Shell Game / Gnomon3 cluster / Very Large Array

The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London)
January 19, 2000, Wednesday London Edition 1

SECTION: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 265 words

HEADLINE: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Ogoni people do not share Shell's optimism on Nigeria

BYLINE: By LEDUM MITEE

BODY:
From Mr Ledum Mitee.

Sir, Your article regarding the operations of Shell in Ogoni, Nigeria quoted London officials of the company expressing satisfaction and considerable optimism about recent discussions ("Royal Dutch/Shell close to healing costly rift on Nigerian tribal rights", January 17). [SEE ARTICLE TO LEFT.]

Their optimism is not shared by Mosop (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People), which has championed the Ogoni cause against the company. We have publicly expressed grave concerns about the difference between Shell's statements in London and the actions of its staff in Ogoni and other parts of the Niger Delta.

It is inconceivable that Shell will achieve a breakthrough of the type implied in your article, given the high cost the Ogoni people have paid for our opposition to Shell's damaging practices in Nigeria. We are still looking for evidence that Shell accepts responsibility for its actions in Ogoni and is prepared to take the necessary remedial steps. We have also indicated support for an independent assessment of the environmental and social situation in Ogoni as recommended by the UN. Shell needs to take practical and concrete steps to build up the confidence of the people.

We hope that Shell understands it has a great deal of work to do to achieve "a significant breakthrough", and that the situation in the Niger Delta is deteriorating, with oil companies often failing to appreciate their contributions to existing problems.

Ledum Mitee, President, Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, 27 Odu Street, Ogbunabali, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
January 7, 2000, Friday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION

SECTION: METRO, Pg. B2

LENGTH: 428 words

HEADLINE: REFUGEES PLAN TO PROTEST AT SHELL SERVICE STATION HERE; NIGERIANS BLAME COMPANY FOR POLLUTION IN HOMELAND, DEALING WITH DICTATORS

BYLINE: Tim O'Neil; Of The Post-Dispatch

Refugees from a region of Nigeria plan to picket a Shell service station in Richmond Heights on Saturday in a weeklong effort to draw attention to troubles in their faraway homeland.

The refugees are from Ogoni Land, an area inhabited by about 500,000 people in the wide delta country of the Niger River. About 100 Ogonis have moved to the St. Louis area since 1996, said Noble Obani-Nwibari, their spokesman.

Obani-Nwibari said refugees and their supporters often picket Shell stations because Shell International produced oil in their homeland until 1993 and wants to resume production there. He said anti-Shell Ogonis blame the company for polluting their land and doing business with Nigeria's succession of dictators.

Obani-Nwibari said Ogoni refugees throughout the world have been holding protests this week. Nigeria is in West Africa.

On Tuesday, a day of celebration for the Ogonis, about 400 people took part in a nighttime candlelight march from the Shell station at Gravois Avenue and South Grand Boulevard in St. Louis to a rally in a church, Obani-Nwibari said. He said most of the St. Louis-area
Ogonis attended and were joined by refugees from Kenya and Ethiopia and local environmental groups, including the Sierra Club.

Obani-Nwibari said the group will meet again at noon Saturday and picket the Shell station at 1402 South Hanley Road, just south of
Highway 40 (Interstate 64). They plan to end the picketing at 2 p.m. "We want to educate people about what Shell is doing to our country," he said.

Harry Dunn, the Shell station owner, could not be reached for comment.

Some Ogonis in Nigeria sabotaged Shell operations there before the company stopped production in Ogoni Land in 1993, and the nation's dictators have taken action against the residents. In 1995, the government of the late Gen. Sani Abacha hanged playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists.

The government of Olusegun Obasanjo, who in May became Nigeria's first elected president in 15 years, also has clashed with protesters in the Niger delta.

Obani-Nwibari, 44, arrived in St. Louis from Nigeria in 1996. He said most of the Ogonis in St. Louis live near Gravois and South Grand.

Shell's international Internet site says the company has protested to the Nigerian government over human rights abuses. It also says the company has no control over how the Nigerian government oil agency distributes royalty payments.

