The unpleasant facts that BP, Shell and their activist defenders don't want you to know.
If there’s a single characteristic that defines climate change activists, it’s their egregious hypocrisy.
Al Gore, the pre-Greta figurehead of climate change activism, lives in a huge Tennessee mansion that devours twenty-one times more energy than the average US home. Quite an effort, considering it’s just him and his partner who live in the house. In addition to his Yeti-sized ‘carbon footprint,’ the audacious Gore also collects between $100,000 and $1,000,000 every time he gives a speech railing against the use of fossil fuels.
In a 2019 ‘plant-based’ propaganda film called The Game Changers, the “99% vegan”Arnold Schwarzenegger banged on and on about the importance of eating less meat in order to save the environment. Rather precious, given the Gropinator is well-known for getting around Beverley Hills in one of those fuel-guzzling monstrosities known as a Hummer and a Bugatti Veyron, the 8-litre supercar with a city-driving fuel consumption of 8 miles per gallon.
Schwarzenegger was also exposed in 2014 as owning an estimated 5% of mega-billion dollar investment fund Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), which holds a massive chunk of shares in logging and palm oil companies, including firms implicated in highly destructive, and sometimes illegal, activities wiping out the rainforests of Borneo.
Like Gore, Schwarzenegger’s environmental activism is strictly of the “do as I say, not as I do” variety. Of course, the two ex-politicians are hardly the only wealthy eco-warriors whose frivolous use of fossil fuels would make a Monster Truck blush.
COP This
Every year, the so-called Conference of the Parties (COP), "the supreme decision-making body" of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, hosts a lavish shindig for which reality-detached bureaucrats and their obscenely wealthy puppet-masters fly in from all over the world. Once the hordes of private jets have landed, the Parties party under the pretense of saving the world from 'anthropogenic' global warming (AGW).
In November 2021, the UN’s annual COP junket was held in Glasgow, "an event many believed to be the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control."
The event was known as COP26, and the participants showed their commitment to this critical "last chance" in a most curious manner. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos - who regularly lectures the world on climate change - arrived in his $60 million Gulf Stream, leading a 400-strong parade of private jets into Glasgow. His shamelessly hypocritical compatriots included Prince Albert of Monaco, scores of other royals, and dozens of 'green' CEOs and politicians. The result was "an extraordinary traffic jam" that forced empty planes to fly 30 miles to find space to park.
Conservative predictions suggest the fleet of private jets arriving for COP26 blasted out 13,000 tonnes (13,000,000 kg) of carbon dioxide in total - equivalent to the amount consumed by more than 1,600 Britons in a year. Kiddie-fondling US president Joe Biden and his entourage generated an estimated 1,000,000 kilograms of CO2 to reach the summit, thanks to a fleet of four planes, the Marine One helicopter and an enormous motorcade including The Beast and numerous SUVs.
Professional moocher and close friend of the late serial pedophile Jimmy Saville, then-prince Charles, traveled by a specially-chartered, taxpayer-funded Ministry of Defence plane from the G20 in Rome.
Addressing the gathering of elitist shysters, then-PM Boris Johnson compared the situation of leaders to "James Bond towards the end of a film trying to diffuse a 'doomsday device' before it 'ends human life as we know it'" Boris the Clown then flew back to London from the COP26 summit by private jet to go to a dinner at a men-only private members’ club.
It wasn’t just a sky full of private jets that highlighted the climatocrats’ brazen hypocrisy. While the silver-spooned attendees of the conference dined and shmoozed under the laughable pretense of saving the planet, the streets surrounding the summit were packed with chauffeur-driven cars, some with their engines idling the whole time.
The partying parasites at COP26 - who insist meat and dairy is environmentally harmful and want us commoners to eat bugs for sustenance - dined from a menu that included burgers, venison, beef ramen, haggis, Scottish buffalo mozzarella pizza and even farmed salmon.
Remember, we have video-conferencing technologies readily available that make this carry on utterly redundant. For people who think fossil fuels are threatening the very existence of this planet, the globalist climatocrats sure love burning fossil fuels, even when it’s completely unnecessary.
So forget farting cows – it's politicians and their billionaire buddies who need the butt-plug treatment, figuratively speaking. A 2015 Oxfam report estimated the CO2 emissions of the world’s richest 1% are up to 175 times that of the poorest 10%. Around 50% of CO2 emissions meanwhile can be attributed to the world’s richest 10% of people, 60 times higher than the poorest 10%.
It’s clear the world’s elite don’t really give two hoots about the environment. They may be a bunch of reality-detached inbreds, but even dumb people know you don’t cut pollution by unleashing hundreds of private jets into the sky or leaving hundreds of limousines idling outside a ‘climate change’ conference.
But what about lower down the tree? What about compliant researchers and journalists who drone on about ‘carbon emissions’ (apparently too dumb to know that CO2 and carbon are not the same things), and idiot activists who glue themselves to roads and buildings?
Are they really driven by a burning passion to save the environment, or are they motivated by other factors, such as conformity, career advancement and a highly misguided sense of self-righteousness?
Grassrooted
If you want further proof the anthropogenic climate change charade has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the environment and saving the planet, look no further than the disingenuous war on ExxonMobil.
As I explained in my last article, the Texas oil giant has been singled out for unrelenting attack by the AGW movement. An entire campaign called “ExxonMobil Knew!” has been built around the demonstrably false claim that the oil giant has ‘denied’ the existence of climate change. In reality, ExxonMobil publicly acknowledged the “risks” of climate change and discussed its initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions way back in the noughties.
Meanwhile, the very same activists who perpetuate the brazen lie that ExxonMobil ‘denies’ climate change, exhibit a remarkably lenient attitude towards the environmentally reckless British Petroleum (BP) and Royal Dutch Shell. Some, like WEF-aligned climate propagandist Naomi Oreskes, even praise the two oil behemoths because they allegedly “refrained from participating in misinformation campaigns.”
That’s nonsense, given that BP and Shell are well-known masters of greenwashing – the art of dressing up environmentally harmful activities in a cloak of ‘green’ propaganda.
A 2022 PLoS analysis of energy claims made by BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell found a large increase in discourse since 2009 related to “climate”, “low-carbon” and “transition”, “especially by BP and Shell” (bold emphasis added). "But," note the authors, this green talk is “dominated by pledges rather than concrete actions” with “a continuing business model dependence on fossil fuels along with insignificant and opaque spending on clean energy."
It is precisely ExxonMobil’s refusal to engage in the same degree of greenwashing that has made it the target of the AGW crowd. While Shell and BP wax lyrical about climate change and pay stipends to AGW propagandists such as the pivotal Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University, ExxonMobil instead gives money to thinktanks and conservative commentators who dare question the official AGW thesis.
While ExxonMobil has publicly acknowledged the importance of climate change, it has also urged a cautious and measured response. A perfectly commonsense approach, except to the “act now, worry about the science later!” AGW crowd who, most suspiciously, want us to abandon any pretense at rational assessment of the issue and simply bow to a “97% consensus” which does not exist, and never has.
When you compare the environmental records of ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, you quickly realize the war on ExxonMobil is a patent farce, and that its purveyors clearly don’t give a rat’s rectum about real environmental devastation.
Nor human rights, for that matter.
