by Tom Baxter: 21 Oct 2019

As someone with a keen interest in decommissioning decision making, I have followed the Brent decommissioning saga with that same keen interest.

A question that keeps coming up for me is why did Shell present such an open goal to Greenpeace, the press and others?

Bearing in mind Shell’s previous experience and reputation hit with Brent Spar, the decision to recommend leaving the concrete cells and their contents is, on the face of it, very perplexing.

Greenpeace’s actions and ensuing headlines were completely predictable.

Shell leave ticking time bomb

Shell ignore international regulations

Shell should clean up its mess

Come on Shell what were you thinking about, why did you make that decision? read more

THEY are the giants of the deep which spent more than four decades pumping billions of pounds worth of oil from the seabed.

But now decommissioned rigs in the North Sea are at the centre of an environmental storm with an oil giant under intense pressure to rethink plans to leave some of the platforms in the sea.

Several hundred oil drilling platforms in the waters o

ff Scotland are due to be decommissioned over the next three decades as they approach the end of their operational lifetime. read more

Germany said Wednesday it had called a special meeting of international partners this week to pressure Royal Dutch Shell to remove old rigs containing crude oil in the North Sea.

An environment ministry spokesman said Berlin had convened signatory countries of the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) on Friday in London.

“Germany finds it absolutely unacceptable that these crude oil quantities remain in these structures,” said the spokesman, Stephan Gabriel Haufe, citing a “danger for the environment”. read more

Greenpeace activists took to the stage at the Oil and Money conference last night

by Allister Thomas:09/10/2019, 7:48 am Updated: 09/10/2019, 9:55 am

Climate activists halted an awards ceremony involving the chief executives of oil majors BP and Shell at a major industry conference last night.

Greenpeace protestors entered the annual Oil and Money conference dinner brandishing a banner describing the two firms as “climate criminals”.

They took to the stage as the Executive of the Year award was due to pass from BP CEO Bob Dudley to Shell’s Ben van Beurden.

In the lead up to the conference, protests were also staged outside the Intercontinental London Park Lane where it was held, describing the event as a “climate crime scene”.

It comes after the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre ended their partnerships with BP and Shell respectively last week. read more

Nigeria’s Rivers state buys Shell’s stake in Ogoniland oilfield

LAGOS, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s Rivers state has purchased Royal Dutch Shell’s stake in an oil mining licence in the restive Ogoniland region, the state’s governor said on Monday.

The license, OML 11, has been undeveloped for nearly 25 years, since the execution of regional activist Ken Saro-Wiwa under the military government of Sani Abacha.

(Reporting By Tife Owolabi; Writing by Libby George; Editing by Jan Harvey)

SOURCE

UPDATE 1-Nigeria’s Rivers state buys Shell’s stake in Ogoniland oilfield

PORT HARCOURT, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s Rivers state has purchased Royal Dutch Shell’s stake in an oil mining licence in the restive Ogoniland region, the state’s governor said on Monday. read more

MANILA, Philippines — Environmental activists formed Friday a blockade at an oil refinery in Batangas, pressing the company to show accountability for their role in the climate crisis.

Representatives from climate-impacted communities and activists from the environmental organization Greenpeace blockaded the entrance to Shell’s refinery in Batangas.

On top of one of the facilities’s silos, the activists unfurled a banner that read: “Shell, stop burning our future.”

“This peaceful protest is a bold challenge to fossil fuel companies to show accountability for their role in the climate crisis heed the call of climate-impacted communities for justice,” Greenpeace said in a statement. read more

CENTER FOR ACCOUNTABILITY, TRANSPARENCY, AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT (CATHUD)
4711 W. Midlothian Turnpike, Unit 20, Crestwood, IL. 60418
~ Ph.: 708.761.0029 ~ Fax: 708.628.7015 ~

Email: [email protected]

August 25, 2019

OGONIS REJECT OIL RESUMPTION BEFORE CLEANUP

Preamble

Oil is the mainstay of the Nigeria economy, hence, the world should be appalled that a nation whose economy is dependent on the oil industry has no clear cut industrial laws, and laws that protect the oil-bearing communities from the enormous hazardous environmental side effects of gas flaring and oil spillages on peoples’, farmlands, swamps, streams, rivers, and the atmosphere. It is grossly unacceptable that some privileged Nigerians who sleep quietly thousands of miles away from the hazardous harms of oil production are the owners of oil wells and oil blocks in Nigeria. It is bemoaning and we find it unacceptable that President Mohammadu Buhari and his administration that claim to play by democratic rules have turned blind eyes to the death toll in Ogoni and the rest of the Niger Delta in preference to oil extraction by treating the environmental cleanup of Ogoni with levity. read more

Shell requires UK government permission to leave sub-aquatic structures in place

Shell’s Brent Delta Topside offshore oil drilling rig platform is towed by tug boats up the River Tees to Able Seaton Port for decommissioning in England ( Getty )

Thousands of tonnes of hazardous waste including crude oil could be abandoned in decaying North Sea rigs by Shell with the permission of the UK government, prompting growing concerns among other European countries.

