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Shell Makes Pact
with the Devil
What Americans Must Do:
Boycott Shell Oil and send your letters TODAY to:
Mr. James Wolfensohn
President,
The World Bank
1818 H. Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433 Fax: 202-522-1677
cunit3@worldbank.org
Mark Moody-Stuart
Chairman of the Board of
Directors
Royal Dutch/Shell Petroleum Company
Carel van Bylandtlaan 30
2596 HR, The Hague
The Netherlands
Fax: 31-70-377-2616
Tell-Shell@si.Shell.com
Philip J. Carroll, President and
CEO
Shell Oil Company
P.O. Box 2463
Houston, Texas 72252
Fax: 1-713-241-5522
Ron Van den
Berg, Managing Director
Shell Nigeria
21/22 Marina
P.O. Box 2418
Lagos, Nigeria
Fax: 234-1-2636681
Jack E. Little,
President and CEO
Shell Exploration and Production Company
One Shell Plaza
Houston, Texas 77002
Fax: 1-713-241-6161
Nigeria and energy use activism
information:
Essential Action
P.O. Box 19405
Washington, DC 20036
action@essential.org
compiled by Alex West
Shell Oil is guilty of environmental racism, and Shell consistently puts profits before people. Shell and other multinational oil corporations operating in the Niger Delta are actively supporting abusive military dictatorships in order to protect their environmentally-degrading and polluting practices, and in November 1995, Nigeria’s military dictatorship hanged nine political dissidents. Only a campaign which affects the profits of these multinationals will bring an end to the vicious circle of violence, environmental destruction, injustice, and death for the Nigerian people.
America is the number one consumer of Nigerian crude oil, and that puts us in a unique position to help the Nigerians directly. A powerful and peaceful weapon in the struggle for corporate responsibility and environmental justice is a divestment campaign that begins with each individual: Boycott Shell Oil!
Proposed Chad-Cameroon Pipeline
A consortium of Shell (40%), Exxon (40%), and Elf (20%) oil companies are actively lobbying the World Bank for millions of dollars in funding a pipeline which would stretch clear through Chad and Cameroon, West Africa, cutting through sensitive forests, waterways, and vital indigenous areas. Already people speaking out against the project have been arrested, and the region could easily become another Niger River Delta, complete with environmental destruction, indigenous exploitation, and military involvement.
Environmental and Human Rights Concerns
The project will involve construction of pipeline 650 miles long by 27 yards wide, buried from the oil fields in Chad to Cameroon’s Atlantic coast. The pipeline traverses several major rivers and passes through or close to important ecological areas that are home to indigenous tribes and endangered species. Oil spills could contaminate the ground water system; even if the best technology is adopted, 2000 gallons could leak per day without being detected.
Private press is subject to heavy censorship, and freedom of assembly and association is often restricted in practice. These violations of individual freedoms cast a shadow on the credibility of consultation processes where people allegedly were allowed to freely express concerns about the pipeline.
Inadequate Environmental Assessment
The environmental assessment for the Chad-Cameroon pipeline prepared by Exxon doesn’t include an assessment of greenhouse emissions associated with the project and the global costs associated with these emissions. The development of the pipeline will allow distribution and consumption of 650 million barrels of crude oil that will be pumped from Chad’s oil fields, which will lead to increased greenhouse emissions with significant impacts on global climate change.
The environmental assessment surveys lack a compensation plan, a resettlement plan, a waste management plan, a plan to protect biodiversity, and a decommissioning plan. The analysis lacks an oil spill response plan and any indication of how damages caused by an oil spill would be paid. The plan also does not mention the impact of the project on the Mbere Rift Valley, a region important for its wildlife and biodiversity, and on the Pygmies living in the Kribi area forests.
Between 1982 and 1992, Shell’s subsidiary in Nigeria spilled about 1.6 million gallons of oil in the Niger Delta, mostly from leaking pipelines, causing high levels of water pollution and subsequent death of fish, mangroves, and tropical forests.