The Great Environmentally Unfriendly Smackdown: ExxonMobil vs Shell and BP
To gain some sense of perspective, let’s start with ExxonMobil. While the American behemoth’s environmental track record is nowhere near as bad as its British and Dutch counterparts, the Texas giant will never qualify for corporate sainthood - and nor does it deserve to.
On March 24, 1989, a decade prior to Exxon’s merger with Mobil, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker infamously struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling more than 11 million US gallons of crude oil into the pristine surrounds. While not even close to the world’s largest spill in terms of volume (it no longer even ranks among the fifty largest oil spills), the Valdez accident extracted a disproportionately large environmental toll due to the location and its habitat. Over 1,000 miles of Alaska's coastline was befouled by North Slope crude. No one knows just how many animals died as a result of the pollution, but the 35,000 bird and 1,000 sea otter carcasses found in the aftermath were considered a small fraction of the actual death toll.
The ExxonMobil refinery at Baton Rouge in Louisiana, originally built by the Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil, is one of the largest in the US. It is has also been the site of numerous incidents. On December 24, 1989, a blast and fire killed two people and injured 7. In August 1993, another explosion killed three workers and reportedly caused personal and property damage to 2,700 people outside the plant.
In November 2007, the EPA gave the Baton Rouge Refinery its Energy Star Award “for its efforts and improvements in energy efficiency.” The following year, ExxonMobil had to pay nearly $6.1 million in civil penalties for violating the terms of a 2005 court-approved Clean Air Act agreement at four of its US refineries, including the Baton Rouge plant. Because of accidents and leaks, from 2008 to 2011 the Baton Rouge complex pumped out nearly 4 million pounds of volatile organic compounds without government approval.
So much for that EPA award.
The Baton Rouge Refinery has continued to be the source of numerous violations, spills and accidents (for examples, see here, here, here, here and here), including a November 22, 2016 explosion which injured 4 workers, 2 of them severely. One worker was knocked off a scaffold and left dangling over the fire, sources told Reuters. Another worker was burned over most of her body. In July 2017, ExxonMobil was fined $165,000 by US regulators for safety lapses related to the incident, including inadequate training and equipment maintenance.
On March 29, 2013, the rupture of Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline in central Arkansas caused around 134,000 gallons of oil to flow through Mayflower and nearby waterways, including Lake Conway, which flows into the Arkansas River. Federal records obtained after the incident revealed the 1,400 kilometre pipeline had at least 13 minor leaks since 2002, and that ExxonMobil was fined in 2010 for not inspecting a section of the pipeline underneath the Mississippi River within the time frame required by federal regulations.
Since the 1950s, oil extraction has been a source of great angst among the residents of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. While oil companies and corrupt regimes have profited handsomely, residents have seen little economic benefit and have instead been left with widespread pollution and environmental damage. The bulk of the allegations involve Shell, but ExxonMobil’s presence has not been without controversy. In 1998, an underwater pipeline from Mobil's Idaho production platform, situated around 5.5 kilometres from the Nigerian coast, snapped. Some 40,000 barrels of oil leaked into the Atlantic, creating a slick 26 miles long.
Being an Asshole in Aceh
The company’s track record in Indonesia is especially shameful. In 1971, Mobil Oil, working with Pertamina (Indonesia's state-owned oil and gas company), discovered a large natural gas field in Arun, located in the Aceh Province of Northern Sumatra. Upon discovering the field, Mobil Oil contracted with the Indonesian government, controlled at the time by mass murderer General Suharto, to obtain exclusive rights to explore and produce natural gas in the Arun area. In exchange, the notoriously corrupt Suharto and his family received shares in Mobil Oil Indonesia, as well as other forms of “direct and indirect” payment.
The Arun Project went on to become one of the largest and most profitable natural gas projects in the world, and helped position Indonesia as one of the world's largest natural gas producers and exporters. But, as with the Niger Delta, this newfound source of wealth for the oil companies and corrupt government came at great cost to the local population. Most of the profits were siphoned out of Aceh, leaving little improvement in the local economy. Instead, the expansion of the industrial zone forced villagers to resettle outside the zone while large numbers of skilled non-Acehnese workers moved in to operate the oil and gas companies.
The ensuing hotbed of discontent gave rise to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), established in 1976 with the goal of establishing an Islamic state independent of Indonesia. The Suharto regime responded with mass arrests of GAM members. After being forced underground, GAM resurfaced and expanded in the late 1980s, attacking police and military installations. In response, the Suharto regime designated Aceh as a military operational area (DOM) and directed the Indonesian military to occupy the province.
During the subsequent nine years, thousands of Achenese civilian villagers not connected to the separatist movement were slaughtered, tortured, maimed, raped or disappeared at the hands of the Indonesian military. The DOM era ceased only when Suharto’s dictatorship was ousted in mid-1998. The true death toll from the DOM period may never be known, but "relatively uncontroversial" estimates fall within the range of 1,600 to 6,000 deaths.
Sadly, the conflict in Indonesia did not end with the dismantling of the DOM. Clashes between GAM and pro-Jakarta forces continued until 2005, when GAM finally disbanded as a result of the Helsinki peace deal that awarded Aceh with expanded autonomy[35,36].
While this abhorrent state of affairs was transpiring, Mobil was jointly operating an extremely lucrative gas project. To do this successfully in such a troubled region required safeguards, and lots of them. The extreme unpopularity of the Suharto regime in Aceh and public knowledge that Mobil had provided shares in MOI to Suharto meant security was at a premium for the Arun Project. To protect their new joint venture, the Suharto regime agreed with Mobil that units from the national army, known as the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI), would provide security for the Arun Project. Mobil paid a regular stipend to the military for these security services.
According to a 2001 lawsuit by 11 Indonesian plaintiffs, that’s not all Mobil gave to the TNI. The complaint also alleges Mobil:
Paid for the construction and provision of buildings and supplies for two military barracks located on or next to the natural gas extraction and liquefication plants, which were used by Indonesian special forces units to interrogate, torture and murder Acehnese civilians suspected of engaging in separatist activities;
provided heavy equipment such as excavators so the Indonesian military could dig mass graves to bury their Acehnese victims, and;
constructed roads which the military used to transport Acehnese victims to mass graves located near the extraction and liquefaction facilities.
The lawsuit also states that after Suharto's fall in 1998, the TNI escalated their attacks on the Acehnese. The situation in Aceh by this time was widely acknowledged internationally, and numerous human rights groups had documented the abuses. Numerous of these groups specifically requested that Mobil/ExxonMobil cease its operations in Aceh until it could make arrangements to operate without using the "murderous" TNI for security. These requests were refused, and the complaint alleged ExxonMobil instead demanded the Indonesian military security increase the number of troops and “take all necessary steps to ensure the security of the Arun Project.”
In 2007, four more Aceh villagers joined the action against ExxonMobil after having been assaulted by security personnel. Each had been violently attacked by bribe-extracting guards manning the ExxonMobil security posts the villagers were forced to cross each day. In one incident, John Doe VIII was shot in the knee because he couldn’t afford to pay the bribes demanded of him. When another of the plaintiffs bravely tried to help John Doe VIII, security personnel allegedly grabbed him, dragged him away and stomped on his head.
