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Greenpeace in ‘peaceful protest’ on Shell’s Brent platforms

Greenpeace has announced it is carrying out “peaceful protests” at Shell’s Brent field in the UK North Sea.

by Allister Thomas: 14/10/2019

Activists from the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark are protesting on two platforms in the field, around 115 miles north-east of Shetland – brandishing signs of “Shell, clean up your mess”.

It comes as a special meeting of Ospar, an agreement between 15 governments to protect Europe’s marine environment, takes place in London on Friday.

Some countries have lodged objections to Shell’s plans to leave the legs of three of the platforms – Bravo, Charlie and Delta – in the sea, with concerns around the contents of oil storage cells within them deteriorating. read more

Message sent to all members of the Guardian newspaper

This week we are running a powerful new series called The polluters, in which The Guardian’s team of environmental journalists around the world have investigated the impact of the fossil fuel industry — as well as the structures behind it — which are driving the climate emergency.

The reporting reveals the 20 fossil fuel companies whose relentless exploitation of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era. In a video explainer, the Guardian’s global environment editor, Jonathan Watts, details how these firms have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet since at least the 1950s, and this excellent timeline shows the shocking levels of denial. read more

PODCAST LINK

In 1995, the Nigerian government executed the Ogoni Nine – environmental activists who were trying to fight Shell’s exploitation of their homeland. Now, four widows are taking the oil company to court. And: Dan Sabbagh on the ramifications of Trump’s shock decision to withdraw from the Turkish-Syrian border

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

Presented by Rachel Humphreys with Kate Hodal, Esther Kiobel, Channa Samkalden and Dan Sabbagh, produced by Gary Marshall; executive producers Nicole Jackson and Phil Maynard read more

A witness hearing examining Shell’s role in the execution of nine men in Nigeria in the 1990s is a key opportunity to hold the oil giant to account over its alleged complicity in human rights abuses, Amnesty International said.

The Kiobel v Shell case resumes at The Hague on 8 October and will for the first time hear accounts from individuals who accuse Shell of offering them bribes to give fake testimonies that led to the ‘Ogoni Nine’ – who included Esther Kiobel’s husband – being sentenced to death and executed. read more

Nigeria/Netherlands: witnesses heard in landmark case scutinising Shell’s role in execution of Ogoni Nine

Shell accused of complicity in execution of nine men in Nigeria in the 1990s

Witness hearing a key chance to hold Shell to account

A witness hearing examining Shell’s role in the execution of nine men in Nigeria in the 1990s is a key opportunity to hold the oil giant to account over its alleged complicity in human rights abuses, Amnesty International said.

The Kiobel v Shell case resumes at The Hague today (8 October) and will for the first time hear accounts from individuals who accuse Shell of offering them bribes to give fake testimonies that led to the ‘Ogoni Nine’ – who included Esther Kiobel’s husband – being sentenced to death and executed.

Esther Kiobel and three other women – Victoria Bera, Blessing Eawo and Charity Levula – accuse Shell of being complicit in the unlawful arrest, detention and execution of their husbands. The men were hanged in 1995 along with renowned activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and four other men after they were convicted in a blatantly unfair trial. read more

OPL 235 related extracts from an article published by THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH on 6 Oct 2019: “The West puts the brakes on dictators’ ill-gotten gains”

By Adrian Blomfield AFRICA CORRESPONDENT: 6 Oct 2019

One case more than any other has galvanised Western action against African corruption. Deepwater OPL245, a 617-square-mile-stretch of territory that contains within it a potential £500 billion fortune, is known as the Eldorado of Africa: an estimated nine billion barrels of recoverable oil buried under the sea off Nigeria’s coastline.

For a country with the highest rates of extreme poverty in the world, it should have been a huge windfall. read more

Extracts from an article published by BEYOND PESTICIDES: 7 Oct 2019

Banana Workers Made Sterile from Pesticide Sue Dow in France

In a pattern of corporate irresponsibility, if not actual malfeasance, now commonly recognized — think Big Tobacco, Big Fossil Fuels, Big Pharma, Big Chem — Shell (Royal Dutch Shell) and Dow Chemical were aware as early as 1958 of toxicological data from experiments on male rats demonstrating that exposure to DBCP caused reproductive anomalies, including reduced testes size at airborne exposures of 5ppm (parts per million), and at 20ppm, sterility in all subjects. (Dow Chemical merged for a time with DuPont to become DowDuPont; in spring of 2019, that company disaggregated into Dow, DuPont, and Corteva, the last of which handles the agricultural seed, trait, and chemicals strands of the business.) 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

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By John Donovan

I have published several articles over the years naming many Shell senior security people. They include the MI6 hires referred to by Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden in a wiretapped telephone conversation relating to the OPL 245 corruption case. 

Some of their names have come up in leaked emails that have recently appeared on the Internet. I have combined the various emails into a single document.

The email participants include a former senior British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officer, Ian Forbes McCredie who until December 2010, was VP Corporate Affairs Security, Shell International B.V.  Mr McCredie is closely associated with the private spy firm Hakluyt sometimes described as the commercial offshoot of MI6. When I sent an email to Mr McCredie at Shell, I received an automated response giving me his Hakluyt email address. read more

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Alleged Non-Remittance: Environmental Activist Wants EFCC, AGF To Probe Shell: Writ Issued 24 Sept 2019

An environmental activist and legal practitioner Anderson Achilike has in a suit called on the Attorney General of the Federation Abubakar Malami, and the Economic And Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to probe Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria Limited.