Due to the cost and difficulty of dismantling the structures, the oil giant has proposed leaving the vast concrete legs from three oil rigs standing in the waters. read more

Shell boss welcomes ‘mobilisation of society’ as oil protests intensify

by Mark Lammey 01/08/2019, 10:32 am

Shell’s chief executive said today that he welcomed the “mobilisation” of society in the crusade to meet global climate change targets.

But Ben van Beurden said he could not agree with some of the more extreme methods used by militant activists in their protests against energy companies’ activities.

Mr van Beurden said demonstrations must not damage property or jeopardise the people’s safety.

Fellow energy giant BP suffered disruption to its plans for a well in June when Greenpeace activists clambered onto a Transocean rig in Cromarty Firth, then pursued it across the North Sea for several days in their Arctic Sunrise ship. read more

The MOSOP president said the Ogoni struggle for justice in Nigeria has consumed over 4,000 lives and currently endangers the lives of over 1,000,000 people owing to Shell and Nigeria’s unjust practices and unfair laws that oppress indigenous communities like the Ogoni people. read more

“Today’s ruling will have great significance for people everywhere who have been harmed by the greed and recklessness of global corporations.”

1 May 2019, 10:08 UTC

The District Court of The Hague today issued an interim ruling in the case brought by Esther Kiobel and three other women with regard to Shell’s involvement in the unlawful arrest, detention and execution of their husbands by the Nigerian military. It ruled in favour of the plaintiffs, that the court does have jurisdiction of the case and that this should not be time barred.

The court also ruled that Shell should hand over some confidential internal documents to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, and that they would have the opportunity to examine witnesses. read more

By MOSOP Ogoniland

President of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Fegalo Nsuke, has described the conduct of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, in Ogoniland as a national shame and crime against humanity.

The MOSOP president Fegalo Nsuke made the assertion in K-Dere in Gokana local government area on Wednesday while conducting journalists around oil spill sites in the Ogoni.

Nsuke said in a country where citizens health and welfare were taken seriously, the oil mining license of Shell should have been withdrawn. read more

The UK government has endorsed plans by oil giant Shell to leave some decommissioned North Sea oil infrastructure in place.

Catherine Early:22nd February 2019

The government is supporting plans by Shell to leave leftover oil and chemicals in some of its installations in the North Sea, according to an investigation by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism team.

Oil and gas operators in the UK are decommissioning their infrastructure as it reaches the end of its life. This has cost companies in the sector more than £1 billion each year since 2014, according to a report by government spending watchdog the National Audit Office. read more

That letter followed the public release of a trove of documents by the Dutch news organization De Correspondent showing that for decades, Shell has been aware of the impact of burning fossil fuels on the climate. Like ExxonMobil, Shell had studied the problem and acknowledged the danger in internal documents, yet publicly downplayed the risk while funding climate denial groups.

By Dana Drugmand

Seven environmental and human rights organizations in the Netherlands announced on Tuesday they are prepared to sue Royal Dutch Shell if the oil giant refuses to align its business model with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The groups, led by Friends of the Earth Netherlands/Milieudefensie, Greenpeace Netherlands and ActionAid Netherlands have gathered more than 13,000 signatures from Dutch citizens backing the forthcoming lawsuit. If Shell fails to meet their demands, they plan to deliver a court summons to the company at its headquarters in The Hague on April 5. This would be a new legal approach in battling climate change, the first lawsuit to directly challenge the business model and growth strategy of an oil company. read more

Their hope and expectations were that Saro-Wiwa’s hanging would silence the Ogoni people and send signals to the rest of Nigeria’s Niger Delta about what awaits anyone who raises questions about the unfair and inhuman distribution of the wealth of the people of the Niger Delta.

By Fegalo Nsuke

Ogoni, the people and the land represent an oppressed nationality, a people persecuted by their own government for seeking respect for their human and environmental rights especially over their natural endowments, a people whose government have authorized its armed forces to unleash on them, unimaginable brutality with assurances that military crimes against the Ogoni people will never be questioned nor punished.

Over 4,000 Ogonis have been killed since 1993 in state-sponsored terrorism and quite regrettably, no one has been prosecuted, punished or indicted in the Ogoni saga. read more

IMAGE INSERTED BY JOHN DONOVAN

Even after his arrest, Kiobel bravely campaigned to improve conditions in his home area, writing to Komo to appeal for a military withdrawal from Gokana (in Ogoniland) because of “indiscriminate shootings, killing of innocent persons.” 

Extracts from pages 35 & 36 of an Amnesty International document entitled: “A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE? SHELL’S INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN NIGERIA IN THE 1990s”

Ken Saro-Wiwa: Before launching MOSOP, Ken Saro-Wiwa, from Bane in Ogoniland, was a successful writer. From 1985-90, some 30 million Nigerians tuned in every week to Basi and Company, a comedy-drama he wrote for Nigerian TV.152 Several of his books won international acclaim, including Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English, and On a Darkling Plain.153 The prosecution accused Ken Saro-Wiwa of inciting his supporters to kill the four chiefs meeting at Giokoo. It claimed that shortly before the attacks, he told a group of supporters “to deal with the “vultures.”154 The only witnesses to allege this, Charles Danwi and Nayone Akpa, subsequently signed alleging that the government and Shell had bribed them to make false statements (see above.)155 Ken Saro-Wiwa denied the accusation.156 read more