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Arabica Robusta

Idku - a neglected town stands up against environmental degradation | Egyptian Initiati... - 0 views

eipr.org/...1746

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource egypt

shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Talking to Idku locals, their pride in their hometown's past glory is  hard to miss - “Idku used to be Egypt’s food basket”, they tell me. But so is the bitterness over its lost potential; the neglect, violations, and loss of their livelihoods, “Idku is an orphan town no one cares about”.
  • These factors are further confounded by evident climate change impacts: the community’s resilience to the longer and stronger seasonal wave surges is weakened by the uncontrolled raking of Idku’s sand dunes (now almost completely removed) by big-business construction contractors, changing the coastal topography and depriving the area of a natural shoreline barrier.
  • Shifting seasons have aggravated the impacts of already declining fish populations on the vulnerable fishermen, diminishing the catch yield and fish variety. Degraded farmland is suffering from increasing salination, with 95% of the famed guava orchards seriously damaged.
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  • Yet Idku remains defiant, even in the face of the Egyptian Liquefied Natural Gas  Project, a massive natural gas liquefaction facility on the nearby beach. The oil operations are run by two joint ventures Rashpetco and Burullus, whose shareholders include the British BG, Malaysian PETRONAS, French Gaz de France,  and the Egyptian state companies EGAS and EGPC .
  • Unfortunately, BP has not given up completely. Instead of recognising that it's not wanted, the company has moved to a new location futher east along the coast. Now the struggle moves to Mtubas  in Kafr elSheikh, the new proposed site for BP’s gas plant.
  • To day, these demands remain unmet. So when British Petroleum eyed Idku for an onshore natural gas processing plant, the community took matters into its own hand: it mobilized to stand up against the proposed project. Roads were blocked, a sit-in occupied the construction site, BP's office was raided and popular assemblies took place in the street. The organised local campaigning and resistance by the Idku community managed to halt BP’s plans.
Arabica Robusta

Oil companies in emerging markets: Safe sex in Nigeria | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...ni-win-huge-nigerian-oil-block

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Malabu then sued the government. After much legal wrangling, they reached a deal in 2006 that reinstated the firm as the block’s owner. This caught Shell unawares, even though it had conducted extensive due diligence and had a keen understanding of the Nigerian operating climate thanks to its long and often bumpy history in the country. It responded by launching various legal actions, including taking the government to the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.
  • Tom Mayne of Global Witness, an NGO, has followed the case closely; he believes things were structured this way so that Shell and ENI could obscure their deal with Malabu by inserting a layer between them. Mr Agaev, Malabu’s former fixer, lends weight to this interpretation. It was, he says, structured to be a “safe-sex transaction”, with the government acting as a “condom” between the buyers and seller.
  • Shell and ENI reject the suggestion that their joint purchase was a thinly disguised transaction with a dodgy brass-plate company. Shell says it made payments to the Nigerian government only and that it has acted at all times in accordance with Nigerian law. It previously said it had “not acted in any way that is outside normal global industry practice”. ENI says its payments to the government “were made in a transparent manner through an escrow arrangement with a major international bank”. That bank was JPMorgan Chase. A Lebanese bank had earlier declined to handle the payments, it emerged in court.
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  • The companies’ claim that they bought the block from the state, not Malabu, is disingenuous, says Mr Mayne of Global Witness. It is also contradicted by Nigeria’s attorney-general, Mohammed Bello Adoke, who told a parliamentary committee last July that the companies “agreed to pay Malabu”, with the government acting as an “obligor” and “facilitator.”
  • The EFCC’s report states: “Investigations conducted so far reveal a cloudy scene associated with fraudulent dealings. A prima facie case of conspiracy, breach of trust, theft anmd [sic] money laundering can be established against some real and artificial persons.” Officially, the EFCC’s investigation is still open, but a source familiar with it says that its sleuths have been discouraged by higher-ups from moving forward. However, other countries’ fraudbusters have taken an interest. At least one of the parties involved in the oil-block sale has been contacted by America’s Department of Justice.
  • The saga is a striking example of an ethical dilemma that is growing more acute for international oil companies. They are desperate to replace their shrinking reserves with new finds, but many of the most attractive fields are in unstable or poorly governed places.
  • Mr Hughes argues that when foreign companies turn a blind eye to questionable aspects of a deal, it can sometimes benefit developing countries with natural resources. The publicly traded oil majors are, on balance, a force for good, raising overall standards of behaviour by trying to operate as cleanly as possible in most circumstances, he says; better that than leaving the field to less scrupulous operators.
  • Global Witness prefers to see the OPL245 affair as “a lesson in corruption” that demonstrates how important it is for rich-world governments to press on with transparency initiatives
Arabica Robusta

