22nd May 2012

At today’s Shell AGM link at the Bar­bi­can the suits on the Shell board were giv­en a 3 hour grilling, with ques­tion­ers focus­ing atten­tion on its envi­ron­men­tal and human rights crimes around the world. Spread through­out the audi­to­ri­um hood­ed Lon­don Ris­ing Tide & friends’ grim Shell reapers, stood silent­ly await­ing direc­tion from the board toward their next appoint­ment with Shell induced death and envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.  They stood motion­less for almost an hour while Messrs Ollila and Voss­er, Chair­man & CEO, attempt­ed to defend Shel­l’s rav­en­ous pur­suit of prof­it above all else at the expense of : the pris­tine Arc­tic- where drilling and prob­a­bly spilling will begin in the sum­mer; the Cana­di­an bore­al for­est-where Tar Sands “extrac­tion” has increased by 100k bar­rels per day;  the once beau­ti­ful fish spawn­ing grounds of the Niger Delta- now clogged with a “Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon’s” worth of oil every year; and lis­tened intent­ly to Voss­er spout­ing that so-called “eth­i­cal com­pa­ny sta­tus” was “very close to my heart and we are dri­ving sus­tain­abil­i­ty”. 

We all know where its being dri­ven.  Remem­ber cli­mate change?

Cli­mate change may not be a fash­ion­able sub­ject these days, but it’s already claim­ing 300,000 lives a year. Glac­i­ers are dis­ap­pear­ing, sea lev­els are ris­ing and extreme weath­er is becom­ing more extreme. As tem­per­a­tures rise, we’ll see more flood­ing, drought, dis­ease, famine and war, cre­at­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of refugees  and destroy­ing entire ecosys­tems and species.  We can’t  afford to for­get about cli­mate change – or the fact that com­pa­nies like Shell are at the heart of the prob­lem and a shift to Fos­sil Fuel Gas and land grab­bing bio­fu­els isn’t help­ing!

Mean­while out­side, many more Shell Grim Reapers man­aged to gain entry into the lob­by before being eject­ed by what one share­hold­er inside referred to as “over the top secu­ri­ty”. There they met with Occu­py Shell Oil cof­fin bear­ers who had processed the cor­po­rate body of Shell from St.Pauls Cathe­dral to be laid to rest at the feet of a 6 degree Cel­sius glob­al tem­per­a­ture rise this cen­tu­ry. There among the share­hold­ers, City cops and many pri­vate secu­ri­ty and cor­po­rate spies, the Shell Reapers hand­ed out leaflets to inform of impend­ing Shell dev­as­ta­tion.

A del­e­ga­tion from Indige­nous peo­ples attend­ed Shell’s main Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in The Hague, Nether­lands, they detailed the mas­sive human and eco­log­i­cal rights vio­la­tions and eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion that Shel­l’s oper­a­tions have brought to local com­mu­ni­ties. The tar sands devel­op­ment in  Alber­ta, Cana­da cov­ers an area the size of Eng­land, with tox­ic lakes so huge they are vis­i­ble from space, leak­ing poi­sons into the local water sup­ply.  The effects that tar sands  are hav­ing on local First  Nations com­mu­ni­ties  are dev­as­tat­ing. Not  only are indige­nous  liveli­hoods and  futures being  destroyed, but  com­mu­ni­ties on land  where tar sands extrac­tion has been imposed  are expe­ri­enc­ing dis­turbing­ly  high rates of rare forms of can­cer and auto-immune dis­eases.

Eriel Deranger, com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber and spokesper­son for the Athabas­ca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), Alber­ta – an Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty resid­ing down­stream from tar sands oper­a­tions and who are cur­rent­ly suing Shell for vio­lat­ing past agree­ments, stat­ed:

“Tar sands extrac­tion projects on our tra­di­tion­al lands are being approved at a pace that is both irre­spon­si­ble and irrepara­bly destruc­tive. Peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty of Fort Chipewyan
are gen­uine­ly afraid. Our food and water sources are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, result­ing in a fear of eat­ing tra­di­tion­al foods and erod­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of our cul­tur­al and sub­sis­tence lifestyles. Yet Shell plans to aggres­sive­ly expand its activ­i­ties, dou­bling pro­duc­tion. The Athabas­ca Chipewyan First Nation is call­ing on Shell to meet its past agree­ments and halt expan­sion until our broad­er con­cerns about the cumu­la­tive impacts of tar sands oper­a­tions are addressed.”

