Their familiar red and yellow logo is everywhere. In fact, if you live in Glen Eyre halls, you can’t even walk to lectures without taking in the (always increasing) price of a  litre of unleaded. But how much do we really know about the corporation? They might offer competitive petrol prices and 2 for 1 on Red Bull, but look beneath the shell (so to speak) and a darker picture emerges. This is a company involved in murder, bribery and criminal levels of environmental damage. Even in the morally bankrupt world of multinational oil businesses, there aren’t many with more blood on their hands than Shell.

Oil Spillages and Gas FlaringTo see this picture clearly, the place to look is the Niger Delta in Nigeria, one of the most oil rich areas on the planet and also home to a tribal group called the Ogoni. Shell Nigeria has been extracting the oil from this area since 1958, building pipelines through Ogoni homes and farmland. There have been persistent oil spillages due to Shell’s negligence (between 1976 and 1991 there were almost 3,000) which have smothered farmland, poisoned the water and killed the animals and fish which the Ogoni people rely on to survive... (read more)