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)

February 21, 1999, Sunday

SECTION: Pg. 21

LENGTH: 1366 words

HEADLINE: Focus - Delta Blues: Nigeria's poor prepare to fight for the oil
riches of their country The Niger Delta is the world's sixth largest oil
field, yet the people there live in abject poverty. Now the tribes of the
Delta are in a state of near revolt: Western oil workers have been
kidnapped, pipelines sabotaged. Christina Lamb reports from Port Harcourt

BYLINE: By Christina Lamb

BODY:
CHIEF Ogibo Otodjareri is holding court in a wattle-and-daub hut decorated with goat skulls on strings and faded black-and-white photographs of his ancestors. He still remembers when oil was first struck in West Africa in 1956. "We thought we would be rich," he smiled sadly, recalling the excitement that spread through the tangled jungles of the Niger Delta where it was discovered.

Instead, like most of the region, his village of 5,000 people still has no electricity or running water, no clinic, no school. The bandy-legged children who gather to see the oyibo, or strange white woman, have the swollen bellies of the malnourished.

Pointing out the nearby oil pipeline, Otodjareri says: "We can't understand why our area is producing all this wealth yet when you come to my house I cannot even offer you a cup of porridge."

The Niger Delta is the world's sixth-largest oil producer, pumping out two billion barrels per day, yet most of its 108 million people are growing poorer. In Arab countries which produce this much oil, people have living standards beyond most Nigerians' wildest dreams. But in Africa's largest country, billions of pounds in oil wealth are siphoned off by a small clique of generals and politicians, while the average income has plummeted to pounds 160 per year. So skewed is the system that motorists must queue two days to get petrol.

In the Delta region where more than 90 per cent of the oil comes from, people live in some of the worst poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and they are losing patience. Much of the Delta is in a state of near-insurrection, with groups of militant youths turning off oil valves, occupying flow stations and kidnapping foreign oil workers. Yesterday a Chevron boat was attacked and one person killed. The next step, says Oronto Douglas, one of the groups' leaders, is to bring the entire oil industry to a halt.

The government has responded with violence, sending in security forces and turning one of the world's largest wetlands into a battleground.

Few expect the current elections - yesterday for parliament, and next Saturday for the presidency - to change anything, despite ending 15 years of military rule. The candidate expected to win is Gen Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military dictator, although the only one ever to hand over power to civilians.

"The real problem is the mineral resources are in minority areas, while the government is always run by a majority tribe who don't find it worthwhile to divert funds to develop those areas," said Robert Azibaola, the president of the Niger Delta Human and Environmental Resources Organisation.

The plight of the Delta first came to world attention in 1993 when the playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa led the Ogoni tribe against the military regime of Gen Sani Abacha, to force the British-Dutch oil giant Shell out of its region. Thousands of Ogonis were beaten or detained and there was an international outcry when Saro-Wiwa and eight colleagues were hanged in November 1995.

Since Abacha's death last June the new president, Gen Abdulsalam Abubakar, reduced repression in Nigeria, freeing political prisoners, and many tribes have been emboldened to follow the Ogonis' example.

A British employee of Shell and his two-year-old son were kidnapped last week, although they were released within days, and oilworkers travel in convoys with armed guards.

A report due out this week by Human Rights Watch catalogues numerous cases of people being "brutalised" by Nigerian security forces for attempting to raise grievances with the oil companies. The largest is Shell, responsible for almost half the country's oil production, followed by the American companies Chevron and Mobil, Elf of France, and the Italian state-owned Agip.

Most of the protesters are Ijaws, the largest tribe in the Delta with more than six million people, presenting a far more serious threat to the regime than the Ogonis, who number fewer than 500,000. Armed mystical cults of the Ijaw god of war, Egbesu, have sprung up, hiding in the mangrove swamps which cover a third of the Delta.

Last month there was a series of killings in the riverside village of Kaiama after troops moved in to end a demonstration calling for foreign oil companies to leave. A week-long gun battle raged, leaving more than 30 people dead. Owonaro Kesiegha, the 26-year-old Youth president, gave a warning: "We are not afraid. We are angry."

