Oil companies battle human and environmental rights groups over climate change

by Carol Forsloff -  In a landmark case in 2009 Shell was found complicit in the execution of author and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders in Nigeria in 1995, even as Greenpeace established this year oil companies have fought climate change legislation.

Evidence is revealing about how environmental rights have been targeted by Big Oil.

In the bloody oil fields of the Niger Delta men were killed.  Plaintiffs in 2009 secured a verdict against Shell Oil Company that it had financed, armed and colluded with Nigerian military forces that used deadly force and killed many Ogoni people in the Niger Delta.  Shell made a settlement out of court, which Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth declare is evidence of its complicity in crimes against Nigerian people.But ERA/FoEN Executive Director, Nnimmo Bassey insisted, after the company claimed it had made the settlement in a humanitarian gesture, “Shell’s sudden decision to settle out of court is a clear indication that the company is guilty of the atrocities alleged and much more.”

“This development signals a ray of hope for the people of the Niger Delta that Shell’s irresponsible acts which have violated their land and livelihoods in the last five decades of oil exploration in the region will not go unaccounted for. It is however sad that justice was achieved not on Nigerian soil where innocent people of the Niger Delta have been labeled criminals and vandals but in far away US.”

Bassey went on to say the Nigerian government should proceed to compel Shell Oil to begin immediate cleanup of pollution of rivers, streams and farms.

ERA reports a number of cases in The Hague, Netherlands where Shell Oil is facing a number of lawsuits for repeated oil spills.

The settlement from Shell Oil and the concerns about the oil spills caused by the major oil companies in Nigeria, has brought fresh outcry from the African continent about oil companies' disregard of human rights in the quest to make money from oil.  The protest is also that the rest of the world paid no attention to Africa's plight and the issue of oil spills, until the recent one that has occurred on the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Greenpeace also has investigated a little-known, but very wealthy, oil and gas group called Koch Industries and found them intimately involved in anti-climate change movements and proposed legislation.  Again oil and gas figures into a movement against going green, even as it has been shown complicit in the killings of people in Africa for fighting against environmental injustices.

Oil companies presently protest that the history of drilling has brought few oil spill accidents, however, the environmental damage presented by environmental groups and others on the African continent reveal that oil spills are frequent and destructive.