US embassy cables reveal top executive’s claims that company ‘knows everything’ about key decisions in government ministries: Ann Pickard boasted that the Nigerian government had “forgotten” about the extent of Shell’s infiltration and were unaware of how much the company knew about its deliberations. The WikiLeaks disclosure was today seized on by campaigners as evidence of Shell’s vice-like grip on the country’s oil wealth.

David Smith in Lagos: Wednesday 8 December 2010 21.34 GMT

Despite billions of dollars in oil revenue, 70% of people live below the poverty line. Photograph: George Osodi/AP

The oil giant Shell claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to politicians’ every move in the oil-rich Niger Delta, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable.

The company’s top executive in Nigeria told US diplomats that Shell had seconded employees to every relevant department and so knew “everything that was being done in those ministries”. She boasted that the Nigerian government had “forgotten” about the extent of Shell’s infiltration and were unaware of how much the company knew about its deliberations.

The cache of secret dispatches from Washington’s embassies in Africa also revealed that the Anglo-Dutch oil firm swapped intelligence with the US, in one case providing US diplomats with the names of Nigerian politicians it suspected of supporting militant activity, and requesting information from the US on whether the militants had acquired anti-aircraft missiles.

Other cables released tonight reveal:

• US diplomats fear that Kenya could erupt in violence worse than that experienced after the election in 2008 unless rampant government corruption is tackled.

• America asked Uganda to let it know if its army intended to commit war crimes based on US intelligence – but did not try to prevent war crimes taking place.

• Washington’s ambassador to the troubled African state of Eritrea described its president, Isaias Afwerki, as a cruel “unhinged dictator” whose regime was “one bullet away from implosion”.

The latest revelations came on a day that saw hackers sympathetic to WikiLeaks target MasterCard and Visa over their decision to block payments to the whistleblowers’ website.

The website’s founder, Julian Assange, spent a second night in jail after a judge refused him bail prior to an extradition hearing to face questioning over sexual assault charges in Sweden.

Campaigners tonight said the revelation about Shell in Nigeria demonstrated the tangled links between the oil firm and politicians in the country where, despite billions of dollars in oil revenue, 70% of people live below the poverty line.

Cables from Nigeria show how Ann Pickard, then Shell’s vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa, sought to share intelligence with the US government on militant activity and business competition in the contested Niger Delta – and how, with some prescience, she seemed reluctant to open up because of a suspicion the US government was “leaky”.

But that did not prevent Pickard disclosing the company’s reach into the Nigerian government when she met US ambassador Robin Renee Sanders, as recorded in a confidential memo from the US embassy in Abuja on 20 October 2009.

At the meeting, Pickard related how the company had obtained a letter showing that the Nigerian government had invited bids for oil concessions from China. She said the minister of state for petroleum resources, Odein Ajumogobia, had denied the letter had been sent but Shell knew similar correspondence had taken place with China and Russia.

The ambassador reported: “She said the GON [government of Nigeria] had forgotten that Shell had seconded people to all the relevant ministries and that Shell consequently had access to everything that was being done in those ministries.”

Nigeria is Africa’s leading oil producer and the eighth biggest exporter in the world, accounting for 8% of US oil imports. Although a recent UN report largely exonerated the company, critics accuse Shell, the biggest operator in the delta, and other companies, of causing widespread pollution and environmental damage in the region. Militant groups engaged in hostage-taking and sabotage have proliferated.

The WikiLeaks disclosure was today seized on by campaigners as evidence of Shell’s vice-like grip on the country’s oil wealth. “Shell and the government of Nigeria are two sides of the same coin,” said Celestine AkpoBari, programme officer for Social Action Nigeria.

“Shell is everywhere. They have an eye and an ear in every ministry of Nigeria. They have people on the payroll in every community, which is why they get away with everything. They are more powerful than the Nigerian government.”

The criticism was echoed by Ben Amunwa of the London-based oil watchdog Platform. “Shell claims to have nothing to do with Nigerian politics,” he said. “In reality, Shell works deep inside the system, and has long exploited political channels in Nigeria to its own advantage.”

