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At a parliamentary hearing in the Netherlands last week, Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, Nigerian and British activists, Dutch MPs and others accused the company of breaches of safety, human rights abuses, destroying lives and the environment, hiding information, gas flaring and blaming locals for oil pollution in Nigeria.

Shell Holland's president, Peter de Wit, denied all the charges and insisted that the company applied "global standards" to its operations around the world. He argued that Shell had provided thousands of well-paid jobs, brought know-how, education and technology and had launched numerous community projects in the west African nation.

The UN Environment Programme, using money from Shell, has spent four years investigating and assessing thousands of oil spills in Ogoniland, the small oil-rich region of the Niger Delta where the company was active until forced out over pollution by Ogoni leaders including Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was hanged by the Nigerian military regime in 1995.The UN report will not say who caused the spills but will confirm that large areas of land remain polluted, drinking water wells are still highly toxic and many of the fishing creeks are unproductive.

Nigeria is strategic to the global energy need, it is also crucial to the maintenance of security of the Gulf of Guinea region; the fear of the magnitude of the crisis and insecurity in that region forced the US to create the African Command.

I was motivated by the conviction that parliaments are central to good governance—representing the voice of the people, making laws and holding the executive to account. I still believe that, but the complex challenges posed by oil wealth in today's Africa means parliaments across the continent struggle to fulfil these roles.

The message was clear: to be an MP representing the voice of your constituents against the interests of the elite can be dangerous. African MPs need not only to be wealthy, but also brave.

Tribalism is never far beneath the surface and is a major barrier to achieving a national consensus. For many Africans, tribal allegiances are strong, but there is weak identification with the nation. Crafting unity in a nation created by imposed colonial boundaries remains a distant concept—witness the imminent breakup in Sudan—and often impedes efforts to garner widespread support for a national oil or mining policy. Failed efforts to build national consensus around policy objectives can lead to situations like Ghana's, where the country has begun oil production without coming to agreement on a national oil policy, instead following an outdated law drafted in 1984 with few regulations to ensure the country derives the maximum benefit from its finite resources.

The case stems from oil pollution in the Ecuadorean rain forest, but Chevron does not operate there and has no significant assets in the country. It was Texaco, which Chevron acquired in a merger in 2001, that was accused of widespread environmental damage before pulling out of Ecuador in the early 1990s.

Chevron has much larger operations elsewhere in Latin America, and the plaintiffs’ strategy of pursuing the company across the region could open a contentious new phase in the case — one that would test Ecuador’s political ties with its neighbors and involve some of Washington’s most prominent lobbyists and lawyers.

Advisers to the plaintiffs said Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela would be obvious candidates to pursue Chevron assets, but they acknowledged it would not be easy. Venezuela, for instance, is a close Ecuadorean ally and its president, Hugo Chávez, is a frequent critic of the United States. But Chevron has extensive operations in Venezuela and enjoys warmer ties with Mr. Chávez’s government than just about any other American company.

Jarch is chaired by Philippe Heilberg, who during the 1990s worked as a Wall Street banker in the commodities division of American International Group, a giant American financial company that nearly collapsed in 2008.

On the same BBC program, Steve Wiggins, a Research Fellow at the think-tank the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) said the deal raised concerns over land rights. “The concerns are very clearly first and foremost alienation of the land rights of people who are already there. And particularly some of the marginal and poor people who may not have legal title to their land and these people are obviously vulnerable to losing the means of their livelihoods.”

This is the latest withdrawal of oil majors from Uganda and other 20 African countries, and is part of the growing trend of shifting away from retail and marketing to exploration and production, where returns on investments are high.

“We are reviewing our business globally and shall end up with a downstream footprint in larger markets with bigger profits because small markets are not profitable,” Kyayonka observed.

“The issue is about utilisation of capital. We have a pot of money from the shareholders and public funds from which they expect returns on their investments,” Kyayonka stated. “As managers, we have to think of where the dividends come from, and that is in exploration and production.”

More oil finds would help ease the burden on the cedi, which is slipping badly against the major currencies. The cedi was quoted at almost one to one with the dollar, when the nation went to the polls in December 2008. It dropped sharply against the major currencies when the then incoming Trade Minister, Ms. Hannah Tetteh, dropped her infamous 'Ghana is broke' bombshell. The cedi then rallied, according to an official pronouncement, "as a result of prudent" economic measures put in place by the government. It is beginning to look like the measures are no more holding. At the last count, the cedi was being exchanged for the dollar at GH ¢1.53, an indication that the national currency has depreciated by about 30 percent in recent times.

The law, passed on March 2, allows oil revenue to be used as collateral for loans in a “credit enhancement” program, said Wayne Mitchell, resident representative for the fund, based in Accra, the capital. The risk of default is reduced, which will lower interest rates, he said.

A provision to keep 21 percent of the revenue in a stabilization fund for the country to fall on in times of price volatility and a heritage fund with 9 percent of earnings saved for the future is “best practice,” Mitchell said in an earlier interview on March 2.

The new law will require Ghana’s government to publish a breakdown of all the oil-related money it receives and where it goes. It establishes watchdog groups to keep an eye on the oil money.

The new law will require Ghana’s government to publish a breakdown of all the oil-related money it receives and where it goes. It establishes watchdog groups to keep an eye on the oil money.

The new law will require Ghana’s government to publish a breakdown of all the oil-related money it receives and where it goes. It establishes watchdog groups to keep an eye on the oil money.

The less attractive possibility is that there is much more money to be made by Shell on a global basis by stemming oil flow from Nigeria than in keeping it flowing.

According him, what Shell is doing, is merely restructuring its port folio by divesting from small oil fields, which he noted was not a strange practice globally,