everyone has something to contribute to deliver a safe, technically sound and profitable operation. These are all things that I’ve used in my day-to-day work ever since. But more than that, my early experience at Shell underscores something I have always felt during my time in this company – that diversity and inclusion, in the wealth of perspectives and experiences it brings, is truly valued here. And I leave Shell with gratitude for the opportunities I have had to learn, grow and lead and respect for the quality and range of skillsets of the people I have had the opportunity to work with.

In the years that followed my work offshore, I lived in various places around the world – including the Netherlands, the USA and Canada – and visited others such as Iraq, China, Nigeria and Bolivia – working in deepwater services, integrated reservoir modelling, exploration, development and carbon capture and storage. These experiences and the skills they helped to develop each prepared me for what would come next.

Developing essential solutions

Much has changed over the course of my time at Shell, including the increasingly urgent need to address climate change. I’ve been privileged to spend much of the last fifteen years working in carbon capture and storage (CCS): an area that I see has true value in helping to reduce emissions from sectors that are hard-to-decarbonise.:

A broad consensus of climate scientists agrees that the world needs carbon capture and storage if it is to reach net zero, which is why Shell has been helping to develop CCS across the world for around 20 years. CCS is also one of the solutions Shell will need to meet its climate targets. In 2009, I moved to Canada to join the team launching Shell’s first ever CCS facility – Quest. This role has defined my subsequent career. As this was the first CCS project in Canada and one of the first in the world, the team had to think through all the workflows from scratch. We worked with federal, provincial and international government bodies to explain what we could do and the policy and regulation required to make the project work for the country and industry. I think you can see the work we did on Quest underpinning the subsequent CCS projects kicking off in Canada. As an aside, the Quest project also required things which were unheard of for a geologist – including featuring in an advertising campaign which was displayed on the side of a bus!

The Quest project has now stored 8 million tonnes of CO2, the same as the annual emissions from nearly two million combustion engine cars, which shows that CCS can work at scale and reduce emissions.

Our greatest asset

Thirty-three years on from working on a drilling rig in the North Sea, I leave Shell having led the company’s CCS business. During my time in this role, I’ve seen further progress in Shell’s pioneering work in CCS – the rolling out of Shell’s CANSOLV CO2 capture technology, the development of the first ships to transport liquid CO2, the capture and storage of many tonnes of CO2 from the two operating CCS facilities in Shell’s portfolio, the early development of the next wave of CCS projects around the world, and the growth of a broad team of technical and business professionals working to deliver results for Shell and our customers.

This progress is hugely encouraging. Defying expectation applies equally to CCS – for those who believe it can’t happen, we are seeing the start of a massive scale-up in CCS. But there is still much work to be done – the world needs more CCS. Partnerships between companies is vital, not least – for example – to ensure that shared pipelines and storage facilities are designed for the benefit of all. There will be bumps along the way, there always are. It is crucial that we persevere to allow the sector to flourish. This means working with governments to advocate for regulations and policies that promote investment. This means working with local communities to understand their needs and address their concerns. And it means working with our customers to demonstrate the value CCS can deliver to them and to their customers who want to purchase lower carbon goods.

To meet these challenges, deep collaboration is key. In all that I’ve learned throughout my time at the company, one thing stands out: Shell’s people are undoubtedly its greatest asset. As I move on to new adventures, I’ll be watching and supporting Shell. I have no doubt that the people I’ve had the pleasure of working with – and those who will join them – will help to develop CCS further, encourage more widespread implementation, and defy expectations by making CCS the revolutionary solution it can be.

At the end of March, I hand over the responsibility and privilege of leading Shell’s CCS business to Bernhard Koudelka. You can follow Shell’s progress in CCS through his LinkedIn account Bernhard Koudelka , Shell’s Emerging Energy Solutions account and at Carbon Capture Storage | CCS Technology & Methods | Shell Global .

So, while I am signing off from Shell, I know the next chapters of my adventure will be inspired by the previous one: defying expectations and allowing my assumptions to be defied in new ways.