Nigeria tonight strenuously denied the claim. Levi Ajuonoma, a spokesman for the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, said: “Shell does not control the government of Nigeria and has never controlled the government of Nigeria. This cable is the mere interpretation of one individual. It is absolutely untrue, an absolute falsehood and utterly misleading. It is an attempt to demean the government and we will not stand for that. I don’t think anybody will lose sleep over it.”

Another cable released today, from the US consulate in Lagos and dated 19 September 2008, claims that Pickard told US diplomats that two named regional politicians were behind unrest in the Rivers state. She also asked if the American diplomats had any intelligence on shipments of surface to air missiles (SAMs) to militants in the Niger Delta.

“She claimed Shell has ‘intelligence’ that one to three SAMs may have been shipped to Nigerian militant groups, although she seemed somewhat skeptical of that information and wondered if such sensitive systems would last long in the harsh environment of the Niger Delta,” the cable said.

Pickard also said Shell had learned from the British government details of Russian energy company Gazprom’s ambitions to enter the Nigerian market. In June last year, Gazprom signed a $2.5bn (£1.5bn) deal with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations.

Shell put a request to the US consulate for potentially sensitive intelligence about its possible rival, which she said had secured a promise from the Nigerian government of access to 17 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – roughly a tenth of Nigeria’s entire reserves. “Pickard said that amount of gas was only available if the GON were to take concessions currently assigned to other oil companies and give them to Gazprom. She assumed Shell would be the GON’s prime target.” Pickard alleged that a conversation with a Nigerian government minister had been secretly recorded by the Russians. Shortly after the meeting in the minister’s office she received a verbatim transcript of the meeting “from Russia”, according to the memo.

The cable concludes with the observation that the oil executive had tended to be guarded in discussion with US officials. “Pickard has repeatedly told us she does not like to talk to USG [US government] officials because the USG is ‘leaky’.” She may be concerned that … bad news about Shell’s Nigerian operations will leak out.”

Shell declined to comment on the allegations, saying: “You are seeking our views on a leaked cable allegedly containing information about a private conversation involving a Shell representative, but have declined to share this cable or to permit us sufficient time to obtain information from the person you say took part in the conversation on the part of Shell. In view of this, we cannot comment on the alleged contents of the cable, including the correctness or incorrectness of any statements you say it contains.”

GUARDIAN ARTICLE

Workers clean tarballs Monday off Waveland beach in Mississippi. Months after the BP spill ended, the oil globules are still washing up on Gulf shores. (Getty Images)

Spill Panel’s Co-Chairman Calls for New Approach to Safety to Prevent Disasters

DECEMBER 8, 2010

By STEPHEN POWER

The oil and gas industry needs a “major transformation” in its approach to safety to avoid another big offshore-drilling disaster, a leader of the presidential panel investigating the BP PLC accident plans to tell a gathering of industry officials Wednesday.

William K. Reilly, co-chairman of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, also plans to say that BP and two other companies involved with the doomed Macondo well—Halliburton Co. and Transocean Ltd.—made “breathtakingly inept and largely preventable” missteps, according to a copy of his prepared remarks viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

His speech also calls for improvements in the training and expertise of federal regulators, who “failed us miserably” in their oversight of offshore drilling before the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 workers dead and triggered the worst offshore spill in U.S. history.

But the bulk of Mr. Reilly’s remarks—to be delivered in New Orleans at a conference of attorneys for U.S. oil and gas companies—focuses on the industry, and what Mr. Reilly says is the absence of “a shared industry culture that puts a premium on safety and risk management.”

“The interest group that could most threaten the future viability of offshore drilling is the oil and gas industry itself,” Mr. Reilly says in the speech. “There has to be a recognition that the industry has not made safety a high enough priority. We need a major transformation in the oil and gas industry’s understanding of what it means to put a priority on creating a safety culture. This is an industrywide challenge that can’t simply be laid at the feet of a few rogue players.”

Mr. Reilly’s speech is significant, because it comes as his panel is preparing to deliver a report next month to President Barack Obama that could influence future regulation of the industry. Although Mr. Reilly says in the speech that his comments are only “personal observations,” his views are likely to influence the panel’s findings. His views could also carry weight in the industry because of his background: A Republican who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush, Mr. Reilly is also a longtime board member of ConocoPhillips, though currently on leave from the post.

