FryingPanFire

Amnesty Intenational are launching a new film ahead of Shell’s AGM in London tomorrow. It’s about Shell’s human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, highlighting the issue of gas flaring. They will also be driving around the City and Barbican with some billboard advertising on their campaign.

Gas flaring contributes to just over 1% of the world’s CO2. It’s where you set fire to the combustible vapours emitted by an oil well. An illegal practice in Nigeria since 1984, there’s overwhelming evidence of its continuing employ by oil companies like Shell. So much so that it can be seen from space.

The film officially launches at midnight tonight, but you can have a preview of it here.

A few years ago, a woman approached me with some evidence of nasty worker treatment by another oil company that drafts in foreign workers [Koreans mainly] to take care of jobs local Nigerians could handle. The locals were left to take care of work along the pipeline. Most of the locals employed were illiterate and couldn’t read the warning and hazard signs. As a result, a few of them died when the pipes occasionally went boom. If you want to know more, drop me a line.

For something a bit funnier, it seems Shell have halted Nigerian offshore drilling in a visionary new remediation plan.