Posts from ‘November, 2011’

Diigbo, who was speaking today at the Ken Saro-Wiwa Peace and Freedom Center, to mark 16th Remembrance of the hanging of the Ogoni leader, late Ken Saro-Wiwa said the setting up of the Ogoni Central Indigenous Authority is a significant step towards actualizing the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Ogoni Bill of Rights, and all the dreams for which late Saro-Wiwa and other Ogonis gave their lives.

SHELL TO SEA SUPPORTER MICHAEL D. HIGGINS (RIGHT) BECOMES PRESIDENT AS  CAMPAIGN MARKS ANNIVERSARY OF GARDA BATON CHARGE AT SHELL’S REFINERY SITE

10 November 2011

– Michael D. Higgins: ‘The people of Erris deserve protection from any company that seeks to trample over their rights. No company should be outside the law’ –

As Shell to Sea supporter Michael D. Higgins prepares to be sworn in as President of Ireland tomorrow (Friday Nov 11th), hundreds of campaigners will gather in north Mayo to mark the fifth anniversary of the infamous Garda baton charge at Shell’s refinery site.

In February 2010, Michael D Higgins said of the Corrib project: “Agencies of the State got involved on the side of the developer, rather than on the side of the community. Given that alternative models were available in other countries, it was scandalous that we proceeded as we did.” [1]

Speaking at a protest at the gates of Shell’s refinery site on November 6th, 2006, Mr Higgins said: “The issue is the right of the people of Erris to have security and safety. They want to be able to live their lives in peace. They deserve protection from any company that seeks to trample over their rights. What is important are issues of justice and no company should be outside the law.”

He continued: “The resources of this planet need to be used responsibly for the people of the planet. The resources of Ireland belong to the people of Ireland.”

On the morning of Higgins’ inauguration as President, local residents and their supporters will gather at 10am at the gates of Shell’s inland refinery. From there they will walk to Bellanaboy Bridge to commemorate a baton charge by Gardaí on November 10th, 2006. The baton charge resulted in numerous injuries to campaigners and is one of the low points of the 11-year struggle against the inland refinery and high pressure pipeline.

They will also be marking the 16th anniversary of the execution of nine activists in Ogoniland, Nigeria. Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others were hanged by the Nigerian government on November 10th, 2005 for their opposition to Shell’s environmental destruction in the Niger delta.

From 7am, campaigners will carry out mass actions at Shell facilities.

Shell to Sea spokesperson Terence Conway said: “For 11 years this community has been resisting the combined force of a corrupt State and arrogant multinationals. Shell’s experimental inland refinery in this bog is a monument to corruption and we will continue to resist it. ”

ENDS

NOTES:

1. Mr Higgins was speaking in the Dáil on Wednesday, 3rd February 2010, during a debate on the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2009 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed)

*This figure is based on the estimate, issued by the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources (DCENR) in 2006, that the amount of recoverable oil and gas in the Rockall and Porcupine basins, off Ireland’s west coast, is 10 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent). Based on the average price of a barrel of oil for 2010 of $79, this works out at $790 billion, or €580 billion. This does not take account of further oil and gas reserves off Ireland’s south & east coasts or inland. The total volume of oil and gas which rightfully belongs to Ireland could be significantly higher. Also, as the global price of oil rises in the coming years, the value of these Irish natural resources will rise further.

Purported leaked email with video link received from an anonymous source with the covering message:

“Potential for another Shell director playing *General Patton…listen to the video…”

THE INTERNAL EMAIL

On behalf of Bob Turner,

All,
We have just posted the latest video clip on the IPO website. In this clip I talk about Gas to Offshore and our preparations and some issues around our culture which I call “NO” will no longer be the low risk option”.

Please have a look. I hope you find it informative and topical. My previous clips will be archived in the Library folder.

As always I welcome your feedback.

Have a safe day

Bob.

