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ENVIRONMENT: Shell Faces Global Attack

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jun 23 2004 (IPS) - The giant oil company Shell ran into a barrage of charges from around the world Wednesday over the damage it is causing to health and the environment.

Activists brought together by the environment group Friends of the Earth highlighted the damage being caused by Shell installations from Sakhalin in East Russia to the Niger Delta in Nigeria to Texas in the United States.

Reports by activists in these areas were brought together in a report ‘Beyond the Shine – the Other Shell Report 2003’ released by Friends of the Earth at a meeting at the House of Commons in London.

The group had released a similar report a year back. But over the past year many legal challenges to Shell have been launched in Texas, in the Philippine capital Manila and in Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Activists backed by Friends of the Earth are now seeking changes in British law to enable legal action to be taken in London against British companies that fail to act responsibly over affected communities.

“Corporate accountability is necessary for sustainable development,” Friends of the Earth executive director Tony Juniper said at the launch of the report. “We have seen the limitations of the voluntary approach to corporate social responsibility. It is not working, we need a change.”

Environmentalists plan to launch a campaign to introduce legally binding duties for corporations towards people affected by their projects. “The UK government must provide means for them to access justice,” Juniper said.

The activists now in London will meet several MPs later this week, and address the annual general meeting of Shell in London Monday.

Promises made a year back have not been kept, several campaigners said. Since representations at the Shell annual general meeting (AGM) last year “things are actually worse,” Desmond D’Sa from the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance told media representatives Wednesday. “And Shell’s words have not turned into improvements.”

Shell is using outdated and ageing equipment and processes in Durban, while it uses new technology and safe systems in operations in Denmark, D’Sa said. “If Shell can be clean in Denmark, they can be clean in Durban,” he said. “There have been so many oil spills at Durban that the company has stopped counting them.”

“We also experience constant gassing from Shell fires, flarings and explosions,” D’Sa said. “Shell has exceeded national and international guidelines for health standards. Our community is suffering from high levels of asthma, lukaemia and cancer.”

Hilton Kelley from Port Arthur in Texas told the Wednesday meeting that despite assurances that Shell would make improvements to its Motiva refinery, nothing has changed. “Instead the Motiva management is trying to undermine our efforts to get them to reduce their devastating impact on my community.”

People living around the refinery have not got jobs at the plant, and there is a high incidence of asthma and lukaemia as a result of known carcinogens being released at the plant such as butadiene, benzene, hydrogen sulphide and nitrogen oxide, he said.

A spokeswoman from Shell said in a statement that “over the past year there has been direct high-level Shell engagement with many of the organisations represented in the FoE report, including having NGO (non-governmental organisation) speakers at senior Shell meetings. We will continue with this engagement. ”

Shell “recognises the scale of the challenges we face,” and “we believe we are making considerable progress,” she said. “At each of the sites represented at last year’s AGM – as well as many others – specific action plans have been implemented to enhance communication and understanding of the issues and to start to address some of the concerns that are clearly strongly felt.”

Shell has declared that it plans to eliminate flaring by 2008. The flaring process releases dangerous gases into the air. But some activists say that Shell plans to eliminate the practice only by 2015, and that it can eliminate flaring elsewhere now as it has in Denmark.

The new allegations against Shell come at a time when it is under scrutiny for overstating its oil reserves. Shell has revised downwards its oil reserves four times since January, raising fundamental questions just how much oil it has access to.

Juniper acknowledged, however, that Shell is not the sole culprit and that “we could have had a similar press conference with most oil majors.” The point is not to compare Shell with others but to compare what Shell says it is doing with what it actually does, he said.

According to one claim Shell has spent 70 million dollars in the Niger Delta on projects to benefit the community.

Oronto Douglas from Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria says he is not convinced. “That is a lot of money in any part of the world,” he said. “We are not seeing it at the community level. A lot of money goes to corrupt leaders, not into communities. This has to stop.”