Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

In the latter arbitration, Chevron claims that Ecuador had violated the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) by letting the case advance.     Since that time, the BIT claimed jurisdiction over the case, and both parties are currently gathering evidence for proceedings on whether Chevron received a fair shake in Ecuador.

Under U.S. law, federal courts can issue discovery orders forcing parties involved in "foreign or international tribunals" to turn over information that would be useful in those proceedings.     The 5th Circuit, a New Orleans-based federal appeals court, found that Chevron cagily straddled this language to get Ecuador to cough up documents while protecting its own.

A federal judge quashed the subpoenas, deferring to Chevron's arguments that the BIT did not qualify as a "tribunal" - when Ecuador wanted evidence for it.

He was quickly handed responsibility beyond his years. For instance, he  was directly involved in an attempted hostile takeover of an American oil company, Kerr-McGee. Hours before it was due to go ahead, the takeover was halted after the intervention of the French prime minister who feared it would damage French-US relations.Before it was stopped, Mr Skjevesland recalled Mr Welby was instructed by Elf’s group treasurer to transfer $2 billion. ‘One morning Justin came in to the office and told me, “I got a phone call from New York last night. We’re going to go ahead with the acquisition.”

Mr Welby had been a committed Christian since university yet rarely discussed his faith with colleagues. But some recall him wearing a cross pinned to the breast pocket of his tweed jacket. Isobel Gil-Noble, the warden of St Michael’s, the English-speaking Paris church Mr Welby attended, said: ‘Justin was a bit of a yuppie – and a real slick professional.’Mr Skjevesland, who was the company’s assistant treasurer for most of Mr Welby’s time with Elf, also attended the monthly talks in Lagos on the Bonny LNG project.It was at this time, unbeknown to Mr Welby who only learnt of the allegations last year, that abuses were being carried out in Elf’s name in the Delta.

Archbishop Welby said in a statement last night: ‘During my time at that company [Elf] I worked in a junior finance capacity on a project in Nigeria, travelling to Lagos from Paris. ‘To suggest that I was in some way responsible for making strategic decisions, or that I was even aware of any alleged dubious confidential strategy by Elf, is absurd given my youth and lack of seniority. ‘In the case of the Bonny LNG project, Elf only had a five per cent stake, so even the company itself had minimal influence in decision making.’

Shell obtained permission to occupy (PTO) during the apartheid era, when black people were not permitted to obtain title deeds to land. A PTO holder once paid a token rent to the government; now it pays it to the Ingonyama Trust Board, which administers about 2.8m hectares of land in KwaZulu-Natal. The board says the agreement legally cannot be changed, despite the stations' profitability.

“The intention is to determine the state of our facilities since we suspended operations in the area in 1993, and determine how best to decommission them,” the head of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), Mutiu Sunmonu, said in a statement.

“If the purpose is to clean the spills, they are welcome but UNEP should supervise the exercise… The problem we have with Shell is that it is not socially responsible,” said Wiwa, an activist with the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People.

"We urgently need more assistance from the Nigerian government and its security forces, other governments and other organizations," Mr. Sunmonu said.

Exxon Mobil Corp over its activity in Indonesia

It, however, warned: “We will continue to participate in the illicit trade until the Federal Government offers us amnesty and reparation or indemnification for our property, such as the refineries, boats, and houses being destroyed by the government.”

According to the group, ‘’We expect government to encourage and complement us for coming up with this lucrative inventory skills to help government create millions of jobs for Nigerians”.

“It has been recorded that the business also grow large in the region, as many of the powerful businessmen acquire  weapons to fight security operatives to continue their sabotage, which has led to the death of many security operatives in the region,” it asserted. Tamana explained, “Local refinery operators are the main agitators in N-Delta region, the struggle is divided into two perspectives, the militants and the oil refinery operators.” ‘’The government has only succeeded in identifying with militants, but not knowing that we are more stronger  than  militants, the government mistake us to be militants, we are different from militants,  that is why amnesty offer to militant does not put stop to activities oil bunkering and local refinery operations.

The illegal refineries are only one part of the illicit industry in Africa's biggest oil producer, and concerns have grown over its alleged international dimension. Authorities, oil firms and industry analysts say the chain of culprits and the stolen crude itself can sometimes reach far beyond Nigerian shores. "I've always said in my speeches that I believe that there are a lot of international syndicates involved," Mutiu Sunmonu, managing director of Shell's Nigerian division SPDC, told reporters recently.

Decades of oil pollution have at the same time poisoned creeks in a region where fishing had been a major source of livelihood, often with few repercussions for those at fault. Shell, Nigeria's biggest oil producer, says most spills happen due to sabotage, but activists accuse the company of not doing enough to prevent and clean them.

Human rights abusers may be rejoicing today, but this is a major setback for their victims, who often look to the United States for justice when all else fails.  Now what will they do?”

Last year I wrote a post on Tullow Oil’s secret deals in Uganda, contrasting that situation to Tullow’s much more transparent operations in Ghana. After I published that story a Tullow Oil representative contacted me and explained that Tullow’s practices were dictated by local governments. Tullow can be transparent in Ghana because the government wants to be transparent. In Uganda, the official told me, the government does not want contract information published.

While offering general endorsements of transparency, oil companies typically defer actual requests for contract and other information to governments. “I have tried to communicate with them but they instead refer me to local government officials,” said Kuich, the South Sudanese freelance journalist. Levi Obonyo, former chairman of Kenya’s independent Media Council, says bluntly that oil companies hide behind governments to avoid public scrutiny.

We shouldn’t forget that the S.E.C. adopted rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requiring oil and gas companies to disclose payments to foreign governments (section 1504). At the time, The Wall Street Journal reported that,  “The rules for section 1504 set a $100,000 threshold, below which companies would not have to report payments. The rules do not contain exemptions for reporting “confidential or competitively sensitive information” or exemptions for instances in which reporting the payments might violate foreign laws.”

"Because of oil production, rising expectations in Ghana will have to be met. But at the same time, past policy choices constrain the room for manoeuvre and Ghana is toeing a very delicate line," said Razia Khan, Africa analyst at Standard Chartered Bank in London.

Across the capital Accra, evidence of new resource wealth abounds - brightly-lit multi-storey buildings, cranes looming over construction sites, well-paved roads and billboards advertising banks, cars and mobile phones.But many Ghanaians remain excluded. An influx of rural workers hoping for jobs in Accra, has spawned a sprawl of outlying shanty towns and spilled vendors across the streets.Standing in a trash-strewn courtyard, 49-year-old school teacher Monica Quansah wonders where the oil money is going."Our children are still attending school under trees," she said. "Those of us in the city don't have reliable power and water, let alone those in the regions."