Oil Corporation Import Weapons and Cooperate with Military Dictatorships
Shell has imported weapons for the Nigerian military, which has established a task force to repress peaceful protests against Shell by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). The task force, known as the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force, has the power to arrest anyone it suspects of working to empower the Ogoni for justice and basic fundamental rights. The military uses violent tactics to oppress the people and protect the interests and profits of the oil corporations, which also include Mobil, Exxon, Texaco, Chevron, and others.
The governments of Chad and Cameroon participate in joint ventures created with the consortium of oil companies to manage the construction of the pipeline. The estimated cost of the project is $3.5 billion, which is 20 times the budget of Chad. Exxon’s 1996 annual profits are four times the budget of Cameroon and 40 times the budget of Chad.
Shell and the Nigerian government are indispensable to one another. Nigeria provides 14% of Shell’s oil worldwide, and some 90% of Nigeria’s foreign revenue comes from oil exports. Yet most of this foreign money gets pocketed by the Nigerian military, and billions of dollars are sent to safe bank accounts in Europe. In 1991 alone, $12 billion in Nigerian oil funds disappeared and have yet to be accounted for.
Although Shell operates in 110 countries, 40% of its spills worldwide have occurred in the Niger Delta.
In 1997 the Wall Street Journal reported Exxon’s chairman as advising developing countries to avoid environmental controls or risk losing foreign investment.
World Bank Supporting Corporate Welfare
Although earmarked for sustainable development and poverty relief, 9 out of 10 World Bank fossil fuel projects benefit transnational corporations based in wealthy countries. The Exxon-Shell pipeline in Chad and Cameroon will divert World Bank money from much-needed health, education, and poverty alleviation projects. Since World Bank funding for each country is limited, whatever is spent for the pipeline will not be available for social and environmental projects.
What Shell Must Do
Shell must admit to its mess in the Niger Delta with an independent environmental assessment and then clean up the Niger Delta.
Shell owes the people who live in oil producing regions monetary compensation for the loss of land, resources, income, and life. Shell has benefited immensely from drilling in the Niger Delta, extracting over $30 billion worth of oil, yet the region lacks functional hospitals, access roads, steady electricity, and pipe-borne water. Poverty is extreme, even by Nigerian standards.
Shell must refuse to operate under an unjust, brutal system. Shell alone provides over 50% of the Nigerian dictatorship’s budget, and has the influence to force the military to reform and insure that a just and democratic government is formed which represents the interests of all Nigerians.
Shell must call for the immediate demilitarization of Ogoniland and all other parts of the Niger Delta where Shell operates, and learn to respect the views of indigenous communities.
Daphne Wysham, a climate change expert with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and Oronto Douglas, the Nigerian environmental and human rights lawyer and a former attorney for the late Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Wysham and Douglas visited Lewis & Clark law school to speak about the injustice in Nigeria, climate change, human rights, and developing countries on September 18, 1998.
Tuesday, November 10 is the third anniversary of the execution of nine Nigerian environmentalists by the Shell-backed Nigerian military regime. These people were hanged for speaking out against exploitation by Shell and the Nigerian government. The most famous of these protesters was Ken Saro-Wiwa; his lawyer, Oronto Douglas, recently gave a speech here at the law school, encouraging us to help in the struggle.
In remembrance of those who were murdered and in an effort to increase awareness of Shell Oil’s atrocities, the American Civil Liberties Union student group will sponsor a showing of the film “Delta Force,” about how Royal Dutch Shell has violated the human rights of the people of Nigeria and decimated the environment, at noon in Room 2.
LINKS
Greenpeace: good site, lots of action and info: http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/ken/index.html
Earthlife Africa homepage: http://www.earthlife.org.za/
EXCELLENT report on the history of Ogoniland and Shell, done
by Earthlife Africa:
http://www.gem.co.za/ELA/ogoni.fact.html
Sierra Club's very comprehensive Human Rights and
Environment Page: http://www.sierraclub.org/human-rights/
AND see the section on Nigeria there: http://www.sierraclub.org/human-rights/nigeria.html
Essential Action's Shell Page: http://www.essential.org/action/shell/index.html