Halliburton said Tuesday it “remains confident that all the work it performed with respect to the Macondo well was completed in accordance with BP’s specifications for its well-construction plan and instructions.”

BP declined to comment.

Transocean said “the calculations, blueprints and step-by-step construction procedures for the well were crafted by BP engineers and approved by federal regulators in advance of—and in some cases, during—the construction process itself.”

In recent days, oil industry leaders and their congressional allies have blasted the Obama administration for its decision last week to maintain a longtime ban on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast. In a conference call with reporters this week, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, said the administration’s decision threatened U.S. jobs and energy needs, and was inconsistent with the lifting in October of a temporary moratorium on drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico.

But Mr. Reilly, in his speech, says an “embarrassing reality” exposed by the BP spill is that the technical expertise of government regulators “has lagged far behind” that of industry, and that it will take time for regulators to catch up. In that context, it is “regrettable but not really surprising that regulatory officials are reluctant to sign their names to new [drilling] permits.”

Mr. Reilly goes on to complain that industry officials “stood by and let disaster happen” in the Gulf, even though “certain companies were well known within the industry to be laggards when it came to a safety culture.” With oil and gas firms increasingly drilling in deeper water, he argues that the odds of another catastrophe will rise if the industry doesn’t take action. He suggests the industry establish a safety institute that would conduct audits of companies’ safety practices and cultures, and whose work would be shared with insurers and companies’ boards.

Such an institute, he adds, would be similar to “Inpo”—the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, which was created in 1979 following the nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. That group, whose inspection teams conduct regular evaluations of nuclear plants and assess training programs, is widely credited with improving plant safety and performance.

“You can invest in safety now, or you can pay for failure later,” Mr. Reilly says in the speech. “An oil spill of national significance may now put the very survival of any but the largest company in peril.”

It’s unclear how the industry will respond to Mr. Reilly’s message. At a recent commission hearing, Nancy Kete, the commission’s senior adviser on corporate safety, acknowledged the oil industry’s structure was “much more complicated” than the nuclear industry’s, with more service providers and more types of technology.

“There’s a small number of very large companies and then a large number of smaller companies, and so the cost of something like this and the influence of something like this will be more complicated,” Ms. Kete said. “I don’t think we can design it for them, but I think that they can handle that.”

Write to Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com

WSJ ARTICLE

By Ryan Dezember, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

HOUSTON -(Dow Jones)- BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) has agreed to buy out Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s (RDSA, RDSB, RDSA.LN, RDSB.LN) interest in a pair of U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil and gas fields.

The U.K.-based oil giant exercised its preferential rights to buy Shell’s 25% stake in the deepwater Marlin and Dorado reservoirs, after Shell unveiled an agreement to sell the assets to Houston-based W&T Offshore Inc. (WTI). BP currently owns the other 75% of the reservoirs.

BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said Tuesday his company sent Shell a letter Monday announcing its decision to exercise the rights to buy out its minority partner. Beaudo declined to disclose the purchase price.

W&T Offshore said late Tuesday that it had agreed to buy Shell’s stake in Marlin and Dorado in early November as part of a larger deal to acquire interests in six Gulf of Mexico properties from Shell.

The original deal called for W&T to pay Shell $450 million. Now that the Marlin and Dorado fields aren’t part of the deal, W&T said in a release it will pay Shell $193 million in cash and assume $32 million in debt related to the remaining four properties.

BP first tapped the Marlin reservoir, which sits in 3,240 feet of water, in 1999.

The Marlin reservoir, along with connected fields Dorado and King, which BP already owned exclusively, have had an average daily output of 60,000 barrels of oil and 250 million cubic feet of natural gas. Currently, the properties are producing about 43,000 barrels of oil a day and 60 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, Beaudo said.

-By Ryan Dezember, Dow Jones Newswires; 713-547-9208; ryan.dezember@ dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires
12-07-101928ET
Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Shell today announced the appointment of three chief scientists to cover the critical industry disciplines of exploration, unconventional oil, and in-well technology. This further strengthens Shell’s existing group of six top scientific experts. Expanding its group of chief scientists underscores the importance Shell places on delivering targeted responses to the challenges of a rapidly changing energy landscape, including demand of business customers.