Bob Turner Video

ENDS

*From Wikipedia article “List of plagiarism controversies“

On 6 June 2007, the Financial Times published a front page article under the headline: “‘Pipeliners All!’ Shell’s memo to Sakhalin”^[24]

The article was about a leaked motivational memo in the form of an email from David Greer, the deputy chief executive of Sakhalin Energy circulated to Sakhalin-2 staff. Some keen eyed readers noticed that inspirational passages were appropriated from a famous speech given by the legendary U.S. General George S. Patton, on 5 June 1944 on the eve of D-Day the Sixth of June. On 7 June 2007, a quarter page follow-up article was published in the Financial Times newspaper and on the FT.com website, under the headline: “Sakhalin motivational memo borrows heavily from Patton”^{[25][citation needed]}

On Monday 11 June 2007, the Financial Times published another article at^[26] on the subject, this time headlined: “Motivational memos must make their message clear”. One of the opening paragraphs stated: “The memo (www.ft.com/shell) is crass, poorly punctuated and most of it wasn’t even written by its author, David Greer, deputy chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell‘s Sakhalin Energy Investment Company. He had lifted the words of General George S. Patton with no attribution, and clumsily adapted them to spur on his team of recalcitrant pipeline engineers”.^{[citation needed]}

On 9 June 2007, The Moscow Times published a front page article on the controversy headlined: Sakhalin Pep Talk From ‘Old Blood and Guts’.

On Friday 22 June 2007, The Moscow Times published a front page story with the headline: “Sakhalin Energy’s Greer Steps Down”. The newspaper reported that “David Greer, the Sakhalin Energy deputy CEO running the giant Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project, has left the company unexpectedly just weeks after a leaked e-mail he wrote revealed the pressure that managers working there were facing”. The article said that Greer had been a 27-year Shell veteran, and was leaving to pursue other business interests.

Firms announce CCS plans for Peterhead power station following collapse of £1bn proposals for Longannet

John Moylan goes behind the scenes at Perdido to see how Shell’s operation works

9 November 2011

It’s a one-and-a-half-hour flight by helicopter to the loneliest platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

Perdido lies 200 miles (322km) south of the coast of Texas. It’s just nine miles from the edge of US territorial waters.

The huge structure floats in more than 8,000ft (2,438m) of water, making it the deepest deep water drilling and production platform anywhere in the world.

It collects oil from wells at depths of more than 9,000ft.

When it started to pump oil to shore, back in March 2010, it had cost in excess of £2bn.

But within weeks, drilling on the brand new state-of-the-art platform had ground to a halt.

Deepwater Horizon

The reason was the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It left 11 people dead and resulted in the largest accidental offshore oil spill in US history. The Obama administration responded by imposing a deep water drilling moratorium. Across the Gulf, equipment worth billions stood idle.

“It’s had a big impact on our business,” says Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Company, the US division of oil major Royal Dutch Shell.

“We’ve lost hundreds of millions of dollars associated with not having that production.”

Shell had five other platforms drilling in the Gulf at the time. All were shut down.

The Gulf of Mexico has been a source of energy for the United States since the 1920s. Today it accounts for 30% of all the oil consumed there.

And according to Daniel Yergin, the bestselling author and authority on the industry, it supports about 400,000 jobs alone in the four Gulf states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

“It wasn’t really recognised before how much of US oil production comes from the Gulf,” he says. “The employment impacts are much larger than people realised, it’s also quite an important source of government revenues.”

So in the months that followed the accident, as millions of barrels of oil polluted the Gulf’s clear blue waters and public opinion hardened, the Obama administration faced a dilemma – how and when to allow deep water drilling to resume.

Aftermath

The drilling moratorium was lifted in October 2010. But many complain that a “de facto” moratorium has existed ever since.

“It takes about 200 days now to get a drilling permit,” says Mr Odum. “That used to take about 50 days.”

A year on, drilling activity still hasn’t recovered. According to the oil services firm Baker Hughes, the number of drilling rigs in US waters fell from 46 in the first quarter of 2010 to just 12 rigs four months later in July. The numbers have since increased but averaged 34 in the most recent quarter.

By contrast, the number of oil rigs drilling across the United States recently hit a record high, a reflection of the soaring interest in unconventional so called “tight oil”.

There’s also a new offshore regulator and new rules covering deep water activity.

Back on Perdido that includes independent checks of the on-board Blow Out Preventer, the last line of defence against an uncontrollable well. It’s the vital piece of equipment which failed in the BP accident.

Mr Odum also points to the new Marine Well Containment System developed by the industry.

