SHELL, NIGERIA & THE OIL CURSE

Lisa Margonelli, author of Oil on the Brain, poignantly described, at a Los Angeles book talk, how difficult it is to get the oil riches coming into Nigeria to the people who need and deserve them without pre-existing political and physical infrastructure.

Shell committed to Nigeria
Carmen J. Gentile, march 14, 2007 (UPI)

- Royal Dutch Shell has no plans on leaving Nigeria despite the ongoing violence plaguing its operations in the Niger Delta, officials said…
- Although 17 Shell workers were killed in Nigeria during 2006, the company said it was committed to remaining in the country, the No. 1 African oil producer…
- Shell's annual report…said the fatalities were caused by militant attacks on the company's installations, though the majority of the deaths were the result of road accidents and drowning at off-shore facilities…
- [Shell Petroleum Development Co.] is working on improving a number of health facilities throughout Nigeria in an effort to improve the lives of the country's majority, many of whom live on less than $1 a day.

- The extreme poverty in close proximity to the multibillion dollar oil industry in the delta has created a breeding ground for unrest in Nigeria's petroleum epicenter and given birth to an armed militant regime known as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
- Several oil companies have been forced to close some oil installations both onshore and offshore due to repeat MEND attacks in which dozens have been kidnapped and a handful killed…
- MEND's distrust of the Nigerian government is based on decades of corruption that has allowed the majority of Nigerians to remain poor while a select few grow wealthy on the more than $300 billion worth of oil and gas that's been extracted…But MEND activity since its inception in late 2005 has cost the country $4.47 billion and counting…reducing Nigerian oil production by [20 to 50] percent …MEND attacks cost the country's oil producers anywhere between 300,000 and 400,000 bpd.

- Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has pledged to retake control of the delta…In August, he vowed to crack down on MEND…However since then, militants have stepped up attacks and kidnappings and vowed to continue their struggle…
- And with elections next month to chose a successor to Obasanjo, MEND has promised to step up its efforts to disrupt the flow of oil. Candidates…promise to succeed where the president' failed…though most pledges have been short on concrete ideas…

This subject was also superbly covered at detailed length in Curse of the Black Gold; Hope and Betrayal in the Niger Delta
Tom O’Neill, February 2007 (National Geographic)

- Oil fouls everything in southern Nigeria. It spills from the pipelines, poisoning soil and water. It stains the hands of politicians and generals, who siphon off its profits. It taints the ambitions of the young, who will try anything to scoop up a share of the liquid riches—fire a gun, sabotage a pipeline, kidnap a foreigner.
- Nigeria had all the makings of an uplifting tale: poor African nation blessed with enormous sudden wealth. Visions of prosperity rose with the same force as the oil that first gushed from the Niger Delta's marshy ground in 1956. The world market craved delta crude, a "sweet," low-sulfur liquid called Bonny Light, easily refined into gasoline and diesel. By the mid-1970s, Nigeria had joined OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), and the government's budget bulged with petrodollars.
- Everything looked possible—but everything went wrong…