Shell blamed for Nigeria oil spills, UPI, published May 2, 2011 at 11:36 AM

LONDON, May 2 (UPI) — A lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell says the company hasn’t responded adequately to rampant oil spills in parts of the country.

The Bodo community in Nigeria filed a class-action lawsuit in London for an oil spill in the Niger Delta. The community blames Shell for many of the oil spills in the region.

Oil companies aren’t moving into the region to address the spills because of frequent attacks from militant groups like the Movement of the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

The Bodo suit involves a leak believed to be from an oil pipeline that dumped crude oil into the Bodo creek for about four months in summer 2008. Shell said it didn’t know of the problem for several months, The Telegraph newspaper in London reports.

Nenibarini Zabbey, a researcher at Nigeria’s Center for Environment, Human Rights and Development, told the newspaper Shell officials arrived in the area in 2009 with meager food aid that the Bodo community found “insulting.”

Shell and other oil companies working in Nigeria blame sabotage oil bandits like MEND for many spills.

The United Nations estimated that at least 6,800 oil spills occurred in the area from 1976-2001.

Shell breaks promises again and increases gas flaring in Nigeria, Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria) Press Release, posted Thursday, 21 April 2011 11:31

Despite promises made by Shell since the 1990s to stop flaring the ‘associated’ gas released in oil production in Nigeria, the oil concern flared more gas in 2010 than it did in 2009 in the West African country. This has come to light from the sustainability report brought out by Shell last week.

According to its own figures, Shell flared over 30 per cent more gas in 2010 than in 2009. This, according to them, was mainly due to increased production in Nigeria and new activities in Iraq.

Nnimmo Bassey, director of Friends of the Earth Nigeria and chair of Friends of the Earth International, said:

“Shell has been flaring gas in Nigeria since 1958. Though gas flaring has been illegal, to them it is a standard industry practice. They continue to reap obscene profits from the oil fields of Nigeria at the expense of the lives and the livelihoods of the poor people. While they speak from both sides of their mouths we see that they are increasing the volume of gas flared and are thus intensifying their poisoning of the environment and the peoples of the region. They engage in this unacceptable and illegal activity just for the maximisation of their profits. Gas flaring is an act of ecocide and everyone should join us to demand that Shell stops this madness.”

Gas flaring has serious negative impacts on the health of local residents and on the environment – while the flared gas could simply be captured and used as natural gas, to the benefit of local people who often do not even have electricity in their houses.  In 2007 Shell promised that it would stop flaring gas in Nigeria in 2009.

The meaningless promises and violations of environmental and human rights by the Dutch oil giant are a concern of the Dutch Parliament as well. In January of this year, it held a hearing on the conduct of Shell in Nigeria, were parliamentarians criticised the needless practice of flaring.

Shell’s sustainability report is available here.
An overview of the promises made by Shell to stop flaring gas is available here.

Ben Amunwa, Niger Delta activist and Platform researcher provides analysis of the conflict, politics and root causes of the Niger Delta crisis. Subjects include the struggle of Ogoni women who succeeded in seeing Shell withdraw from Ogoniland in 1993, the origin of MEND and the December bombings of Ayakoromo.

Watch the full video and join the discussion by adding your comments here.

Nigeria: NNPC to Begin Production On Shell’s Ogoni Oil Wells, by Chika Amanze-Nwachuku, This Day, Allafrica.com, 28 January 2011

image credit: Ken Saro-Wiwa from remember saro-wiwa, http://remembersarowiwa.com

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said Thursday that the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), its producing arm, will soon commence production from the 30 oil fields belonging to Shell Petroleum Development and Production Company (SPDC) in Ogoniland.

Group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC, Engr. Austen Oniwon, who confirmed the development in an interview with journalists in Abuja, said the move was in line with the Corporation’s mandate to produce 250,000 barrels of crude oil per day in 2015.

Oniwon said to achieve the set mandate, the NPDC has grown its asset base in three fold preparatory to becoming a big player in the upstream sector, while the enabling environment has been provided by the Federal Government

The SPDC was forced to abandon the prolific oil wells in 1995, following the crisis that greeted the murder of former President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), Ken Saro-Wiwa.

However, in 2008, the Federal Government announced that the oil fields would be handed over to another operator acceptable by the Ogonis on grounds that there was a total loss of confidence between the Ogoni people and Shell. Government reasoned that the solution to the crisis was to allow an operator acceptable to Ogonis to take over exploration activities in the area.