ExxonMobil insisted the allegations were “baseless”, although it beggars belief to claim the company was truly unaware of the TNI’s reputation and activities. Since the initial 2001 complaint, the lawsuit has bounced back and forth between dismissals and appeals but in 2015, a DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled ExxonMobil should be forced to defend the charges.
That same year, ExxonMobil sold its Aceh operations to Pertamina. It doggedly continued its attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed, but in July 2022 a US District Court denied ExxonMobil's motions to dismiss the case, clearing the way for the lawsuit to go to trail, although no trial date was set.
This brings us to an especially sobering observation about the “ExxonMobil Knew!” crowd. They could easily and rightfully attack the company for its sloppy environmental and safety practices, and its disgraceful partnership with brutal Indonesian autocrats and military forces. But hey, who gives a shit about torture, rape and murder of innocent people – pesky climate ‘deniers’ are what’s really wrong with the world, right?
The demented campaign against ExxonMobil is proof that many social justice warriors are really sociopaths masquerading as humanitarians. When a company has been involved in such egregious human rights abuses and all you care about is their refusal to uncritically embrace your pet climate change theories (!?), then you are one very sick and misguided entity.
BP: Biggest Polluter
Can you imagine how awful a company would have to be to overshadow ExxonMobil’s poor environmental track record?
Well, imagine no more: Instead, feast your eyes upon British Petroleum (BP) which, in order to win favour with the AGW crowd, dubiously attempted to re-brand itself as Beyond Petroleum back in 2000.
While ExxonMobil’s environmental record leaves much to be desired, BP is a whole other level of awful. In early 2010, as the various whitewashing Climategate ‘enquiries’ were doing their utmost to downplay the damaging East Anglia CRU email leak, a far deadlier leak was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. Early on April 20, 2010, workers had just finished cementing BP's two-and-a-half-mile-deep Macondo well, situated around 80 kilometres off the Louisiana coast. Construction of the problematic “well from hell”, as some workers dubbed it, was running almost six weeks behind schedule and more than $58 million over budget.
Later that fateful day, workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig above the Macondo began conducting pressure tests of the well. For reasons still not entirely clear, a string of ominous inconsistencies in the pressure readings were inexplicably disregarded.
The first unmistakable sign that something was badly amiss occurred between 9:40 and 9:43 pm, when drilling mud began spewing onto the rig floor. At that point rig staff knew the well was blowing out, and they tried frantically to shut it. Their efforts were futile. At 9:49, the first explosion occurred, and all hell broke loose.
The resultant giant fireball was inextinguishable and two days later the rig sank, leaving the well furiously gushing millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea. It continued to do so for almost three months, until the well was finally capped on July 15. It was the largest accidental maritime oil spill in history, spilling an estimated 4.9 million barrels (around 206 million gallons) into the Gulf.
The disaster killed 11 crewmen and injured 17 others.
The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd, a Swiss-based drilling contractor, and was leased to BP. The cement for the underwater well had been supplied by the infamous Halliburton Co., a company with links to the Bush family and also former US vice president Dick Cheney, who served as its CEO from 1995 through to August 2000.
During the aftermath, BP, Transocean and Halliburton scrambled to deflect blame from themselves.
However, in its January 2011 Report to the President, the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling placed the blame on all three companies. The report concluded the "explosive loss of the Macondo well could have been prevented" and "the immediate causes of the Macondo well blowout can be traced to a series of identifiable mistakes made by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean that reveal such systematic failures in risk management that they place in doubt the safety culture of the entire industry."
The Macondo blowout was an environmental catastrophe in every sense. In addition to the immediate loss of lives and the havoc it wreaked on local marine and wildlife, the spill extracted a considerable ongoing human toll. In an attempt to break up the humongous volume of leaked oil, officials released 1.8 million gallons of Corexit, a chemical dispersant, before the well was sealed. As a result of carpet-bombing the Gulf with chemicals, endemic health problems now affect both residents and those who worked on the clean-up effort. “There is a core of very sick patients who undoubtedly will be ill for the remainder of their lives as the result of exposure to chemicals involved in the Deepwater Horizon tragedy,” said Dr. Michael Robichaux, an ear, nose and throat specialist in south Louisiana and a former state senator.
By October 2010, so many locals had fallen ill and filed lawsuits that the district court judge combined them into a class-action suit to avoid clogging up the courts. In 2012, BP agreed to a $7.8 billion medical settlement that would compensate victims up to $60,700 per person and allow them to file further claims if they developed more serious health problems. Newsweek reported that over 37,500 victims filed claims, yet only a tiny fraction had been paid. Countless more opted out of the settlement and are pursuing individual lawsuits, and it could take “many years” before they see any money.
BP’s Long History of Alaskan Oil and Gas Spills
One of BP’s US subsidiaries, BP Exploration Alaska (BPXA), has established a long and shameful track record of spills, leaks and environmental violations on Alaska’s North Slope. The North Slope region fronts the Arctic Ocean and contains most of Alaska's petroleum reserves. It is also home to thousands of birds, caribou, bears, seals, whales and other creatures. In September 1999, BPXA pleaded guilty to the illegal disposal of hazardous waste on the North Slope, and agreed to spend $22 million in fines and penalties to resolve the criminal case and related civil claims.
In March 2006, corrosion of a BPXA oil pipeline in Prudhoe Bay led to a 5-day leak and the largest oil spill on Alaska's North Slope. According to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC), over 212,000 gallons of oil were spilled. Thanks to ruthless cost-cutting by BP, the company had not run maintenance devices in its Prudhoe Bay transit lines since 1998 - even though it was well aware an increasing amount of sediment-heavy viscous oil was flowing through those lines, and even though standard industry practice was to run such cleaning devices as often as monthly. In November 2007, BPXA pleaded guilty to negligent discharge of oil and was fined $20 million.
However, before this decision was even handed down, BP was involved in yet another Prudhoe Bay spill. On October 15, 2007, a BP pipeline in Prudhoe Bay ruptured and spilled 630 gallons of pure methanol, a further 1,260 gallons of a 60/40 methanol water mixture and 42 gallons of a crude oil/water mixture.
In 2009, another BPXA pipeline ruptured, contaminating a frozen wetland on the North Slope with around 15,000 gallons of crude oil. A federal judge declined to hold BP criminally negligent, but warned the oil giant "it was on notice".
BPXA didn’t get off so lightly in 2011, after its failure to comply with improvements mandated after the 2006 spills led to a civil suit by the US Department of Justice. As part of the settlement, BPXA agreed to a $25 million penalty, the most ever levied per barrel by national regulators.
Despite the record penalty, little would change at Prudhoe Bay. Through to December 2018, further leaks and spills occurred in the area due to BPXA’s substandard infrastructure and maintenance (see here, here, here, here, here and here).
In 2019, BP sold its Prudhoe Bay interests to Hilcorp, a Houston-based company with a long history of environmental violations.
The Texas City Explosion
On March 23, 2005, workers at BP's refinery in Texas City, Texas began a highly dangerous procedure: Re-starting a unit that had been down for repairs. They began to fill a tower with gasoline. The tower overflowed, and the excess gas flowed into a back-up unit, which also overflowed and sent a geyser of gasoline into the air. An idling truck nearby ignited the fumes, and the resultant blast ripped through several nearby office trailers full of workers.
Fifteen workers were killed and 170 others injured.
