Breaking: Shell Gannet Alpha oil Spill hits North Sea
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Aug 13, 2011
From BBC News last night: Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has said it is working to stop a leak at one of its North Sea oil platforms. The leak was found near the Gannet Alpha platform, 180 km (113 miles) from Aberdeen, Scotland. The company would not say how much oil may have been spilt...
Oil spills & military collusion continue in Niger Delta as Exxon’s offshore fields go down
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Jun 26, 2010
With the media searching for new angles on BP’s Gulf disaster, stories on the devastation in Nigeria and the “normality” of spills in the Delta are now finally making it back into the papers – see Benoit Faucon’s piece in the Wall Street Journal and Adam Nossiter’s NYT article. It’s about time, as several Exxon spills in quick...
Nigerian Regulators Need Real Powers
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Jun 22, 2010
Breaking years of silence, politicians and regulators in Nigeria are talking tough on oil spills in the aftershock of the BP disaster. Officials had stern words with Shell over its inadequate clean-up activities, and Exxon Mobil, who were ‘cautioned’ over a recent spill of over a million gallons. Upping the stakes, the governor of Delta...
Will BP Oil Spill Make Shell ‘Come Clean’?
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Jun 16, 2010
As the US government takes BP to task over the disasterous Gulf of Mexico spill, many Nigerians (including twitter users) are asking, ‘what about Shell?’. There is nothing clean about Shell’s operations in the Niger Delta, where daily oil spills are frequently ignored for months and where ‘clean up’ methods include dumping oil-drenched soil into pits before...
Who to blame for the Gulf of Mexico spill?
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May 10, 2010
As the leaking crude in the Gulf of Mexico chokes sperm whales, wipes out local fishing incomes and ruins tourist destinations, we’ll see continued debates over who is to blame. Obama is pointing at BP, insisting the company won’t be let off the hook. BP’s claiming that they weren’t really on the scene – Transocean...
Shell Wreak Havoc in Nigeria And Head to Ghana
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Mar 26, 2010
Shell is pushing for a more active role in Ghana’s vast new oil fields, which may hold over 500 million barrels of oil. With a legacy of turmoil in Nigeria crippling its supply, Shell was desperate to impress at an industry summit this week before Ghana’s Vice President Mahama and the Director of Ghana National...
Iraq: New contracts will undermine Iraqi independence
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Nov 12, 2009
The mega-oil deals signed and pledged in Iraq in last week have been major news, marking another step by the oil majors back into a country that liberated itself from the “robbery and exhaustion practiced by the monopolistic oil companies” in 1972. But the full consequences of the agreements have been hard to untangle. BP and Chinese...
Flawed logic of Nigeria’s response to insurgency
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Jun 26, 2009
Is there any logic to the Nigerian Federal Government’s latest offer of amnesty to armed insurgents in the oil-rich Delta region? The offer follows one of the largest military offensives in the region, in which hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed and many thousands displaced. The government’s idea of winning the hearts and minds...
