New Shell MD in Nigeria

New Shell MD in Nigeria

Mar 2nd, 2015

by John Donovan. 

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Printed below is information from a press release about the new boss of Shell in Nigeria. I am sure Mr. Osagie Okunbor will be just as honest as the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and other Nigerian politicians and business people (including Internet entrepreneurs), all globally renowned for their virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness. 

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE

A new Managing Director for Shell Petroleum Development Company, Mr. Osagie Okunbor, has assumed office succeeding Mr. Mutiu Sunmonu who retired on Saturday after 36 years of service. Osagie’s appointment had been announced in January while he was serving as a Senior Advisor in Shell’s Upstream International Operated business in The Hague, Netherlands.

The new Shell helmsman, who is also assuming the role of the Country Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria, brings over 28 years of industry experience and expertise to the role his new role.

“I’m delighted at the opportunity to build on the progress we have made over the years. Shell continues to be a highly valued partner for progress in Nigeria and I’m looking forward to exploring more channels for fruitful collaboration with our stakeholders,” Osagie said as he took over from his predecessor weekend.

Okunbor is the third Nigerian MD of SPDC and Country Chair Shell Companies in Nigeria in a row. Mr. Basil Omiyi assumed office as the Managing Director of SPDC in 2004, and also became Country Chair of Shell Companies in Nigeria in 2008, the first Nigerian to hold both positions.

In a farewell note, the outgoing Managing Director thanked staff of Shell Nigeria and key external stakeholders for their dedication and support which enabled the company to collectively achieve the successes recorded during his tenure. “I am indeed proud to have made this remarkable journey with you and tremendously grateful to God for the privilege to have done so.”

A graduate of Business Administration from the University of Benin, Okunbor is an accomplished professional who has worked in Nigeria, the UK, Brunei and until now, the Netherlands.

His previous assignments included Vice President, Human Resources for Shell’s Upstream Business in Sub-Saharan Africa and Vice President, Infrastructure and Logistics Shell Nigeria. He is currently Senior Advisor in Shell’s Upstream International Operated business, based in The Hague, The Netherlands, from where he returns to Port Harcourt to take up his new role.

Commenting on the appointment, Vice President Nigeria and Gabon, Shell Upstream, Mr. Markus Droll, said: “We are delighted to see another Nigerian at the helm of affairs in Shell Nigeria. Mr. Sunmonu worked very hard over these years – managing production and setting a new agenda in dealing with communities, government and other key stakeholders. We’re confident that Osagie will consolidate and build on the progress we have made in the past years.”

Okunbor is married to Soala and they are blessed with children. He enjoys music and football in his spare time.

SOURCE

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Posted in: Africa, Business Principles, Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell.
Tagged: Nigeria · Royal Dutch Shell Plc

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

View image | gettyimages.com

Desert Pilgrimage to the Cradle of the Bomb

BY RIVERA SUN

T
he lawn is mowed. This small detail cracks my heart into pieces. A silent scream wails in the hollow space of my ribs.

I am standing at the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

Green grass slopes down to a pond. A grandfather helps a child circle the concrete walkways on a plastic scooter. Ducks paddle around a metal statue of cranes. The rusted iron of the metal cranes look charred and melting. The lumps and bubbles remind me of the hanging flesh of Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. Like everything in the mundane city park, the cranes, upon close inspection, cannot hide the fact that this very spot was where the first nuclear bomb was built.

In my mind, an angry red mushroom cloud roils thousands of feet into the sky.

Nowhere is Hannah Arendt’s phrase the banality of evil more potent than at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The prosperous county — one of the nation’s richest — sits amongst the piñon pines and junipers in the high-altitude desert of northern New Mexico. It exists almost exclusively for the purpose of researching and developing nuclear weapons.

My shoes are standing on the place where the first atomic bombs were built. The World War II sheds and buildings are gone, replaced by this city park, but the canyons are still hide radioactivity . . . and a mile away, scientists are developing bombs that make Fat Man and Little Boy look like cheap firecrackers.

Awakening before dawn, my partner and I have come on a pilgrimage to Los Alamos to speak truth to power at a meeting of our elected officials from local county, city, and tribal governments. Not one of these mayors, councilors, or commissioners dares to use their position on the coalition to speak out against nuclear weapons. The livelihood of the impoverished northern New Mexicans depends on the laboratory. It is the second largest employer in the state.

Lives are at stake, we are told again and again. We need the jobs.

Seven billion lives are hanging “three minutes to midnight” as the United States keeps nuclear weapons ready to deploy.