In the aftermath of the horrific blast, BP placed the blame primarily on operator error and fired six employees. The company produced a report claiming there was "no evidence of anyone consciously or intentionally taking actions or decisions that put others at risk."
Carolyn Merritt, head of the US Chemical Safety Board that investigated the explosion, begged to differ. Merritt's investigators found problems at Texas City just about everywhere they looked: antiquated equipment, corroded pipes about to burst, and safety alarms that didn't work. "There were three key pieces of instrumentation that were actually supposed to be repaired that were not repaired. And the management knew this," she told 60 Minutes.
In addition to ignoring critical equipment it knew was malfunctioning, BP placed trailers full of workers in an open area, right next to the unit being filled with gasoline. BP's own rules require office trailers to be parked a safe distance from dangerous operations. BP also failed to tell the workers in those trailers about the dangerous operation about to take place close by. BP paid more than $3 billion to settle lawsuits, cover fines and upgrade the refinery in the years after the blast. In 2012, it sold the refinery to Marathon Petroleum Corp for $2.5 billion.
BP’s Dismal Safety Record
As evinced by its “Beyond Petroleum” shtick, BP has gone to great lengths to portray itself as an environmentally aware energy company. In 2000, it did away with its empirical-looking shield logo, instead adopting a softer image designed by famous San Francisco based brand consultancy firm, Landor Associates. The new Helios imagery, says Landor “captured BP’s aspirations. A stylized sunflower symbolizes the sun’s energy, while the color green reflects the brand’s environmental sensitivity. With this simple shift in identity, BP staked its claim as a leading provider of energy solutions.” This PR bollockery, combined with then-chief executive Lord John Browne’s public embrace of the AGW paradigm, convinced many the company was leading its field into a more energy efficient future.
"BP was the first to say that climate change was a problem, the first to take responsibility and the first to have an internal target" for reducing their emissions, gushed Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, in 2002. "They were pretty brave."
In this author’s mind, there is nothing courageous about buckling to groupthink and going along with the crowd. But if BP were “pretty brave” in embracing AGW, then they remained pretty damned gutless when it came to environmental safety. In 2010, BP was awarded the dubious honour of having the worst safety record in the US oil refinery industry. The Center for Public Integrity found two BP refineries - Texas City and Toledo, Ohio - accounted for 97% of all flagrant refining industry violations found by government safety inspectors during the previous 3 years. Most of BP’s citations were classified as “egregious willful” by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and reflected alleged violations of a rule designed to prevent catastrophic events at refineries.
Refinery inspection data obtained by the Center under the FOI Act showed BP received 862 citations between June 2007 and February 2010. Virtually all the citations were for alleged violations of OSHA’s process safety management standard, a sweeping rule governing everything from storage of flammable liquids to emergency shutdown systems. “The only thing you can conclude is that BP has a serious, systemic safety problem in their company,” said OSHA's Jordan Barab. The OSHA statistics show BP ran up 760 "egregious, willful" safety violations, while Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had eight, and Citgo had two. Exxon, meanwhile, had only one such violation.
Profit at all Costs
Not surprisingly, BP’s awful safety record attracted closer scrutiny after the horrendous Gulf of Mexico spill. Among the revelations were a series of highly damning reports from 2001, 2004 and 2007 about the firm's Alaskan operations, produced by outside lawyers and an internal BP committee. The confidential reports were reportedly leaked to non-profit group ProPublica by a person close to BP who thought the company had done far too little to fix its shortcomings. The reports documented a frightening corporate culture “in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured employees not to report problems and cut short or delayed inspections to reduce production costs.” (Bold emphasis added)
Together with interviews of former employees, lawsuits, little-noticed state inquiries and e-mails obtained by ProPublica, the documents portrayed "a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations - from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas."
The 2001 report noted BP had neglected key equipment needed for an emergency shutdown, including safety shutoff valves and gas and fire detectors similar to those that could have helped prevent the explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon rig. The 2004 inquiry found a pattern of the company intimidating workers who raised safety or environmental concerns. It said managers shaved maintenance costs by using aging equipment for as long as possible. Accidents resulted, including the 200,000+-gallon Prudhoe Bay spill in 2006, caused by a corroded pipeline.
"They say it's your duty to come forward," said former BP safety technician Stuart Sneed of the company's corporate policies and public statements, "but then when you do come forward, they screw you. They'll destroy your life." He should know; after complaining about falsified inspection reports and halting work on a cracked pipeline, he was scolded, harassed and then fired by a most ungrateful BP on a trumped-up safety infraction.
BP is an “An Environmental Criminal”
A visit to the archived non-profit Project on Government Oversight website shows that, between 1995 and 2021, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell were subjected to $3.3 billion and $1.7 billion in US federal penalties, respectively. As a point of comparison, Halliburton accumulated $3.4 billion of penalties in that time frame, while serial offending drug companies GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer were penalized $10.2 billion and $6.6 billion, respectively. Johnson & Johnson, another perpetual offender whose claims to fame include selling asbestos-laced baby powder, accrued $11.2 billion in penalties.
BP, meanwhile, racked up a staggering $34.5 billion in penalties – ten times the total of ExxonMobil or Halliburton. When your penalty sheet dwarfs that of even the biggest and most sinister drug companies, you know you’ve got a major problem.
A number of commentators have wondered out loud why BP, with its appalling safety record, is even allowed to continue operating in the US. "They are a recurring environmental criminal and they do not follow U.S. health safety and environmental policy," said Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA attorney who led investigations into BP. "At what point are we going to say we are not going to do business with you any more, bye? None of the other supermajors have an environmental criminal record like they do."
Oil Spills: They’re Good for Local Business!
An especially illuminating insight into BP’s true attitude towards the environment comes from comments the company made during its failed bid to begin drilling in the Great Australian Bight. Situated off the central and western portions of Australia’s southern coastline, the Bight contains some of the continent’s most pristine and rugged coastline. The eastern end of the Bight is also home to Kangaroo Island, a relatively unspoiled and sparsely populated gem with stunning beaches, abundant kangaroos, seals and echidnas, and a koala population estimated to outnumber human residents by 10 to 1. It was in this highly ecologically sensitive environment that the company responsible for the world’s worst accidental oil spill wanted to start drilling.
Not surprisingly, BP’s proposal was met with significant local opposition and, thankfully, was eventually rejected by Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA). Correspondence from NOPSEMA to BP in 2015 and 2016, obtained by FOI requests, reveals a startling lack of detail on just how BP intended to deal with a plethora of environmental issues. For a company that is no stranger to submitting environmental safety proposals, it seems BP either wasn’t taking the process seriously or had long since gotten used to having its way with lax regulators. There were, however, a few highly revealing details that BP did include.
BP’s own modeling showed a spill could hit land as far away as New South Wales, on Australia’s east coast. It found a worst case shoreline scenario would result in the oiling of 650 kilometres of coastline at 125 days after the spill, increasing to 750km after 300 days. While that might sound like a catastrophic outcome to you and me, the “brave” eco-warriors at BP evidently weren’t fussed. According to the audacious brains trust who authored the company’s safety proposal, “In most instances, the increased activity associated with cleanup operations will be a welcome boost to local economies.”
The mind boggles. Even after the untold damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP apparently views its oil spills as a boon to local economies. BP’s statement evinces an alarmingly callous disregard for the multitude of humans, animals and flora that would be devastated by an oil spill in the Great Australian Bight.