Ron Plain, from Aamji­w­naang First Nation, Ontario – which has been called ‘the most pol­lut­ed place in North Amer­i­ca’ by the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety, and the ‘the most con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed air­shed in Cana­da’ by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion due to its prox­im­i­ty to ‘Chem­i­cal Val­ley’ where Shell’s and oth­er tar sands oper­a­tors’ refiner­ies are caus­ing seri­ous health and repro­duc­tive impacts – said:

“Aamji­w­naang is the first com­mu­ni­ty in the world to expe­ri­ence birth ratios of 2 girls to 1 boy due to endocrine dis­rup­tion from the pol­lu­tion. This is the first step towards extinc­tion. Shell have admit­ted that their cur­rent facil­i­ty, which is locat­ed at the fence­line of Aamji­w­naang, ‘could not meet today’s envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions or stan­dards.’ But Shell’s pro­pos­al for a new facil­i­ty with­in Aamji­w­naang ter­ri­to­ry was recent­ly denied by Cana­da for a whole host of envi­ron­men­tal, social and oth­er rea­sons. The cor­po­rate response to that set-back was to build onto the anti­quat­ed facil­i­ty the equip­ment need­ed to process more tar sands bitu­men.”

Robert Thomp­son, Chair­man of REDOIL and an Inu­pi­at from Kak­tovik, a vil­lage on the edge of the Arc­tic Ocean in Alas­ka, where Shell plans to drill off­shore in Arc­tic waters this sum­mer, said:

“Shell plans to drill in the Arc­tic this sum­mer with­out the proven tech­nol­o­gy or infra­struc­ture to deal with inevitable spills. They have not demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty to clean up spills with­in or from under the ice or dur­ing storms. Our cul­ture depends on a clean ocean, and we have sub­sist­ed in this region for 12,000 years. We oppose Shell’s plans that have the poten­tial to destroy the cul­ture of our peo­ple and will fur­ther push the plan­et into irre­versible cli­mate change.”

Ben Pow­less, a Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario, rep­re­sent­ing the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work, said:

“Not only have Shell rev­eled in being a cli­mate crim­i­nal, they have also been exposed as fight­ing the Euro­pean Union’s pro­posed Fuel Qual­i­ty Direc­tive, in col­lu­sion with the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment. Their con­tin­ued envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and vio­la­tion of Indige­nous rights across Cana­da, Alas­ka and Nige­ria show that Shell needs to change their oper­a­tions or face increas­ing protest and oppo­si­tion across the world. Our orga­ni­za­tion is sup­port­ing an Indige­nous-led cam­paign against Shell’s extreme ener­gy projects to bring togeth­er front­line impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties.”

To find out more about the Cana­di­an Indige­nous Tar Sands Cam­paign, see:http://ienearth.org/tarsands.html

 So, what else can we do about Shell in Lon­don?

Apart from street cor­ner Petrol Garage block­ades we can wage war on cor­po­rate brand­ing. Join us to help kick Shell-out Spon­sor­ship = buy­ing us off .

 Shel­l’s spon­sor­ship acts as a green­washed blind­fold to pre­vent us see­ing the  rav­ages of fron­tier oil extrac­tion bound­aries being pushed. When we chal­lenge this, we strike a blow at Shell’s brand, chip away at its pow­er and move towards the day when Big Oil – like Big Tobac­co – is no longer seen as social­ly accept­able. As we once kicked the tobac­co com­pa­nies out of our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions we must now do the same to the oil indus­try.