“These appointments further differentiate Shell as an industry leader in technology and innovation. The chief scientists are critical solution drivers for our business today and in future,” said Gerald Schotman, Chief Technology Officer for Royal Dutch Shell. ”Our chief scientists have been pivotal ambassadors for Shell’s technology, promoting thought-leadership in their specific areas of expertise and beyond amongst academia and industry. Against the backdrop of a vast energy challenge, our decision to further enhance this value-adding concept is a clear and logical step.”

The chief scientists were chosen for their strong technical capabilities, outstanding breadth and depth of expertise as well as having achieved both internal and external recognition for their contributions in the field of energy. They play an important role in Shell’s vision to become the world’s most innovative and competitive energy company. The following appointments are effective immediately.

Dirk Smit, VP of Exploration Technologies, will be Chief Scientist for Geophysics. Dirk received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands. Before he joined Shell in 1992, he taught on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. Dirk has worked as Chief Geophysicist for Shell UK and as Technology Manager for Global Exploration. He was awarded the EAGE Ludwig Mintrop Award in Geophysics in 2002.

Outside Shell, Dirk is a Visiting Scientist at MIT and holds a Visiting Professorship in Geoscience at the Chinese University of Petroleum in Beijing. He served as a member of the U.S. National Research Council on Solid Earth Observations from 2004 – 2007 and is a member of The Netherlands’ National Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter and of the Physics branch of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

John Karanikas, Chief Subsurface Engineer in Unconventional Oil, will be Chief Scientist for Reservoir Engineering. After graduating with a Ph.D. in physics from Ohio State University, John joined Shell in 1991 and has worked as a research physicist and a reservoir engineer at Shell’s Bellaire Technology Center in Houston, Texas. He drove the development a thermal recovery method for unconventional oil, including oil shale and heavy oil, in which he holds over 70 patents.

Vianney Koelman, Team Leader of In-Well Technology, will be Chief Scientist for Petrophysics. He earned a Ph.D. in engineering sciences from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. In addition to heading Petrophysics for Europe and Africa, Vianney has held research and operational positions in the Netherlands, the UK, Nigeria, Oman, and the U.S., where he is currently stationed. From Houston, Vianney leads R&D projects on technologies enabling effective well and reservoir surveillance.

SOURCE ARTICLE

COMMENT FROM A FORMER EMPLOYEE OF SHELL OIL USA

I read the Huffington Post article about a hypothetical oil spill from a Shell well ‘under the ice’.

I have a couple of facts for you about the oil at Prudhoe Bay the author neglected to look up that make that story implausible. Any well drilled by Shell will have pretty much the same reservoir temperature, and the oil should have similar properties.

At Prudhoe Bay the reservoir temperature is about 225 degrees F, or about 110 degrees C. That is above the boiling point of water. The point here is that oil from any blowout under sea ice will be HOT and will melt through the sea ice to form a large pool of oil. The other point I would like to make is that the ‘pour point’ of Prudhoe Bay oil is around 0 degrees C, that is 32 degrees F. Pour point is the temperature at which the oil solidifies. Prudhoe Bay crude has a gravity somewhere around 21 API, and has about 10% asphaltines. As the name implies, that is the stuff tar and asphalt are made of.

So, any blowout in the Arctic that produced oil of similar properties would likely produce oil that would at first melt through any surface sea ice, form a large pool that would solidify around the margins because of the very cold air temperatures and sub-zero degrees C water temperature. In short, the stuff is going to go very far during the winter.

Cleaning up this stuff would be difficult because the oil is so viscous when it gets cold. Even in the summer oil like this would probably be very viscous, more like thick semi-liquid tar than the light weight crude of the Gulf of Mexico. But it would also probably form a large continuous thick slick that could be contained to a great degree, making cleanup feasible in concept, if not in reality. But then you need the right equipment, and have to have enough of it on hand to actually do a clean-up. That can’t be done today.