“One thing that was perfectly clear to us and to everyone else that was watching that incident unfold is that the ability to respond to oil in the water was not adequate. So we’ve built new systems now to do that.”

Uncertain future

Those systems would be stretched to the limit in the event of an accident at Perdido. It’s 60 miles from the nearest platform. Any rescue boats would be hours away.

It’s also drawing oil and gas from the deepest sub-sea well in the world. Capping a blow out could mean operating in 9,000ft of water, almost twice the depth of the Deepwater Horizon’s Macondo well.

But the rewards of operating in deep water are great.

Perdido is expected to keep oil and gas flowing for the next 20 years. At its peak it will produce 100,000 barrels of oil a day, which Shell says is enough to meet the energy needs of more than two million households.

But Bob Tippee, editor of the Houston-based Oil & Gas Journal, warns that a major deepwater incident can happen again. He’s been covering the industry for 34 years.

“We’re going to be drilling more wells. We’re going to have more industrial activity in deep water environments,” he says. “And where you have industrial activity anywhere, you are going to have accidents.

“The only way to have zero risk is to have zero activity, but then you have zero energy.”

SOURCE ARTICLE (WITH VIDEO CLIPS)

Marvin Odum, President of Shell Oil Company, on new safety measures brought in since the Deepwater Horizon accident

* Shell gives no figures on fire’s impact on production

* Damaging spills common in the oil-rich Niger Delta

* Local community leader blames pipeline sabotage

LAGOS, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Fire broke out on Wednesday on the Okordia/Rumuekpe oil pipeline in Nigeria and some production has been shut down, but the blaze has since been put out, a spokesman for operator Royal Dutch Shell said.

The fire on the pipeline in Ikarama, Bayelsa State, started a day after the company received reports of an oil spill there and was still burning at 1.45 (1245 GMT), spokesman Precious Okolobo said by telephone.

“SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development Corporate) confirmed reports of a fire incident this morning on the Okordia/Rumuekpe line … and mobilised a fire-fighting team to the site.”

“Some production has been shut down … We can’t give detailed figures on that,” he said. “A joint investigation … planned for tomorrow will determine the cause and impact.”

He later added that “the fire has reportedly burned out … but production will stay shut off until and investigation and repairs are carried out.”

Environmentally devastating oil spills are common in the vast network of creeks and rivers that make up Nigeria’s Niger Delta region.

In many cases oil output is disrupted by sabotage attacks on facilities and by bunkering — the tapping of pipelines to steal oil.

Local community leader Washington Odoyibo told Reuters he had contacted Shell about the Ikarama oil spill on Monday, and that the fire had actually broken out late on Tuesday night.

He said he had received reliable reports that local youths sabotaged the pipeline.

“I can say this is sabotage … And as member of this community, I don’t like it,” he said.

“The boys who did it are protesting that a surveillance security contact was given to a company owned by ex-militant leaders,” he added, referring to the Niger Delta militants who made peace with the government under amnesty in 2009.

He said local youths were also upset at what they saw was too low a fee for some surveillance work they had done for Shell.

The company blamed pipeline sabotage for a force majeure it placed on exports of Forcados oil in October, the same month it lifted a force majeure on exports of Bonny Light after a spate of hacksaw attacks on pipelines.

Nigeria’s high-quality oil is widely exported to the United States, Asia and Europe, and disruptions to supplies can affect world prices because it is priced against the Brent oil benchmark.

© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved

SOURCE ARTICLE

10 Nov, 2011, 02.35AM IST, AFP

LONDON: Oil giant Shell should commit $1 billion (700,000 euros) as a first step to clean up the Niger Delta following two devastating oil spills in 2008, rights groups said Thursday.

Shell has accepted responsibility for the spills in the southern Nigerian state of Ogoniland that affected the Bodo fishing community and has agreed to pay compensation, which is currently being decided in the British courts.

But Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) accused Shell in a report of failing to act quickly enough to fix the damage and demanded the Anglo-Dutch group make the billion-dollar contribution.

“It is time this multi-billion-dollar company owns up, cleans up and pays up,” said Aster van Kregten, Nigeria researcher for London-based Amnesty International.

“Shell’s failure to promptly stop and clean up oil spills in Bodo has devastated the lives of tens of thousands of people.”