Travelling in the Delta last week I passed checkpoints every couple of miles manned by soldiers brandishing machine-guns, looking for youths whose backs bear the tattoos of the Egbesu cults. Soldiers have spread terror by looting houses and demanding money to let people pass.

The Ijaw have threatened to bring the oil industry to a halt. This month, leaders of all the Delta tribes gathered for the first time and issued a declaration demanding autonomy and a share of oil royalties.

With disruptions flaring up every week, Shell's production has been cut from 450,000 to 250,000 barrels per day, and a senior executive said: "Many of our operations have been closed down and our staff are exposed." Troops are already digging trenches in the jungle and Western diplomats predict a full-scale guerrilla war.

The foreign oil companies feel unfairly targeted. Since the Ogoni crisis, Shell has conducted a major review and is building hospitals and schools, paying for more than 100 teachers in the Delta. It says the real blame lies with the state, which receives the royalties and is supposed to distribute a percentage to local people.

The anger of the Ijaw people is tangible, it hangs heavy in the already humid air the Delta. At the village of Otuegwe, which is only accessible by boat, a strange gloom hangs over the community. Ijaw youths led the way through the forest --- where spiders are as big as dinner plates and everything seems to grow to 10 times the normal size. Suddenly the birds stopped singing. Emerging from a swamp, the primeval odour of the jungle was replaced by a nausea-inducing smell of hydrocarbons, and we entered a place that looked like Armageddon.

A pipeline had burst, spreading black oil over the vegetation and casting a thick film over the pools of water. When it rains, as it does every day, this runs into the creek and pollutes the water used by the villagers in addition to killing the mudfish which they eat. Many of the palms, on which they depend to produce palm oil and alcohol, lay brown and dying.

Although this happened last October, nobody from Shell has visited the village to clean up or apologise, let alone offer compensation. Scooping up some crude to take home for fuel, Igonibo Ido said: "We want the world to know our plight."

The oil companies admit that many pipelines are older than the 15-year safe lifespan, but blame the government (which has a 55 per cent stake in Shell's operations and 60 per cent in the others) for not putting up its share of investment. Hundreds of pipeline leaks occur each year, although Shell claims that many result from sabotage.

Last October, word went around the community of Jesse that a pipeline had burst. Thousands of villagers rushed to the leak to collect oil. Among them was Eunice Akamugbe, a 30-year-old mother of two. "We were all filling buckets when suddenly there was a huge explosion."

When Eunice came to, she was covered in horrific burns. She was one of the lucky ones. More than 1,000 people died in the blaze. In November, General Abubakar said there would be no compensation, as sabotage was suspected.

The current low price of oil, and the rash of demands which democracy is likely to bring, will make it hard for a new government to meet the needs of the Delta region. Oil earnings, which make up 80 per cent of government revenue, are projected at pounds 4.8 billion for this year, far short of 1997's pounds 9.3 billion.

Some campaigners fear that the Delta people's fight will provide an excuse for the military to retake power. But Fawehinmi Gani, a leading campaigner for democracy, warned: "You can send in 50 million troops but you cannot cow the people. They have been cheated for so long that they are fighting the battle of their lives."

Copyright 1999 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Guardian (London)

September 13, 1999

SECTION: Guardian Leader Pages; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 637 words

HEADLINE: email

BYLINE: John Vidal @ Ogoniland

BODY:
The six kingdoms of Ogoniland deep in the Niger delta had seen nothing like it. The 100 splendid grey-haired, bowler-hatted traditional
chiefs, the spirit dancers, the choirs, the acrobats, wrestlers, drummers, bishops and several thousand onlookers were cracking up.

On a platform in the centre of a large tented square, four middle-aged whites were being stripped of their clothes and made 'first-class'
Ogoni chieftains. The embroidered gowns looked fine. The carved sticks, chains and feathers lent authority. But the multicoloured knitted
socks with tassles on the ends which were pulled over the heads of the new chiefs made them look like giant Smurfs. The crowd shrieked
and doubled up.