Just a few facts for your readers.

ft.com/energysource

Next week, the person in the hotseat will be Peter Voser, the boss of one of the world’s biggest oil companies, Shell. This is your chance to ask him anything you want, from the controversy surrounding oil sands, to why Shell thinks gas is so important, to the prospects for drilling in the Gulf following the BP spill.

Email all your questions to energysource@ft.com by the end of Monday, December 13th.

FULL FT ARTICLE

German Cartel Office Sees Oligopoly In German Gasoline Market

FRANKFURT -(Dow Jones)- December 6, 2010: Germany’s Federal Cartel Office said Monday it sticks to its assessment that the country’s gasoline market is dominated by a few companies, and said mergers and takeovers in the gas stations sector will only be allowed under strict conditions.

“The Federal Cartel Office still thinks that the vertically integrated oil companies Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RSDA), BP PLC (BP), ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), ConocoPhillips (COP) and Total SA (TOT) for a [market] dominant oligopoly on regional filling station markets,” the antitrust authority said in an emailed statement.

Cartel office President Andreas Mundt said takeovers and acquisitions of gas station sites will continue to be granted only under conditions, to “avert a further concentration of the market.”

The cartel office’s comments come after Austrian oil and gas company OMV AG (OMV.VI) last months said it will sell 59 filling stations in eastern Germany to Poland’s PKN Orlen SA (PKN.WA) after the antitrust authority had opposed a sale to France’s Total.

The cartel office blocked Total’s purchase of the OMV filling stations in April 2009, saying it would have given Total and the four other companies an unacceptable market dominant position.

The cartel office’s ruling had subsequently been overturned by a regional court, which disagreed with the regulator’s view. The antitrust authority appealed, prompting OMV to sell the filling stations to PKN Orlen to avert a lengthy legal dispute.

In a separate deal, Shell’s German unit earlier this month acquired 41 filling stations from German retailer Edeka, fewer than previously intended after the cartel office had opposed the original plan on competition grounds.

The cartel office also Monday said it expects to present the findings of a comprehensive sector probe of the gasoline market, which was launched in 2008, at the end of January. In a preliminary report in June 2009 the cartel office had criticized inadequate competition on the German gasoline market.

-By Jan Hromadko, Dow Jones Newswires; +49 69 29 725 503;jan.hromadko@dowjones.com

SOURCE

The Huffington Post

Subhankar Banerjee: Photographer, writer, activist, founder ClimateStoryTellers.org

I’ll tell you a fictional story ‘After The Arctic Spill,’ but first some announcements from the real world. Last week was filled with news about offshore oil drilling in the U.S. and it came in all flavors — “the good, the bad, the ugly.”

First, ‘the good’ — Last Wednesday the Obama administration announced that for at least the next seven years it will not allow any offshore drilling off the East Coast of the Atlantic or in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida. This is ‘good’ news.

Next, ‘the ugly’ — Last Friday ABC News presented a story ‘Scanning The Gulf Floor: Sub Trip to Capped Well.’ We got a chance to see the Gulf of Mexico seafloor nearly eight months after BP’s spill in April. In the video we see marine scientist Samantha Joye, who has been studying the Gulf seafloor since May. She is inside a tiny submarine, a mile below the water surface. We see the seafloor and hear her voice, “yeah, it looks like everything is dead.” This is very ‘ugly’ news.

And last, ‘the bad’ — Also last Wednesday the Obama administration shared some news about Shell’s drilling plan in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of Arctic Alaska. Here are some headlines: from Democracy Now, ‘Admin Cancels Atlantic Gulf Drilling, But OKs it in Alaska,’ and from The Lipman Capital Times, ‘Salazar says No Drilling Off Alaskan Coast, Until 2013.’ You see its very confusing — did the administration approve Shell to go drill in the Arctic or not and if yes, then when? The truth it seems is somewhere in between and that is why this news is in between good and ugly and falls in the bad category.

Here is what’s happening. Shell has been pressuring the Obama administration to give them the permit ‘this month’ so that they can get their fleet prepared for drilling that could begin in the Beaufort Sea during summer 2011. Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) said, “We’re not going to be constrained by any deadlines, we understand that Shell needs a decision, and when we’ve completed the review and analysis, we’ll make a decision.” That is tough talk and a necessary one to bring some credibility to that agency.

