If a tobacco company gave the World Health Organisation a $10 million grant to examine the health effects of smoking, health campaigners would be outraged.  They would also treat the results with great suspicion.
And the fact that Shell gave UNEP $10 million dollars to examine the cause of oil spills in Ogoni means that – [...]

BP may be paying out money faster than its going out of fashion for the Gulf of Mexico spill, but its arch-rival Shell is still not ready to part with its cash.
Yesterday, the oil giant’s Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC, announced that it was going to appeal against the judgment of a Federal High Court, which ordered [...]

Five years ago, I co-authored a book called “The Next Gulf- London, Washington and Oil Conflict in Nigeria”, that  - as the title suggested - looked at the interlinked nature of oil politics from America, the UK and West Africa.
In part the book details the grievances of the people of the Niger Delta - one [...]

Years ago, when the environmental organisation Greenpeace was running a campaign against Ford in the UK, the liberal Guardian newspaper refused to run one of Greenpeace’s anti-Ford adverts.
At the time, Ford was one of the largest advertisers in the Guardian and it threatened to pull all its adverts if the Guardian ran the Greenpeace ad.
It [...]

They are two moments in history, intricately linked, although poles apart. Today Peter Voser,  the chief executive of Shell, outlines the company’s financial and production strategy for the coming year.
Once again Nigeria was mentioned as a key country where the company had added strategic reserves.
“These are exciting times for Shell”, said Voser. “We are poised [...]