A spokesman for Shell’s Nigerian operations insisted discussions were underway with the government to establish a clean-up fund for the Niger Delta and said efforts had been made to clean up after the Bodo spills.

Ogoniland has been blighted by oil pollution for decades and a landmark UN environment agency report released in August said the region might require the world’s biggest ever clean-up.

The United Nations Environment Programme report called for the oil industry and the Nigerian government to contribute $1 billion for a clean-up fund.

Thursday’s report however focused solely on the Bodo spills of 2008.

The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), the Shell subsidiary which operates a joint venture in Nigeria in which the state oil company has a major stake, insisted its bid to clean up after the spills had been hampered.

“The reality is that our efforts to undertake (a) clean-up in Bodo have been hampered by the repeated impact of saboutage and bunkering spills,” the tapping of pipelines to steal oil, said an SPDC spokesman.

But van Kregten said: “This claim has been strongly disputed by the communities and NGOs who point out that the process of collecting data on oil spills is flawed.”

The SPDC spokesman said the subsidiary was already implementing many of the recommendations in the report.

“SPDC is committed to working with the Nigerian government and other stakeholders to improve the environment in the Niger Delta,” he said.

SOURCE ARTICLE

By Jerome Mwanda
IDN-InDepth NewsReport

NAIROBI (IDN) – “We help to meet the world’s growing energy needs in economically, environmentally and socially responsible ways,” claims the oil giant Shell on its website. But a new report avers that it has been doing just the opposite: triggering devastating oil spills, indulging in the illegal practice of gas flaring, and crassly violating human rights in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria by paying money and awarding contracts to armed militants.

A new report titled ‘Counting the Cost,’ implicates Shell in cases of serious violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region from 2000 to 2010, detailing how Shell’s routine payments to armed militants exacerbated conflicts and led to the destruction of Rumuekpe town.

The report published in London by a coalition of local and international non-governmental (NGO) organisations, led by the London based NGO, the Platform, comes within a few weeks of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) publicising its findings that looked into the ecological impact of oil spills in Ogoni.

UNEP found that Shell has fallen below its operating standards and covered up the full extent of its pollution. It recommended an initial fund of $1 billion to start the clean-up process in Ogoni. The full cost of cleaning oil spills in the Niger Delta is, however, estimated to be up to 500 times higher.

The report by the NGO Platform accuses Shell – with headquarters in the Dutch capital, The Hague – of collaborating with the state in the execution in 1995 of writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa and other leaders of the Ogoni tribe.

The coalition backing the report includes Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), Friends of the Earth Netherlands/Milieudefensie, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Social Action, Spinwatch and Stakeholder Democracy Network.

According to the Nigerian Tribune, Shell was said to have paid $15.5 million to the eight families in settlement, and key documents implicating it never saw the light of day during the trial.

Shell has, however, disputed the report, defending its human rights record and questioning the accuracy of the evidence, while pledging to study the recommendations, according to its London office, the Nigerian Tribune reported.

Key findings of the report include testimonies of contracts that implicated Shell in regularly assisting armed militants with lucrative payments, such as an alleged transfer of over $159,000 to a group credibly linked to militia violence in late 2010.

Shell was also alleged to have, from 2006 onwards, paid thousands of dollars every month to armed militants in the town of Rumuekpe, in the full knowledge that the money was used to sustain three years of conflict.

One gang member, Chukwu Azikwe, told the NGO Platform, the newspaper adds, that “we were given money and that is the money we were using to buy ammunition, to buy this bullet, and every other thing to eat and to sustain the war,” adding that his gang and its leader, S. K. Agala, had vandalised Shell pipelines.

Ransom

“They will pay ransom. Some of them in the management will bring out money, dole out money into this place, in cash,” he said.

Platform alleged that in Rumuekpe, “the main artery of Shell’s eastern operations in Rivers State,” Shell distributed “community development” funds and contracts via Friday Edu, a youth leader and Shell community liaison officer.

By 2005, Edu’s monopoly over the resources of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) was reported to have sparked a leadership tussle with Agala’s group, with the latter reportedly forced out of the community and a number of people killed.