It’s worth noting the birth of BOEMRE. Once upon a time there used to be an agency called the Mineral Management Service (MMS), which was part of the Department of Interior (DOI). But it seems that some of the MMS employees were not only having ‘discourse’ but also ‘intercourse‘ with oil company folks while handing out permits and regulating their operations. It was BP’s Gulf spill — not WikiLeaks Cables — that smoked out the fun-loving MMS regulators. President Obama was outraged and gave birth to BOEMRE.

Back to the Shell news — the DOI is willing to evaluate Shell’s Beaufort and Chukchi Sea drilling proposal in the 2012-2017 five-year Outer Continental Shelf drilling plan. The DOI is also considering very soon granting Shell the permit for drilling an exploratory well in the Beaufort Sea during summer 2011. You might be curious about what is an exploratory drilling well? To give you an example, BP’s Deepwater Horizon was an exploratory well. The result turned out to be ugly, as we all know.

If you’re thinking it’s hypocritical that the administration would close off the Atlantic for offshore drilling but would entertain the idea to open up a much harsher place, the Arctic, where major spills would be inevitable — you’re right — it is indeed hypocritical. You can check out details about this in a press release circulated last week by numerous environmental organizations.

Anyway, so far Shell still does not have the permit to go drill in the Beaufort Sea during 2011 and the administration has imposed a December 22 deadline to accept public comments concerning Shell’s drilling proposal.

Polar Bear on Bernard Harbor, Beaufort Sea coast of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Photo by Subhankar Banerjee, 2001

Here is a fictional story titled, ‘After The Arctic Spill,’ that I’m offering as my public comment and am requesting that this story be entered as a public record in the federal register. Because it is fictional I’m not 100% certain what to do about the ‘under the penalty of perjury’ clause. But I have used real character names with the hope that they might perfectly fill these roles if it were a real story.

The Spill
March 2012: an oil spill has happened in the Beaufort Sea from Shell’s drilling operation. Its winter, the Arctic Sea is completely covered in ice and the oil is floating around in the water underneath the ice.

The News
No one knows that there has been a spill, except perhaps Shell. Days went by¹, perhaps weeks. Then an Inupiat hunter named Robert Thompson from Kaktovik was seal hunting on ice. He first smelled something and then looked at the water through a ‘breathing hole’ (seals break ice and keep several holes open for breathing) and saw oil-like substance floating in the water. He didn’t have good luck with seal hunting that day and he told his story to a few folks. Soon thereafter Shell released a press release that stated nearly 1000 gallons² of oil has been spilled due to some accident that they’re investigating.

The Media
The media got very curious and showed interest in covering ‘The Arctic Spill’ story. But it turned out that this was no Gulf of Mexico adventure. The trip would be very costly (NYC-FAI-NYC r/t: $900; FAI-Kaktovik-FAI r/t: $700). But worse was that the crew might have to wait many days after arriving in Fairbanks as there might be a blizzard blowing in Kaktovik and the planes don’t fly during Arctic blizzards. On the way back the same kind of wait could happen. But most importantly after all these wait and expenses there might not even be a dramatic story to tell–like Katrina, Tsunami, BP’s spill–this is just a 1,000 gallons of oil underneath the ice that the media crew might not even get to see.

Mainstream media dropped the idea. But one intrepid and adventurous Alaskan — Sarah Palin — decided to tell the true story. She thought correctly — who better to tell the story than a real Alaskan, it could be a news segment for FoxNews and great raw material for Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Palin finally arrived in Kaktovik. She and her crew stayed at Waldo Arms, a trailer-turned-motel owned by legendary former bush pilot Walt Audi. After Palin ate the famous-and-tasty burger-and-fries at Waldo Arms, she was satisfied and decided to take a long nap. When she woke up, a blizzard was blowing.³

She waited for a few days but the blizzard kept blowing. She got bored — burger and fries and playing pool at Waldo Arms started to annoy her, her time was also very valuable, and the cost was climbing rapidly with all the crew she had with her. She finally reported for the FoxNews segment “it’s a hostile wasteland⁴, I don’t see any oil spill here.” She was also quite upset that she got no good material for Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Finally the blizzard lifted and she went home.

