To squash protest by the
Ogoni people of
Nigeria against Shell operations, the
Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company supplied the Nigerian
military government with weapons. These weapons were used to put down, with
deadly force, opposition to Shell drilling on Ogoni land.
Gas flares from the Shell operation were causing hearing loss, along with conjunctivitis, asthma, and bronchitis in residents of nearby villages. This is in addition to over 2,000 oil spills, totalling 2 million barrels of oil, on Ogoni land. While Shell has earned over $30 billion US from its activities in Nigeria, the Ogoni from whom this wealth has been extracted have no running water, electricity, hospitals, suitable roads or schools.
Journalists investigating the Nigerian military's operations against the Ogoni were threatened with roadside executions after being pulled from their vehicles.
Shell admitted to supplying the weapons during Ken Saro-Wiwa's 1995 trial. He and eight others were executed by hanging for their anti-Shell activism.
Shell Oil has invited Greenpeace to help them assess and mitigate their environmental impact. This is, of course, yet another greenwash. The only way for Shell to have any kind of benign impact of the environment would be to dissolve itself.