Henceforth, announded the MC, Anita Roddick, co-founder of the Body Shop and no lover of British titles, was to be 'Her Royal
Highness Mene Missus Roddick, Chief Wiper Away of Ogoni Tears.' Husband Gordon and two other Bodyshop executives would be
Ogoni ambasadors and 'Chief Helpers'.

'Bene Ogoni, great, great Ogoni,' cried their Highnesses Peter, Gavin, Gordon and Anita over the uproar. 'Ka'alene Bari,' ('glory be to
God') the crowd roared back as the 100 chiefs exited backwards in deference to their new peers.

The Ogoni do not forget their friends. When Ken Saro-Wiwa founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop) in
1992, no one in the international community wanted to help the struggle to expel Shell from Ogoni lands or hear of the pollution and
destitution. The military came in, thousands died, the human rights abuses were terrifying and the pollution from oil spills and gas flares
was atrocious. The lowest point came in 1996 when Saro-Wiwa and eight others were hanged.

Body Shop declared corporate war on Shell and poured resources into the campaign to draw the world's attention. Thanks in part to it
and its supporters, 20 Ogoni prisoners were released, the Commonwealth expelled Nigeria and Shell was forced, in theory, to change its
ways. 'It was the first struggle of this kind in the black world,' said the MC. 'You were friends in time of exile and desolation. You did not
forget us.'

For a week now the Ogonis have been celebrating, in churches, palaces and storm-lashed fields, the Roddicks' first visit. They have, too,
rained down gifts. Between libations of gin and rousing renditions of the Ogoni anthem, the Roddicks have acquired 40 acres of land, a
goat, carvings, coconuts, plaques, robes, hats and pots. So far, two Ogoni children have been named after them, but soon there could be a
tribe: all children born to the Ogoni 20 will be little Gordons, Anitas, Peters or Gavins.

But below the gaiety, there is deep concern. Shell and the military have left, Mosop is a fully fledged grassroots liberation movement with
its own flag, heroes, martyrs and radical politics, but the 500,000 Ogoni are devastated by generations of neglect and denial. Despite
promises, there has been next to no compensation, reparation, clean-up or development.

It rankles deeply with all the minority groups in the vast Niger delta region that tens of billions of dollars' worth of oil has been extracted
but almost nothing has been returned. Most British have more in their medicine chests than the Ogoni or Idjaw have in their hospitals;
most British nine-year-olds have more books than Ogoni schools have for thousands of pupils. 'It would have been better if oil had never
come,' says a Mosop leader.

The Ogoni have high hopes - perhaps too high - that Bodyshop will change everything. The company will mobilise its staff and the public
and set up community projects and other development works.



	Shell ad, National Geographic, May 1999: Exploit or Explore? Profits and Principles: Is There a Choice?

	[Let me guess. The right answer to the first question is “explore,” yes? And I didn’t even peek at your web address below! As for the second question---oh, a toughie. My guess is that Shell believes you don’t have to choose between profits and principles; you can have both at once! What a wonderful world!] Shell: There’s no room for an attitude of, ‘It’s in the middle of nowhere, so who’s to know?’ If we’re exploring for oil and gas reserves in sensitive areas of the world, we consult widely with the different local and global interest groups. Working together, our aim is to ensure that bio-diversity in each location is preserved. We also try to encourage these groups to monitor our progress so that we can review and improve the ways in which we work. [Gee, sounds perfect. And so conscientious, too. Question: what kinds of areas of the globe are “non-sensitive”? Are the “sensitive areas” sensitive because of the ecosystem there, or because of the people who must be consulted. Is Shell oil and “interest group” too?] We welcome your input! Contact Shell at www.shell.com/explore
in deepest National Geographic jungle-land (colorized)
		[Please do NOT send sarcastic remarks in brackets, however.]

Shell Game
(Oil on the Wounds)

Shell companies

Shell Game (Oil on the Wounds)

Shell companies

Shell Game
(Oil on the Wounds)