BP’s Deadly Legacy in Colombia
At BP's annual shareholder meeting in April 2002 in London, company chairman Peter Sutherland lost his temper when asked about human rights issues in Colombia. "This AGM on an annual basis is not going to be allowed to become a pantomime for the discussion of political issues that we on the board and you, most of the shareholders, are not concerned with," he fumed.
Sutherland’s sheer and explicit disinterest in human rights violations probably goes a long way towards explaining the company's behaviour in Colombia.
BP started oil exploration and extraction in Colombia in the 1990s as part of an international consortium of oil companies, after ‘discovering’ two of the largest oil fields in Latin American history: Cusiana and Cupiagua. In the late 1990s, the BP-led consortium completed the 820 km Ocensa pipeline, which quickly became a military target for guerrillas.
Left-wing guerillas were hardly the only ones upset by the Ocensa consortium’s behaviour. BP’s arrival in Casanare in the early 90s wrought huge changes in the sprawling countryside. There was seismic exploration, the diversion of huge quantities of water to aid exploration, and the construction of the 830km pipeline that forced thousands of locals off their land. As in Aceh and the Niger Delta, outsiders profited handsomely while the hapless locals suffered miserably.
The inevitable protests were met with violent opposition. The UN estimates that 3,000 trade union activists were murdered and 6,000 more were disappeared in the Casanare region over the last 30 years. Many of the victims were unionists working in the oil industry, or social leaders in oil-producing regions. Numerous trade unionists, environmental campaigners and community activists who criticized BP and the other oil companies were murdered.
On 13th April 1995, for example, Carlos MesÌas ArriguÌ Cerquera and Gabriel Federico Ascencio, two peasant activists, were shot dead by gunmen who fled on a motorcycle. ArriguÌ Cerquera was the leader of a work stoppage protest in El Morro against BP in January 1994.
In 1995, residents of the village of El Morro set up a roadblock to demand compensation for damage to an access road by BP lorries. According to The Guardian, the brigade commander protecting BP claimed the blockade was guerrilla-inspired and unleashed a crackdown against its organisers. Two of the blockade leaders were assassinated and others were threatened. Government human rights lawyers investigated the killings and reported that BP's military protectors were "out of control".
On 3rd June 1996, Marcos Mendoza was shot dead in his home, allegedly by the GuÌas de Casanare Battalion of the Colombian army. Mendoza had earlier participated in a work stoppage in protest against BP.
Three months later, in September 1996, a protest against BP took place at Tauramena. Security forces were called in to tackle the protest, and a photographer covering it was killed.
In 1997, farmer Eliodoro Torres and his nephew were murdered. Torres had sold part of his land to BP for a production facility, and then later complained that the constant flaring of gas was preventing his cattle from breeding. After his assassination, his widow took up the case with the oil companies, and her son was later assassinated. In a subsequent legal case that she lost, the local court did not even allow her to give evidence.
In 2001, Aury Sara, president of the Cartagena office of the USO (the oil workers union) was kidnapped. His body was later found, showing signs of torture.
After Sara had initially gone missing, his friend Gilberto Torres, a trade union leader of the USO at a pumping station in Casanare, discussed the situation with co-workers. They agreed on an immediate strike, in the hope of saving Sara’s life.
As the days and nights passed, Torres says they were threatened by the army, the management of Ocensa and Ecopetrol, and the paramilitaries. They stood fast, eventually halting the flow of oil across Colombia.
In February 2002, while driving home from work, Torres himself was kidnapped and tortured. He spent 42 days in captivity, released only when his his trade union colleagues, who had mounted a strong campaign for his release, began threatening another expensive national oil strike. Unable to stomach the thought of another crippling national oil strike, those behind Torre's abduction decided it best to let him go.
Torres fled for Spain and tried to sue BP and six other related oil companies, but to no avail. On September 19, 2016, the High Court in London ordered that Torres’ case against BP – which enjoys intimate ties to the UK government - and the other companies should end with no payment of costs.
While there is no evidence that BP directly ordered any of these killings or kidnappings, the company cannot seriously claim to be unaware of the reputations of the entities it was colluding with.
In order to protect the pipeline, the Ocensa consortium utilized two lines of defence. The first involved the secretive London-based Defence Systems Limited and Israeli security company Silver Shadow. Second was a secret agreement with the Colombian defence ministry to provide protection by counter-guerrilla brigades based near the pipeline.
The BP-led Ocensa consortium directly provided 60 night vision goggles to the notorious 14th Brigade, which operates in Segovia, through which the pipeline passes. This brigade has one of the worst human rights records in Colombia's dirty war, including involvement in one of Colombia's worst massacres in Segovia in 1988 when more than 90 men, women and children were attacked and 43 of them killed.
A joint investigation by The Guardian and El Espectador newspapers, published in October 1998, also found that BP and OCENSA discussed supplying the Brigade with armoured attack helicopters, "anti-guerrilla special weaponry and ammo", small robotic spy planes (drones) and secure communications equipment.
Even the audacious BP could not feign ignorance of the brigade’s legacy, so the company instead brushed it off as a necessary part of doing business in Colombia. John O'Reilly, public relations adviser to BP in Colombia, said the sale of military equipment and the general relationship with the brigade were “unavoidable” under Ocensa's secret agreement with the defence ministry.
In 1995 a Colombian military intelligence officer, Colonel Luis Garces, then working for the also-notorious 16th Brigade, paid by BP to protect its oilfields, spoke to a government human rights commission. He revealed oil companies, including BP, had shared intelligence, such as photographs of the local communities, with his unit.
Journalists also discovered Defence Systems was being used to train local police assigned to protect the oil facilities in counter-guerrilla tactics, such as lethal-weapons handling, sniper fire and close-quarter combat (rather than simply defensive operations for the BP sites).
After further allegations of psychological operations, the use of covert operatives mingling with locals, the cultivation of paid snitches and the compilation of intelligence files on private individuals by DSC and Silver Shadow, BP reacted to The Guardian’s investigation by sacking its chief security officer, Roger Brown. Ludicrously, the company also asked Defence Systems to conduct an 'internal inquiry.'
The insincerity of BP's actions did not escape MEP Richard Howitt, who commented:
"What they are seeking to do is to minimise public attention of this problem by the sacking of Mr Brown and individualising the impact of the allegations against them. They are trying to say it's only one bad apple, when my research has shown that there's a pattern of threats and abuse against people who speak out against BP in Colombia."
Roger Brown was moved to Venezuela where he later started working for BP again.
BP consistently responded to criticism of its role in Colombia arguing that it had no choice but to work with the national police and army, and to employ its own security. This raises an obvious question:
Why did it remain there?
As Tessa Kingham MP, a member of the UK House of Commons Select Committee on International Development's 1998 inquiry into economic development and conflict, asked of BP:
"Do you [BP] feel that by having any kind of contact with a brigade that has been implicated in human rights abuses and massacres of innocent civilians those are the kinds of bedfellows that BP should have? Do you not feel that it would be in order for a reputable company to have no contact with these people at all? ... Would you then consider it to be pertinent not to put your profits above human rights abuses and people's lives and actually withdraw from that situation?"