Achilike in the suit filed on Wednesday at the Federal High Court, Abuja sued Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria limited over alleged non-remittance and under declaration of crude oil exportation and shipment; instigation of acts of pipeline vandalism; oil theft; third party interference in trunk line operations; incessant cases of fire outbreak.

Achilike said he filed the action “as a matter of urgent national importance to save the dwindling economic fortunes of the country from acts capable of undermining the future of Nigeria.” read more

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The photograph shows Swastika flag flying at the head office of Royal Dutch Petroleum, 30 Carel van Bylandtlaan, The Hague, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II (From Image Database Hague Municipal)

By John Donovan

For more than a decade, Shell’s reputation has been damaged by this website not by the publication of lies, but by us telling the unvarnished truth.

How can you judge if this claim is true or false?

Logic provides the answer. If we published fake news or falsehoods, Shell would have sued for libel long ago. It dare not do so because fact, not fiction, is a complete defence against libel. Furthermore, Shell does not want its toxic past or current corporate sins ventilated in open court. read more

The anger among Groningers was great after two earthquakes last spring. It fueled the fear of new cracks and subsidence, while in some cases the old damage was not even repaired by the syrupy claim settlement and reinforcement operation.

Printed below is an English translation of an article published 10 Sept 2019 by the Dutch FT, Financieele Dagblad. NAM is the Shell/Exxon Joint Venture company responsible for the earthquake blighted Groningen Gas Field and consequential potential bill for untold billions to deal with damaged residences.

Saying goodbye to Groningen gas much faster than expected

Bas Knoop In short

The cabinet wants to stop gas extraction in Groningen much faster than planned. Not in 2030, but already in 2022.

Next year gas extraction will fall to 11.8 billion cubic meters, just below the ‘safe’ level of 12 billion cubic meters.

In order to accelerate the gas extraction, nitrogen is added to imported high-calorific gas. Nine large industrial users are no longer allowed to use Groningen gas from October 2022.

Due to the lower gas extraction, the natural gas revenues for the cabinet will fall by €400 million next year. A new gas deal with Shell and ExxonMobil is being prepared. read more

Shell’s toxic Nazi history catching up with the energy giant

By John Donovan

Information and evidence about Shell’s financial support for Hitler’s Nazi regime (and Shell’s anti-Semitism directed at its own employees), remained buried for decades in library books and newspaper archives gathering more and more dust.

Unfortunately for Royal Dutch Shell, it’s reputation, brand value (and shareholders), fast-evolving Internet technology, including digitalisation of newspaper archives, has transformed access, thereby making that toxic information instantly available everywhere. And spread by social media.  read more

But when the United Nations called for an oil boycott of the South African Apartheid regime, Van Wachem unintentionally ended up in a high-rise political debate. The shareholders’ meetings were suddenly visited by angry activists who had purchased a share from the Royal Dutch. Radicals cut the fuel hoses from Shell’s gas stations. But Van Wachem knew nothing about it. In a letter to the World Council of Churches, he pointed out that there were six other major oil companies operating in South Africa. He also hired an American agency to investigate what he could do against those activists.

Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch FT, Financieele Dagblad

Shell CEO preferred to stay in the shade

Louis Hoeks: 29 August 2019

Lo van Wachem during the presentation of Shell’s annual figures for 1985. Photo: Rob Bogaerts on behalf of the FD

Amsterdam, spring 2004. At the shareholders’ meeting of Philips, Peter Paul de Vries of the Vereniging van Effectenbezitters (VEB) asks why the bonus of chairman Gerard Kleisterlee has tripled. “Not on the agenda,” grumbles to Commissioner Lo van Wachem. “It is an issue, because I am asking you,” De Vries insists. But Van Wachem is simply silent. It is not the first collision between the two. A few years earlier, Van Wachem had threatened to have the shareholder foreman removed by security. read more

While insisting that the attackers are known, Nsuke charged the government to end the attacks on Ogoni by asking Shell and the Nigerian industry as well as those who organized the Saakpenwa meeting of June 22, 2019, to halt the crazy push for oil resumption in Ogoni…

Printed below in italics is a press statement issued by one of the two competing organisations, both calling themselves MOSOP. The statement is from the MOSOP led by Fegalo Nsuke which is indisputably active, while the MOSOP led by Legborsi Saro Pyagbara (Wikipedia article) has an online presence, but otherwise appears to be dormant?

MOSOP kingdom coordinators and affiliate heads held at the organization’s headquarters in Bori, Ogoniland

PRESS STATEMENT

Oil Resumption Campaigners Behind Gangsters in Ogoni Says MOSOP

The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has accused the campaigners for forceful oil resumption in Ogoni of patronizing criminal gangs that are currently terrorizing the Ogoni area. President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke, made the declaration on Saturday, August 17, 2019 at a meeting with MOSOP kingdom coordinators and affiliate heads held at the organization’s headquarters in Bori, Ogoniland. read more