The pronouncement had pitched Shell against the Federal Government, as the oil giant insisted that it would not hands off those blocks to any operator, other than a Joint Venture partner. Shell had faulted government’s decision and resisted initial plans to hand over the control of the Nigerian oil fields to Chinese oil companies.

After intense lobbying, government named the NPDC as the new operator of the oil blocks, a development, which received the commendation of Shell, which under the NPDC’s operatorship, would continue to be a shareholder in the Ogoniland operations.

The news of the NPDC’s planned commencement of exploration has elicited reactions from Ogoni people, who vowed last month to resist any such moves.

MOSOP President, Mr. Ledum Mitee, told THISDAY recently that the Federal Government was yet to contact the Ogoni people on the planned take-over, insisting that any company that would be allowed to explore oil in Ogoniland must be acceptable by the people of Ogoni.

“I have not been contacted about the plan by the NPDC to begin production, although the government was considering appointing a new operator. Our position as always is that Shell must be replaced. So it is important that government should first discuss whoever will be coming with us. I should expect government to contact us for discussion first and for us to know who is coming what the company stands for and what they are bringing to the table. We don’t want Shell or something like Shell or a company that will work for Shell,” he said.

Also, Ogoni people, under the umbrella of National Union of Ogoni Students, USA, recently cautioned Shell, NPDC and the NNPC against what it described as the danger of back door negotiations with acclaimed stakeholders, and vowed that neither Shell, NPDC nor NNPC would be allowed to operate in the area.

The students in a statement titled “Ogoni Allegations Against the Nigerian Government and Shell”, a copy of which was made available to THISDAY warned against using the security forces to terrorise the people of Ogoni in order to start oil production.

The statement read: “We also discovered that the Rivers State government, NPDC, Shell and the federal authority are making another calculated attempt to start oil production in Ogoni without meeting the demands of the people as stated in the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR). They planned to do this through the use of the already established security task forces (Abacha style) coupled with some help from the deceptive works of the UNEP. We strongly advise the Rivers State government to stop using the State security taskforce to terrorise the people of Ogoni in order to start oil production.

“We abhor a repeat of state and corporate sponsored violence that characterised the 1990s’ which was used by the Nigerian government as a pretext to kill prominent Ogoni leaders and over 4000 Ogoni indigenes for demanding their rights. Ogoni students viewed these secret attacks as a sponsored activity by Shell Oil and the authority to resume oil operations in Yorla Oil Fields. We shall be forced to take civil actions against Shell and all those behind these constant threats to the peace of Ogoni”.

Nigeria: U.S. Court Declines to Hear Suit Against Shell, Chika Amanze-Nwachuku, This Day, AllAfrica Global Media, 8 February 2011

A United States Appeal Court on Friday refused to entertain a lawsuit that accused Royal Dutch Shell Plc of helping Nigerian authorities violently to suppress protests against oil exploration in the 1990s.

Specifically, the plaintiffs, families of seven Ogoni indigenes who were executed by the regime of the late General Sani Abacha, had accused the oil giant of violations related to the 1995 hangings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other protesters by Nigeria’s then-military government.

The Ogoni Nine

In the case – Kiobel et al v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Nos. 06-4800 and 06-4876, the plaintiffs had sought their claims from the oil giant under a 1789 U.S. law known as the Alien Tort Statute.

The Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) was adopted in 1789 as part of the original Judiciary Act. It gave the federal courts jurisdiction to hear tort claims brought by foreigners who allege a violation of international law or a treaty to which the United States is a party. For almost two centuries, the statute was relatively dormant, supporting jurisdiction in only a handful of cases. However, it was later invoked in several cases involving torture, disappearances, or killings committed by non-Americans in foreign countries.

In a divided vote that prompted a bitter debate among some of its judges, the US appellate court affirmed a September ruling, which held that companies cannot be liable in U.S. courts for violations of international human rights law.

Reuters reported that the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York declined to hear the case by a 5-5 vote and instead left intact the original 2-1 panel ruling from September. Separately, the judges in that panel voted 2-1 not to rehear the case, the report said, added that the Friday ruling may not be the end of the lawsuit.