Judging by it's behaviour over the next 12 years, BP's answer was a resounding "screw human rights, we place profits above people!" In 2010, BP finally sold its assets in Colombia, but only to use the $1.9 billion proceeds to help pay for the clean-up of the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe. As the company exited Colombia, it left behind a long list of claims regarding serious human rights abuses and environmental destruction for which it remains almost entirely unpunished, as well as a community which continues to live in deep poverty.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is British Petroleum: The “recurring environmental criminal” with a record-breaking tally of penalties, who thinks oil spills are great news for local communities, and who colluded with brutal assassination squads in Colombia. This is the kind of company the “ExxonMobil Knew!” crowd are happy to ignore, because their activist energy apparently must be preserved for companies guilty of far more trivial infractions - such as refusing to completely acquiesce to climate change alarmism.
Again, this reveals a lot about AGW warriors that they’d prefer us not to know.
Environmental Hell Courtesy Royal Dutch Shell
And what about Royal Dutch Shell? How does its environmental record stack up against that of ExxonMobil?
Poorly.
Shell and the US Army vs Colorado
In 1942, the US Army seized 43 square kilometres of land by eminent domain and established the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, some six miles northeast of downtown Denver, Colorado. The Army used the site to manufacture munitions and deadly chemical weapons, such as napalm bombs and mustard gas, until the 1960s. It then destroyed weapons at the arsenal through the 1980s. In addition, it leased a portion of the Arsenal to Shell from 1952 to 1982 to produce herbicides and pesticides. These activities left the Arsenal heavily contaminated with toxic chemical residues. The pollution spread from the site, and impacted neighboring farms. As with many post-military sites, the arsenal ranked among the most polluted places on Earth. The heart of the arsenal was once known as "America's most contaminated square mile."
Shell and the Army then began squabbling with the government and each other over their share of the cleanup cost. Shell tried to saddle its insurers with the clean-up bill. The insurers refused, because willingly polluting a site is hardly an insurable event. Shell took them to court, and lost.
Shell and the Army also spent 25 years battling The State of Colorado in court, finally agreeing to pay the State $35 million in damages for polluting groundwater at the arsenal.
Like BP, Shell has gone to great lengths over the years to reposition itself as an environmentally aware energy company. But it’s all a farce. As numerous critics have pointed out, the massive legal fees Shell spent fighting its insurers, Colorado, the federal government and the Army would have been far better spent on the cleanup effort. Both the Army and Shell, for example, refused to conduct dioxin testing when requested by the EPA, leaving it to taxpayers to foot the bill. They failed to adequately clean the area, necessitating a temporarily closure to the public in 2007 after a chemical warfare agent known as the "dew of death" was found at the site.
The 1973 and 1988 Norco Explosions
Norco, Louisiana is located along the Mississippi River approximately forty kilometres west of New Orleans. It is also the site of a Shell refinery and chemical plant where, on a summer’s day in 1973, a gas pipeline sprung a leak. The pipe ran parallel to Washington Street in the predominantly African-American community of Diamond. Residents recall seeing a white cloud of gas floating down the street, where 16-year old Leroy Jones was cutting grass at the home of Helen Washington, an elderly woman who was napping inside. Jones had taken a break to chat to some friends who were riding their bicycles in the area. After they left, Jones pulled the cord to restart the lawnmower. Residents believe a spark from the lawnmower ignited the gas that had escaped from the Shell pipeline.
The ensuing fireball scorched Jones and burned down Washington’s house. Jones, badly burned and blistered, stumbled around in shock, clutching his eyes. He died a few days later in hospital. Helen Washington died immediately, incinerated in her own home.
When author Steve Lerner contacted Shell to ask how much the victims’ families received in compensation, company officials said they had no record of the incident. There was also no mention of the incident in Shell’s Norco museum. Diamond residents, however, were unanimous in recalling the relatives of Helen Washington were paid $3,000 and that Leroy’s mother, Ruth Jones, was paid $500. It was a cruel and callous resolution, one that reeked of a willingness to take advantage of an impoverished community’s lack of legal knowledge and resources. Monique Harden, a former attorney for the EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund, was incensed, remarking “It is beyond an insult. The company doesn’t feel sorry for what happened. It doesn’t feel sorry for the loss of lives. It doesn’t value the people and what they meant to the community or their families or survivors.”[1]
In 1988, an even deadlier explosion ripped through the Norco refinery. Early in the morning on May 4, a catalytic cracking unit at the refinery blew up, killing seven Shell workers and injuring a further 48 residents and workers. The explosion launched 72 million kilograms of toxic chemicals into the air, caused widespread property damage, and necessitated the evacuation of 4,500 people. Debris from the blast was found five miles away, and the blast was heard 40 kilometres away in New Orleans, where it set off burglar alarms. The resultant fire burned for eight hours before it was brought under control.
In the wake of the disaster, many residents understandably concluded it was time to get the heck out of Diamond. Local citizens formed a coalition and embarked on what would prove to be a protracted battle with Shell. Finally, in June 2002, Shell signed an agreement in which those who wanted out could sell their properties to the company at a fair price and leave Norco[96]. The minimum offer was $80,000, and more than 300 families took it.
Shell’s Terrible North Sea Record
Ever since the late 1980s, Shell has been involved in dozens of mishaps, explosions and spills in the North Sea. On March 14, 1992, in the midst of appalling weather, a Super Puma helicopter transporting workers from Shell’s Cormorant Alpha platform crashed into the sea shortly after take-off. The co-pilot and ten oil workers, who were being flown to their floating accommodation just 180 metres away, were killed. The pilot and five others managed to survive the crash and were pulled from the freezing waters.
A Fatal Accident Inquiry by Sheriff Jessop of Aberdeen, Scotland and the UK Department of Transport's Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) conveniently dumped most of the blame on the pilot, Captain Jonathan Shelbourne.
But according to Charles Woolfson, John Foster and Matthias Beck, authors of Paying the Piper, a damning 1996 expose of Britain's offshore oil industry, blaming Shelbourne was almost certainly wrong.
An urgent telex warning of the imminent approach of a Polar Low that rendered the weather conditions wholly incompatible with the Super Puma chopper, logged into the Cormorant Alpha radio room, was not passed to the pilot. The flight should never have taken place, but no-one bothered to tell Shelbourne.
While Shelbourne was fingered as the main cause of the accident, Shell did not escape criticism. A boat should have been within 500 metres when the aircraft took off, but was 2 miles away trying to avoid heavy seas. "Had the stand-by vessel been advised of the movement of the helicopter and been in position," said the Sheriff heading the inquiry, “ ... the deaths of some of the survivors of the accident might have been prevented."
Shell responded with the usual corporate rhetoric: “The company took steps immediately after the accident to ensure that the procedures were adhered to.”
Whatever procedures Shell was adhering to immediately after the accident, they did not translate into prompt and effective action. Six of the victims died while awaiting rescue. The six survivors claimed that if not for the survival suits, they all would have perished in the freezing waters. One survivor, incredibly, lasted more than 90 minutes in the sea. This begged the question as to why rescue had taken so long to carry out.
First on the scene, some twenty minutes after the alarm was raised, was the standby vessel, closely followed by a Norwegian supply vessel, the Edda Fram. The sea was so rough the standby vessel could not launch its fast rescue craft. A truly heroic Edda Fram crew member was not prepared to stand by and watch people die, and promptly took matters into his own hands. Norwegian seaman Knut Rogne – a heroic man with balls of steel if ever there was one - dived into enormous 50-foot waves in a repeated attempt to rescue survivors, with only a rope tied round him.
