This article by Ben Amunwa first appeared in The Huffington Post on 19 October 2011. EthicalOil.org has a reputation for using just about anything to promote Canada's tar sands. The local mayor, Aboriginals and environmentalists have all been thrust into EthicalOil.org's narrative, some against their will. This Monday it was my turn to get 'tarred' as…
This article first appeared on the Amnesty International UK, Press Release Me, Set Me Free blog on 17 October 2011. by Ben Amunwa Can we stop Shell abusing human rights? In the case of Shell in Nigeria this is a question well worth asking. Over the past few months, Shell’s appalling legacy of pollution and human rights abuses…
by Ben Amunwa This article first appeared in Foto8 magazine, The Legacy of Oil edition, 14 October 2010. Outside the plane window at the Niger Delta, the oil region of Nigeria, I can see a solid bed of rainforest with wide ribbons of water the colour of coffee dregs coiling through it. I try to…
This blog first appeared on the Greenpeace UK blog on 7 October 2011. This time last year I was standing in a vast pool of oily water. It used to be a fish pond for local villagers, but now everywhere was coated with oil and the stench of petroleum was overpowering. A light rain was falling.…
Oil and private military/mercenary company Heritage has muscled its way into Libya. The London-based oil company is the first new foreign oil company to buy its way into Libya, after acquiring a controlling 51% stake in Sahara Oil Services – which apparently brings the right to bid for and operate oil and gas licenses in…
Counting the Cost implicates Shell in cases of serious violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region from 2000 to 2010. The report uncovers how Shell’s routine payments to armed militants exacerbated conflicts, in one case leading to the destruction of Rumuekpe town where it is estimated that at least 60 people were killed. The report describes…
Oil runs through every sector of society. London, our city, is one of the global centres of the oil industry. Oil companies use the city to extract a combination of financial, political, legal and technological services that enable them to produce, pump, transport, refine and sell oil and gas. For more than a decade, Platform…