Nigeria: Oil Companies And Criminal Abuse Of Expatriate Quota By Ifeanyi Izeze | Sahara... - 0 views

saharareporters.com/...expatriate-quota-ifeanyi-izeze

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 02 May 13 - No Cached
  • However as at today three years after it came into existence as a law, the stipulations on allocation of the number of new expatriates or extension of stay of those already in the country to work in a company or particular project is only on the paper used in writing the Content Act.
  • The foreign operators have abused their allowed expatriate quota with impunity simply because they have found ways of circumventing the system that was supposed to monitor compliance. Some companies even bring in all kinds of funny “expatriates” under the guise of expertise without recourse to approval from any government monitoring agency.
  • These agencies either for outright lack of will power to be honest and do the right thing approve applications for expatriate quotas allocations and variations without recourse to existing Regulations and so you see even cooks and washer-men, security men, mechanics amongst many others  work in Nigeria as expatriates with unthinkable pay.
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  • The companies from day one recruit these so called expatriates from countries where labour is so cheap, pay them what they were supposed to be paid in their countries but on paper claim they are paid what oil workers earn in Austrialia or America. Is this not fraud and money laundering?
Arabica Robusta

Shell returns to massively polluted Nigeria oil region - 0 views

www.vanguardngr.com/...ly-polluted-nigeria-oil-region

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse nigeria shell spills

shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • “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.
Arabica Robusta

[Corporate Lying] Shell Warns of Environmental Cost of Oil Theft in Niger Delta | Fox B... - 0 views

www.foxbusiness.com/...-cost-oil-theft-in-niger-delta

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria shell marketing spills

shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • "We urgently need more assistance from the Nigerian government and its security forces, other governments and other organizations," Mr. Sunmonu said.
  • Arabica Robusta on 12 Apr 13
     
    How corporations lie.
Arabica Robusta

Extreme Oil: Costly, Dirty and Dangerous (Klare) | Informed Comment - 0 views

www.juancole.com/...dirty-and-dangerous-klare.html

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource

shared by Arabica Robusta on 28 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Once this surge in U.S. energy production was linked to a predicted boom in energy from Canada’s tar sands reserves, the results seemed obvious and uncontestable.  “North America,” he announced, “is becoming the new Middle East.”  Many other analysts have elaborated similarly on this rosy scenario, which now provides the foundation for Mitt Romney’s plan to achieve “energy independence” by 2020.
  • Perhaps the most notable example of this was Shell Oil’s costly failure to commence test drilling in the Alaskan Arctic.  After investing $4.5 billion and years of preparation, Shell was poised to drill five test wells this summer in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska’s northern and northwestern coasts.  However, on September 17th, a series of accidents and mishaps forced the company to announce that it would suspend operations until next summer — the only time when those waters are largely free of pack ice and so it is safer to drill.
  • Only after promising to take immensely costly protective measures and winning the support of the Obama administration — fearful of appearing to block “job creation” or “energy independence” during a presidential campaign — did the company obtain the necessary permits to proceed.  But some lawsuits remain in play and, with this latest delay, Shell’s opponents will have added time and ammunition.
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  • Another unexpected impediment to the arrival of energy’s next “golden age” in North America emerged even more unexpectedly from this summer’s record-breaking drought, which still has 80% of U.S. agricultural land in its grip.  The energy angle on all this was, however, a surprise.
  • If this year’s “endless summer” of unrelenting drought were just a fluke, and we could expect abundant water in the future, the golden age scenario might still be viable.  But most climate scientists suggest that severe drought is likely to become the “new normal” in many parts of the United States, putting the fracking boom very much into question. 
  • If the U.S. proves too tough a nut to crack, Alberta has a backup plan: construction of the Northern Gateway, a proposed pipeline through British Columbia for the export of tar sands oil to Asia.  However, it, too, is running into trouble.  Environmentalists and native communities in that province are implacably opposed and have threatened civil disobedience to prevent its construction (with major protests already set for October 22nd outside the Parliament Building in Victoria).
  • While output from unconventional oil operations in the U.S. and Canada is likely to show some growth in the years ahead, there is no “golden age” on the horizon, only various kinds of potentially disastrous scenarios.  Those like Mitt Romney who claim that the United States can achieve energy “independence” by 2020 or any other near-term date are only fooling themselves, and perhaps some elements of the American public. 
  • The drought’s impact on hydro-fracking became strikingly evident when, in June and July, wells and streams started drying up in many drought-stricken areas and drillers suddenly found themselves competing with hard-pressed food-producers for whatever water was available. 
Arabica Robusta