That, Eileen Claussen, is real bravery – not a greenwashed redesign of a BP corporate logo.
Rogne managed to drag two men abroad the Edda Fram. One survived; the other, sadly, had swallowed copious amounts of water and later died. At the Fatal Accident Inquiry, the entire court stood to applaud Rogne’s incredible courage.
Shell to Victims: Sue Us and We’ll Have You Imprisoned
In stark contrast to Rogne’s awe-inspiring heroicism, Shell’s behaviour after the incident confirmed the company’s utter lack of humanity. After the Cormorant Alpha crash, survivors and relatives of the victims began litigation against Bristow in the UK, and in the courts of Texas and Louisiana against Shell and Exxon, Esso's US parent company (the Cormorant oilfield was operated by Shell, but also licensed to Esso).
With the prospect of US litigation, which held the potential for far greater payouts than those allowed under the outmoded Warsaw convention, Shell sought and obtained interim interdicts and injunctions in the UK against the bereaved families and survivors. They were to be prevented from pursuing an award in the American courts. Violation of this court order, Shell warned, could result in the families and survivors concerned being “subject to bodily imprisonment.”
It was a remarkable display of callousness, and even hardened lawyers involved in the proceedings reeled in disbelief. Any reference to imprisonment, said Shell, was “legal jargon”. Yes, legal jargon that explicitly threatened grieving families and traumatized survivors with imprisonment if they turned to the US legal system to hold Shell accountable.
Among other ‘legal jargon’ employed by Shell's QC was the description of US attorneys acting for the victims as “dogs straining at the leash”. He justified Shell's relentless legal wrangling as getting "the handlers to order the dogs to sit down."
What a maggot.
Shell’s disgraceful tactics failed to achieve their intended goal. Finally, when faced with the imminent prospect of US court proceedings going ahead, Shell opted for an out-of-court settlement in early 1996, nearly four years after the crash. The families reportedly received substantially greater compensation than they would have in the British courts, but the size of the settlement was not disclosed. The imposition of “gagging clauses” also left key questions about corporate culpability unanswered.
More North Sea Problems
Shell’s poor safety record in the North Sea continued. In 2006, an Aberdeen court ruled the deaths of two workers on a North Sea platform three years earlier could have prevented if Shell had properly repaired a hole in a corroding pipeline. A union official said repairs to the hole were hampered by a lift that was left broken for six months and stairs that were similarly neglected and in a dangerous state.
In August 2011, oil spewed from a faulty pipeline at Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform in the North Sea. The leak continued for ten days before it could be plugged, spilling an estimated 1,300 barrels and coating almost 7 square kilometres of sea surface in oil.
Enquiries by the Sunday Herald revealed Shell had been officially censured twenty-five times during the previous 6 years for breaking safety rules, giving it one of the worst safety records of any major oil company in the UK. Between 2005 and 2011, Shell had been prosecuted four times, with the company forced to pay out nearly £1 million in fines and legal costs. No other major oil company had faced as many prosecutions in the same period, according to the UK's Health and Safety Executive.
In early 2013, on the same day Shell reported global annual profits of $27 billion, government statistics revealed the company had been responsible for over 20 pollution accidents in British waters over a six-month period.
But don’t worry about that, oh heroic AGW warriors - you keep on hounding ExxonMobil for allegedly not supporting climate change propaganda!
More Royal Screw-Ups by Royal Dutch Shell
The Magdalena, Argentina Spill
On January 15, 1999, a bright, sunny mid-summer’s day, the Shell tanker Estrella Pampeana collided with German freighter Sea Parana near the shores of Magdalena, Argentina, spilling 5,400,400 litres of oil. It was the largest oil spill in Argentina, and the largest fresh water oil spill anywhere in the world. The accident occurred despite excellent climate conditions and visibility.
True to form, Shell denied responsibility for the collision and the spill, but in 2002 an Argentine court found Shell was responsible for the spill, and also ruled the oil giant had failed to clean up the coast after the accident. While 5,399 cubic metres of light crude had been spilled, Shell's clean-up crews recovered 1,500 cubic metres of oil and then called off the clean-up operation after 30 days. The court ordered Shell to pay 35 million pesos (US $10 million) to further clean up the coastal area near Magdalena.
The small town of 8,000, which relied heavily on tourism, experienced significant damage to its agriculture, fauna and flora, and contamination of its drinking water. Court claims alleged an increase in cancer cases and infant deaths as a result of the pollution. In May 2009, the Municipality of Magdalena accepted a US $9.5 million indemnification offer by Shell, settling the environmental damages claim initiated by the Municipality. Shell, responsible and eco-sensitive corporate citizen that it is, continued to deny all responsibility for the incident.
The Deadly 2017 Bahawalpur Explosion
On 25 June 2017, a tanker truck contracted by Royal Dutch Shell's local subsidiary crashed and overturned on a main highway in central Punjab Province while carrying some 50,000 liters of fuel. It exploded minutes later, sending a fireball through crowds from a nearby village who had gathered to scavenge the spilled fuel, despite warnings by the driver and police to stay away.
The final toll was 219 killed and at least 34 more people injured. Shell was ordered to pay the families of the deceased US $2.48 million in compensation.
Abdul Malik, a local police officer who was also among the first to arrive, described a "horrible scene."
"I have never seen anything like it in my life. Victims trapped in the fireball. They were screaming for help," he told Associated Press. "We saw bodies everywhere, so many were just skeletons. The people who were alive were in really bad shape."
An agency report seen by Reuters and AFP said Shell never checked if the private tanker it hired complied with safety standards, and that the tanker involved in the accident had four axles instead of the five recommended to carry such a load. The report also claimed the tanker's fitness certificate was "fake" and that Shell Pakistan's emergency response was "casual."
And then there’s Nigeria.
Rape, Torture and Murder in the Niger Delta
The 70,000 square kilometres of Africa’s Niger Delta contains some 7,400 square kilometres of mangroves, and is considered one of the world’s 10 most important wetlands and marine ecosystems in the world.
Not that Shell gives a shit.
The Dutch behemoth has been extracting oil in the Niger Delta since the 1940s, and remains the major player in the region. Literally hundreds of spills occur every year in the delta, a disgraceful state of affairs that has persisted for decades. Exactly how much oil is spilled annually remains unknown; in response to a lawsuit by the Bodo community for spills that occurred in 2008 and 2009, Shell claimed the volume of oil spilled was 4,000 barrels. Evidence proved the actual volume was closer to 500,000 barrels. Shell subsequently paid £55 million to the Bodo community in an out-of-court settlement.
Drawing on available data, a group of independent environmental and oil experts visiting the Niger Delta in 2006 put the figure for oil spilt, onshore and offshore, at 9 to 13 million barrels during the previous 50 years. Not only have these millions of barrels of oil wreaked untold environmental damage, they have caused untold health problems for the locals.
As Amnesty International reports:
“Women, men and children living in the Niger Delta have to drink, cook with, and wash in polluted water; they eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins ... the land they use for farming has been contaminated; after oil spills the air they breathe reeks of oil, gas and other pollutants; they complain of breathing problems, skin lesions and other health problems, but their concerns are not taken seriously and they have almost no information on the impacts of pollution.”