The Scientist
Even though mainstream media didn’t do any coverage of the spill (except Palin’s FoxNews segment), some progressive outlets did some interview with Robert Thompson and published something about the spill that caught the attention of a marine scientist, named Samantha Joye. She became determined to know what’s going on in the Beaufort Sea floor. The scientist waited a few months, both for the sea ice to melt and to raise necessary funds from the National Science Foundation to conduct her study. She finally arrived in Kaktovik on a beautiful July day and made many dives. She announced, “Beaufort Sea is dead — everything is dead here.” She even showed videos and speculated that it wasn’t a 1000 gallons spill but perhaps tens of millions of gallons.

The Investigation
Her story made front-page news and also made into TV channels in the U.S. and around the world. Finally America came to know that there was a major oil spill during March 2012 from Shell’s drilling operation in the Beaufort Sea.

This was a real bad news for President Obama. First, because in 2010 he had designated the area as a ‘critical habitat’ for polar bears, but now everything is dead–the plankton, the fish, the seals, and of course the polar bears. But most importantly it was a bad news because the presidential election was just a few months away. Obama was outraged and appointed a committee to investigate the matter pronto. The investigation proceeded rapidly and it seemed what happened was rather simple: a large iceberg had collided with Shell’s rig and caused the whole accident. Obama slapped a big fine on Shell but Shell decided to fight it out in court.

The Ruling
The court finally ruled in favor of Shell and determined that the real culprit was not Shell but ‘climate change’ that melted the Greenland ice-sheet resulting in these large ‘rogue icebergs’ that drifted from a ‘foreign country’ and arrived in America’s Arctic water and destroyed a foreign company’s (Shell) rig. There was nothing Shell could do to fight nature and save the rig, the court determined. It was a double-victory for Shell — they didn’t have to pay any fine and they could now keep drilling many more wells because you can’t kill a dead sea.

The Solution
After the court ruling the administration decided that since the Beaufort Sea is dead anyway as the scientist showed, our priority now should be to protect Shell’s many rigs there, and for that we must ‘arrest’ all rogue icebergs from foreign countries before they destroy valuable infrastructure-and-life in America. Obama decided to put the best science and engineering brains with Nobel Laureate Secretary Chu at the helm to solve the foreign-iceberg-invasion problem.

Obama hoped that his swift action would help his reelection campaign that was just around the corner. But Palin hoped that since she was the only person to brave the Arctic and tell something about it when it happened and from where it happened, that ought to help her presidential campaign. Both of them were right and we eagerly awaited the poll numbers.

End of story.

After laughs, come tears.

America — that’s You and I, because Ginsberg is dead — we must howl and demand that President Obama denies Shell the permit to ‘BP the Arctic.’

[Notes for Chief of U.S. Federal Register: While the truth-value of my fictional story is questionable, here are a few Arctic facts from past events that I'd like to include as supplemental material accompanying my fictional story for the federal register.

1: The worst oil spill in Arctic Alaska happened in March 2006 from a severely corroded transit pipeline. It spilled 260,000 gallons of crude oil in an oil field that was jointly operated by BP, ExxonMobil and Conoco Phillips. The spill went 'undetected for five days' until an oil field worked smelled hydrocarbon while driving around and suspected there was a spill. We came to know that this was not a freak accident but due to BP's years of neglect, poor maintenance and cover-ups that activist Chuck Hamel brought to our attention.

2: The news about how much oil was actually spilling from BP's Gulf of Mexico spill was a constantly moving target and it went like this: 1,000 gallons a day, then 5,000 gallons a day, then 25,000 gallons a day, then 70,000 gallons a day, and finally a total tally of about 180 millions gallons of crude oil and extremely large amount of methane that no one has actually estimated, but something that Samantha Joye and other scientists brought to our attention.

3: Leslie Stahl of CBS 60 Minutes went to Kaktovik in 2001 to tell a story about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She experienced a blizzard that prevented her from seeing much and I vaguely remember she reported something like it's all white and there is no wildlife here in winter. At the same time Robert Thompson and I were camping in the nearby tundra observing winter wildlife activities.

