There's no excuse

Geoffrey Chandler, a former director of Shell International and founder chair of the Amnesty International UK Business Group, says companies with no moral basis do not deserve to survive and probably won't. Interview by Tom Nicholls

"THE END of the Cold War, and the discrediting of Communism and of state control of national economies offered vast opportunities to the oil industry. The countries of the former Soviet Union and established oil producers in the developing world opened up to Western companies, providing access to previously inaccessible reserves. "They also brought social and environmental challenges, problems of insecurity and human-rights violations, for which companies were unprepared. Without appropriate policies, companies made worse, rather than improving, the situations they confronted. The benefits they brought to the world were too often accompanied by collateral damage – with the 1989 Exxon Valdez