“The 2nd Circuit is alone among federal circuit courts in concluding that corporations cannot be responsible under U.S. law for human rights violations, ” the newswire quoted an international law professor at George Washington University, Ralph Steinhardt as saying. “This clears the way for the plaintiffs to seek review at the Supreme Court,” he added. The report added that a lawyer who has represented the families, Paul Hoffman, and Shell, did not immediately return requests for comment.

Shell had since denied allegations it is involved in human rights abuses.The 2nd Circuit ruling, the report said, applies in New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The Alien Tort Statute had underpinned other human rights cases. Reuters reported that in one, mining company Rio Tinto Plc was accused of forcing workers in Papua New Guinea to live in “slave like” conditions, and pushing the government to exact retribution after a mine was sabotaged.

The report cited another case where plaintiffs sought to hold Ford Motor Co. General Motors Co. and International Business Machines Corp liable for helping South African authorities when apartheid was in force more than two decades ago.

Friday’s split ruling showed major differences in the judges’ thinking. Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, part of the September panel that ruled for Shell, wrote that the original ruling “has no great practical effect except for the considerable benefit of avoiding abuse of the courts to extort settlements.”

He chided what he called fears by dissenting Judge Pierre Leval that “slavers and pirates will now rush into corporate transactions,” resulting in “absolution to moral monsters. For the record: even moral monsters are humans, and I would happily see them hanged.” Leval countered that Jacobs’ opinion evinces an “intense, multi-faceted policy agenda” underlying an effort “to exempt corporations from the law of nations.”

The report noted that other judges who favored a rehearing by the entire court said the case presented “a significant issue,” and that September’s ruling conflicted with a 2008 ruling from the 11th Circuit appeals court, which sits in Atlanta.

See another article on this story:  Shell not liable for rights violations, UPI, published: Feb. 8, 2011 at 9:44 AM

Shell in Nigeria: unable or unwilling? Published on : 26 January 2011 – 10:22pm | By Philip Smet, Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Sunny Ofehe

“In our engagement with the Nigerian government, particularly at [the] local level, there was a degree of fear of Shell. Local regulators in particular were very afraid to speak about Shell unless they could be guaranteed not to be named. They feared losing their jobs if they told the truth about how Shell operates. At the federal level we face serious challenges. The government knows there’s problems; it’s not doing enough… [but] there are things that are Shell’s responsibility and it cannot point to the government of Nigeria.” --Amnesty International spokesperson Audrey Gaughran

Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell must take responsibility, critics say. Shell is trying, but is facing a failing government and sabotage, says the oil company. But who is right? The Dutch parliament has held a hearing on oil extraction in Nigeria and its impact on the local population.

Activist Sunny Ofehe, founder of the Hope for the Niger Delta Campaigns (HNDC), was present at the hearing:

“There are many people in the villages who are waiting for the outcome of this hearing. And I want to tell you that, while you do your duty as elected representative of this country… you might face pressure from the giant companies who have the money and the resources to stall this process that has begun today. But as you ponder… I want you to have deep down in your heart that more than 26 million people are dying from environmental devastation… every fuel tank you fill [is] at the expense of somebody’s health.”

Profound distrust

Mr Ofehe admits that the oil company has been trying to improve relations with the local population of the Niger delta, but argues that this is not enough. He and other speakers pointed out that, as long as people are still suffering the consequences of oil pollution and the practice of burning off excess natural gas, the profound distrust of Shell will not disappear.

Shell argues that it is often impossible to mend leaking pipelines and clean up leaked oil. On top of which, they say that many of these leaks are the result of sabotage. Shell’s sub-Saharan Africa executive vice-president Ian Craig says the situation is very complicated:

“A situation of high population density, unemployment, poverty, political marginalisation and of course corruption. Leading to frustration and criminality. This extreme and challenging environment is then compounded by the major shareholder [the state of Nigeria] having chronic underfunding problems… We had to shut down about 50 percent of the production because the militants made it too dangerous to continue working.”

More stories on the complaint against Royal Dutch Shell PLC filed by Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International with the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, alleging the oil giant has published misleading data about oil spills in Nigeria, and the hearing in the Hague:

Groups file OECD complaint vs. Shell Nigeria

The Hague to Hear Fresh Charges Against Shell

Dutch Lawmakers Question Shell on Oil Pollution in Nigeria

Dutch lawmakers grill Shell on Nigerian operations

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