PressTV - West using terror to plunder oil resources of Nigeria - 0 views

presstv.com/...-terror-to-destabilize-nigeria

industry petroleum development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Balkanising the country into North-South entities would undermine the central government in Abuja and bolster exploitation by these corporations.
  • Political analyst Olufemi Ijebuode says: “The upshot of this latest massacre is to destabilize the state of Nigeria by sowing sectarian divisions among the population. The killers may have been Boko Haram operatives, but Boko Haram is a proxy organization working on behalf of foreign powers.”
  • Campbell reiterated the significant observation: “The Mubi atrocity will feed a popular perception that the government can no longer ensure security in large parts of the country.”
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  • However, the fragmentation of Nigeria would undermine the political base of the central government. Nigeria’s political class has an unenviable reputation for institutionalized corruption and graft. Those flaws would most probably intensify in splintered and weakened political administrations. In that scenario, the powerful Western oil companies stand to gain by extracting even more favorable terms for oil production.
  • Political analyst Olufemi Ijebuode is convinced that Britain, France and Israel have also stepped up covert military involvement in Nigeria over the same period.
  • The same Western objective of fracturing, balkanising and weakening countries is also seen to be playing out in Sudan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria. Nigeria’s oil and gas riches and its position as a natural leader of African nations underscores the Western objective with regard to West Africa.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 09 Oct 12
       
      Frynas, citing Ahmad Khan, makes the same point in his work on instability and corporate exploitation in Nigeria.
Arabica Robusta

West using terror to plunder oil resources of Nigeria | nsnbc - 0 views

nsnbc.wordpress.com/...under-oil-resources-of-nigeria

industry petroleum development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • With a population of 160 million, Nigeria is the known as the “giant of Africa”. In addition to crude oil, Nigeria has also the biggest reserves of natural gas among Sub-Saharan nations. Western energy companies are gearing up to tap this wealth even further in the coming years. Balkanising the country into North-South entities would undermine the central government in Abuja and bolster exploitation by these corporations.
  • However, some Nigerian analysts believe that the organization is being used by powerful external forces as a conduit for destabilizing Nigeria. Political analyst Olufemi Ijebuode says: “The upshot of this latest massacre is to destabilize the state of Nigeria by sowing sectarian divisions among the population. The killers may have been Boko Haram operatives, but Boko Haram is a proxy organization working on behalf of foreign powers.”
  • Campbell reiterated the significant observation: “The Mubi atrocity will feed a popular perception that the government can no longer ensure security in large parts of the country.”
Arabica Robusta

Obama on Wrong Side in Shell Oil Human Rights Case | Black Agenda Report - 0 views

blackagendareport.com/...-shell-oil-human-rights-case-0

industry petroleum development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • But now, under these circumstances, Shell Oil claims it is not a person, subject to human law, but an entity possessing corporate immunities.
  • When Shell Oil walked into the U.S. Supreme Court building, this week, claiming that it is not responsible for the torture and murder of Nigerians in its oil fields in the Niger River Delta, the Dutch corporation had a friend in the courtroom: the Obama administration.
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