And as if all that isn’t bad enough, the hapless residents of the Niger Delta have had to contend with the jack-booted tactics of the Nigerian military government, which has employed extreme violence when defending Shell’s interests in the region. After investigating the subject, Amnesty International released a statement in November 2017 stating:
“Oil giant Shell has a case to answer for its role in human rights violations including murder, rape and torture committed by the Nigerian military government in the 1990s.
The victims were the Ogoni people, whose land has been devastated by pollution from Shell’s operations. When the Ogonis organized in peaceful protest, the Nigerian government unleashed a campaign of appalling violence against them.
Despite a raft of evidence linking Shell with the government’s actions, no company executive has ever been made to answer for its involvement.
The fact that Shell has never been held to account for this is an outrage, and one that sends a terrible message: if companies are rich and powerful enough, they can get away with anything.”
“From 1990 onwards,” said Amnesty, “Shell knew that its requests for the security forces to intervene in the Niger Delta were likely to result in human rights violations.”
In 1990, reports Amnesty, Shell requested the assistance of Nigerian paramilitary police to deal with peaceful protesters at one of its facilities in Umuechem. The police attacked the village with guns and grenades, killing eighty people and torching 595 houses.
Despite this atrocity, Shell repeatedly asked the Nigerian government to intervene in community protests, and these requests were predictably followed by violence and death.
Examples of these requests included:
A Shell memo showing that on March 18, 1993, Shell staff “pleaded” with the Rivers State governor for a military guard while its contractors laid a pipeline. On April 30, the army responded to community protests against the new pipeline by shooting and wounding 11 villagers at Biara village. Days later, on May 4, Shell again asked the governor for “assistance”. That same day, troops opened fire on community protests at Nonwa village, killing one man.
A May 12 memo showed Shell managers met senior government and security officials in Abuja “to mobilise support at top government levels”. The head of the security service assured Shell the Ogoni situation “would be over soon”. Two months later, the military incited a new wave of armed attacks on Ogonis.
In October 1993, Shell provided the army’s transport to Korokoro village, where troops opened fire on protesters. A 1995 statement from Shell Nigeria’s then-chairman Brian Anderson explained it was company policy at the time to provide the Nigerian government with logistical support – including the use of Shell’s boats, buses and helicopters.
“Shell,” asserts Amnesty, “had no qualms about repeatedly offering logistical support to security forces it knew were committing human rights violations. Shell even paid money to a military unit responsible for violence.”
In December 1993, shortly after a military coup, Shell wrote to the new Rivers State military administrator, highlighting the economic consequences of protests and naming communities where protests had taken place. A month later, the military administrator created the new Internal Security Task Force (ISTF), under the command of Major Paul Okuntimo. The ISTF began violently imposing its will almost immediately. On February 21, 1994, soldiers under Okuntimo’s command shot at thousands of people peacefully demonstrating outside Shell’s main compound.
Shell was highly pleased with the ISTF. On March 3, 1994, Shell paid Okuntimo and 25 of his men an “honorarium” which, according to an internal Shell memo, was a “show of gratitude and motivation for a sustained favourable disposition towards [Shell] in future assignments”.
Shortly after Shell provided this “show of gratitude and motivation”, the ISTF began a campaign of brutal raids in Ogoniland – killing, raping and torturing villagers. Shell, notes Amnesty, knew full well of these human rights violations.
The Ogoni crisis culminated in the executions of the “Ogoni Nine”. Among them was Ken Saro-Wiwa, a famous writer and Ogoni protest leader. At the height of the crackdown in Ogoniland, Shell provided encouragement and more “motivation” to the military authorities to stop protests, specifically naming Ken Saro-Wiwa. A memo describes how, at a meeting with President Sani Abacha on April 30, 1994, then director of Shell Nigeria Brian Anderson raised “the problem of the Ogonis and Ken Saro-Wiwa”. Anderson reported he came away from the meeting with the sense that Abacha “will intervene with either the military or the police.”
Sure enough, within a month Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders were arrested, wrongly accused of involvement in murder, and held without charge. The men were subjected to torture and other abuse during their detention. Meanwhile, the ISTF raided and terrorized Ogoni villages, raping women and girls, and detaining, torturing and killing people.
Saro-Wiwa and the remainder of the Ogoni Nine were found guilty in a sham trial and executed on November 10, 1995. Shell’s Saro-Wiwa “problem” had been solved in the most brutal of fashions.
With little hope of obtaining justice in Nigeria, some of the victims filed civil claims in other jurisdictions. In 1996, relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa and others launched a civil case against Shell in a US court. On the eve of the trial, in 2009, Shell settled out of court with the plaintiffs for $15.5 million, but did not admit liability.
Another group of litigants, including Esther Kiobel, the widow of executed Ogoni Nine member Dr Barinem Kiobel, launched a separate case against Shell, which the company did not settle. Instead it argued the US should not have jurisdiction over the case. In 2013, the US Supreme Court ruled in Shell’s favour on the jurisdiction issue.
On 29 June 2017, Kiobel announced she had filed a writ in the Netherlands, commencing legal action against Shell there, to pursue justice for her husband and herself. Kiobel brought the case along with three other widows whose husbands were also executed. The four widows were demanding damages and a public apology from Shell. In March 2022, their case was rejected in a final ruling by the District Court in Hague (Shell’s former home town). In November that same year, the widows abandoned a planned appeal of the decision.
In 2015, Shell avoided a London High Court case by reaching a settlement over its Nigerian oil spills; £35m would be paid directly to affected individuals and £20m paid to the Bodo community.
Shame On You, AGW Shills
ExxonMobil is constantly attacked as a ‘denier’ by climate change activists. By targeting ExxonMobil and ignoring BP and Shell (or even praising them, as activists Naomi Oreskes and Eileen Claussen have done), the AGW movement unwittingly reveals its real motivation is not the environment. When the environmental records of these three oil behemoths are compared, ExxonMobil easily emerges as the least worse of a bad bunch.
Sadly, all three have appalling human rights records. All three companies have shown a willingness to collude with brutal military forces in order to protect their profits and crush dissent from long-suffering locals. All three companies have also displayed a callous indifference to this suffering and have fought doggedly to avoid civil and criminal responsibility when victims have tried to hold them to account.
AGW activists care about none of this. At the ‘elite’ globalist parasite level, where the climate change narrative is controlled, climate alarmism has never been about the environment. It has always been about money, power and fulfilling a twisted depopulation agenda.
At the grassroots level, climate change activism is dominated by useful idiots who have been pumped full of hysterical doomsday sentiment. Many of these low-level activists are probably unaware of much of the information I have presented above, because they do not do their own research but simply take their cues from government and mainstream media as to what they should think and be outraged by. As such, we have generations of people who consider themselves enlightened, but are in fact textbook classic dolts easily manipulated into supporting the current thing. The current thing, of course, being determined by the same wealthy and powerful parasitic class who congregate in Davos each year.
The climate change agenda is not about saving the world; it’s about reshaping the world in the twisted vision of globalist psychopaths. And ground floor climate change activists, in all their gullible, mindless self-righteous glory, are helping them do it.
---
References
Lerner S. Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor. MIT Press, Feb 17, 2006: 29-31.
Ibid: 32.
Leave a Reply