The allegations, according to Platform, were largely substantiated by a Shell official, adding that a manager with Shell confirmed that in 2006, one of the most violent years, Shell awarded six types of contract in Rumuekpe, says the newspaper.

Rumuekpe is just one of several case studies examined by the report, which alleged that in 2009 and 2010, security personnel guarding Shell facilities were responsible for extra-judicial killings and torture in Ogoniland.

In the meantime, a Nigerian environmental activist, Sunny Ofehe, standing trial in The Netherlands for alleged plot to bomb pipelines in the Niger Delta, has cried out, saying “I am not a terrorist or suicide bomber.”

In an e-mail made available to the Nigerian Tribune, Ofehe, who is also the founder of Hope for Niger Delta Campaign, said his travail was traceable to the parliamentary testimonies he gave at the Dutch parliament about degradation of Niger Delta environment by Shell Oil and other oil majors.

“I have been campaigning against environmental devastation of our people’s environment for many years and testified at the Dutch Parliament against Shell in a parliamentary hearing, where Shell was summoned to defend its practice in the region,” he said.

Less than a month after the hearing, he added, “a team of about 30 policemen came to my house and arrested me on trumped-up charges and I was detained for 14 days before being released, but remained a suspect; when they could not establish a case against me, they came up with a new charge of conspiracy to commit terror act by blowing oil pipelines” belonging to Shell in the Niger Delta.

“I became the first person to be charged under this law since it came into effect in 2004. I appeared in court for the first time on September 5 and we now have a new hearing date of December 5, 2011,” the Nigerian Tribune quoted Ofehe saying.

Global Implications

The report finds that:

- Shell’s close relationship with the Nigerian military exposes the company to charges of complicity in the systematic killing and torture of local residents.

- Testimony and contracts seen by Platform implicate Shell in regularly assisting armed militants with lucrative payments. In one case from 2010, Shell is alleged to have transferred over $159,000 to a group credibly linked to militia violence.

- Shell’s poor community engagement has provided the “catalyst” for major disruption, including one incident that shut down a third of Shell’s daily oil production in August 2011.

- In the absence of proper supervision and controls, Shell contractors, including multinationals like Halliburton, Daewoo and Saipem, have replicated many of Shell’s mistakes.

“Shell’s conduct in the Delta has local and global implications. Basic company errors have exacerbated violent conflicts in which entire communities have been destroyed. Billions have been lost in revenues to the government and oil companies, sending shockwaves through the global economy,” says the report.

These are not new phenomena, it adds. In 2003, a leaked internal report denounced Shell for its active involvement in the Delta conflict. Then, as now, Shell pledged to improve. But NGO Platform’s report finds that Shell has not taken the necessary steps to de-militarise its operations in the Delta, resolve long-standing grievances and respect the human rights of local communities.

The eight cases in this report are the thin end of the wedge. Many further cases of human rights abuse are associated with Shell’s operations in the western, central and outer Delta regions, as well as with Chevron, Eni and other oil companies and private military and security contractors (PMSCs), says the report.

Platform visited the Niger Delta in September to October 2010 and conducted over 50 interviews with women, ‘youth’, elders, community leaders, ex-militants and human rights defenders. Platform interviewed the families, victims, witnesses and perpetrators of human rights abuses, oil company employees, contractors and academic experts. Due to the risk of reprisals, Platform has changed or withheld the names of some informants.

Where available, hospital records, contracts, court documents, photographic evidence and other forms of documentation have been relied on. Media articles, academic publications, company records and NGO reports have also been used for reference.

The report points out that in a country where access to justice is denied to many, moments of accountability are rare. But on two recent occasions Shell’s operations in Nigeria have been the subject of international scrutiny, raising legal, financial and reputational risks for the company.

On June 8, 2009, Shell settled a landmark U.S. lawsuit brought by nine plaintiffs from the minority Ogoni region of the Niger Delta. The case accused Shell of colluding with government forces in crimes against humanity and gross human rights abuses, including the execution of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists on November 10, 1995. The Wiwa v Shell lawsuit cost the company more than the $15.5 million settlement it eventually paid out. Shell’s reputation and brand, valued at $3.3 billion in 2008, suffered substantially. [IDN-InDepthNews - November 8, 2011]

Picture: Shell Nigeria | Credit: priceofoil.org

2011 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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