4: In 2007, CBS 60 Minutes did an episode on seed banks in the Norwegian Arctic. The program opened with an introductory statement--'Arctic is a hostile wasteland.']

[Notes for readers: I want to thank veteran journalist and host of Report from Santa Fe Lorene Mills for bringing the ABC story to my attention.]

Subhankar Banerjee is currently editing an anthology titled “Arctic Voices” that will include nearly thirty essays, testimonies and stories by indigenous activists, scientists, writers and artists (Seven Stories Press, forthcoming). Most recently Subhankar has been appointed ‘Director’s Visitor’ at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for fall term 2011.

Copyright 2010 Subhankar Banerjee

December 5, 2010

SOURCE ARTICLE

The Independent on Sunday

Sunday, 5 December 2010: By Andy Rowell and Eveline Lubbers

Ken Saro-Wiwa was framed, secret evidence shows

Compelling new evidence suggests the Nigerian military killed four Ogoni elders whose murders led to the execution of the playwright and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995.

The evidence also reveals that the notorious military commander Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Okuntimo, whose troops were implicated in murder and rape, was in the pay of Shell at the time of the killings and was driven around in a Shell vehicle.

Since the time of Saro-Wiwa’s death, Shell has insisted that it had no financial relationship with the Nigerian military, although it has admitted paying it “field allowances” on two occasions. It has consistently denied any widespread collusion and payments. However, The Independent on Sunday has gained exclusive access to witness accounts that were to be used in evidence in the case of Wiwa vs Shell, brought by Ken Saro-Wiwa’s family. The case was settled last May for $15.5m, just days before it was due to start in New York. The settlement meant the testimonies were never made public.

They provide fresh insight into Shell’s financial and logistical involvement with the Nigerian military and with Lt-Col Okuntimo.

One of the key witnesses due to testify was Boniface Ejiogu, Lt-Col Okuntimo’s orderly in the Internal Security Task Force, a coalition of army, navy and police. Mr Ejiogu testified to standing guard as victims were raped and tortured while Lt-Col Okuntimo was in command. Asked if he ever saw his commander receive money from Shell, he said he witnessed it on two occasions.

Mr Ejiogu described in detail how, just days before the Ogoni elders were murdered, he drove with Lt-Col Okuntimo to Shell’s base in Port Harcourt, where the officer received seven large bags of money. “I was there when other soldiers were carrying the Ghana Must Go bags,” he testified. The bags were so heavy the soldiers had difficulty carrying them, and one fell open. “The thing opened,” Mr Ejiogu said. “I saw it was money in bundles. He said, wow, this is money. I say, yes man, it is money.”

On another occasion, Mr Ejiogu witnessed four bags being given by a Shell security official to Lt-Col Okuntimo at the official’s house late at night.

Another witness, Raphael Kponee, also due to testify, was a policeman working for Shell. On a different occasion, he saw three bags being loaded into Lt-Col Okuntimo’s pick-up truck by his driver and another driver in front of the security building at the Shell base. Shell officials have admitted that money was paid to the officer, but purely as field allowances for his men, who were protecting Shell property in Ogoniland.

MrEjiogu also offers compelling evidence as to who may have murdered the four Ogoni elders at a meeting on 21 May 1994. Saro-Wiwa was due to speak but was turned away by the military. Mr Ejiogu said he heard Lt-Col Okuntimo tell his task force commander to “waste them… in the army you waste them is when you are shooting rapidly”.

Within 24 hours Saro-Wiwa was arrested and charged with the murders. It was implied that he had had the elders killed because of their moderate stance on Ogoni issues. Despite an international outcry, he was hanged in November 1995, following a sham trial described by the then British prime minister, John Major, as “judicial murder”.

A Shell spokesman said yesterday: “Allegations concerning Okuntimo and Shell are not new. There is a lack of any credible evidence in support of these allegations. Shell Petroleum Development Corporation and Shell at the time spoke out frequently against violence and publicly condemned its use.”

Selection of comments published with article:

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