Lives are at stake. The phrase echoes in my mind as I watch the fountain in the center of Ashley Pond. Seven billion lives are hanging “three minutes to midnight” as the United States keeps nuclear weapons ready to deploy. Three hundred and twenty million Americans are kept in danger by the US and Russian tensions and our governments’ inability to dismantle their nuclear arsenals. One and a half million New Mexicans are thrust in the shadow of Los Alamos . . . a laboratory that sits on top of a fault line, nearly burned to the ground in a catastrophic forest fire a few years ago, and still stores plutonium on site. Countless peoples of the Marshall Islands and North American tribes have been poisoned by radiation. 150,000 Japanese lost their lives in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago.

At the same time that a secret team of scientists was constructing the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, 11 million people were being shoved into gas chambers. In Nazi Germany and occupied territories, local officials let train loads of men, women, and children pass through their depots because the officials’ lives — and livelihoods — were at stake. German bureaucrats filed paperwork just like New Mexican bureaucrats — because their livelihoods were at stake. Construction crews built Auschwitz and the other death camps, because they needed the jobs. Scientists designed the gas chambers, incinerators, and toxic chemicals. Townspeople coughed on acrid black smoke and went on with their daily lives.

The banality of evil lies in this mowed lawn that slopes down to the complacent Ashley Pond. I sit for a moment by the water, watching the ducks and the fountain, thinking of Japanese civilians with eyeballs hanging out of their charred faces as they stumbled through the ruins of Hiroshima. I think of the post-bombing suicides when traumatized Japanese, unable to cope with the horrors, threw themselves under trains, leaving sisters to collect dismembered limbs.

“The Atomic Bomb has resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.” – Mahatma Gandhi, 1945

Gandhi’s words make me weep. I feel shame for my country. I am a member of a people who would not only drop one, but two horrific bombs on Japan, and currently has enough weapons to destroy the whole world. I am a citizen of the nation that contaminated whole chains of islands with nuclear tests. I am part of a country that devotes trillions of dollars to these monstrosities while just down the hill the local children are going hungry.

On the other hand, this year marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There will be hundreds of vigils and actions all around the world, and I invite you to be part of the hundreds who will pilgrimage to Los Alamos this summer to speak out against the horror of nuclear weapons during the August 6th & 9th Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day Vigils.

Iam one of the hundreds who will choose to embody Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words about nuclear weapons, “It is nonviolence or nonexistence,” by taking part in the Campaign Nonviolence National Conference, studying active nonviolence with Rev. James Lawson, Erica Chenoweth, Kathy Kelly, Medea Benjamin, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Ken Butigan, John Dear, and more. I am one of the thousands who live in the shadow of Los Alamos who choose to stand up to nuclear weapons.

And today, I am one person standing at the epicenter of our nation’s banality of evil, listening to a child laughing.

Rivera Sun
The Dandelion Insurrection

SUNDAY, 1 MARCH 2015 Pope Francis Making Big Mistake Joe Mathews: You could drop by the California Institution for Men in Chino—part of our state’s unconstitutionally overcrowded prison system—to wash prisoners’ feet, as you have done elsewhere. READ MORE LA Progressive Live:  Will LA's "Raise The Wage" Succeed? Joining us Monday at 3 will be Vito Triglia, a Political Coordinator for SEIU 721, who is now deep into making the LA Raise The Wage campaign succeed. WATCH HERE Riding for the Homeland Security Ranch Larry Wines:Congressional absolutist dumbbells are quite literally playing with fire. And they're not much different from kids playing with matches in the hayloft, with barrels of lamp oil and a lot of nervous livestock in the barn. READ MORE Desert Pilgrimage to the Cradle of the Bomb Rivera Sun: Seven billion lives are hanging "three minutes tomidnight" as the United States keeps nuclear weapons ready to deploy. READ MORE Bad Bibi Peter C. Cavanaugh:Netanyahu’s horribly one-sided retribution against relatively ineffective rocket attacks from Hamas in Gaza last summer earned him dismay and scorn from most of the watching world. READ MORE

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS MESSAGES IN IMAGES 1MARCH15

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

Oil Spill: Syndicates Defraud Communities As Shell Remains Adamant On Payout

Oil Spill: Syndicates Defraud Communities As Shell Remains Adamant On Payout

Mar 1st, 2015

by John Donovan. 

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BY SAHARA REPORTERS, NEW YORK, FEB 28, 2015

An investigation by SaharaReporters reveals that several rogue syndicates have been selling oil spill compensation forms to members of oil-producing communities in Bayelsa State ostensibly to enable the residents to benefit from a fund established to compensate victims of the December 2011 Bonga oil spill. However, some concerned activists told Sahara Reporters that the sale of forms was exploitative, especially since it was not clear that those who file for compensation would ever receive any payment.

The House of Representatives and National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) had in November 2014 recommended a compensation of $3.98 billion for victims of the incident.

NOSDRA estimated that 40,000 barrels of crude were discharged into the Atlantic during an operational mishap in an oil field operated by Shell Nigeria Production and Exploration Company (SNEPCO).

However, a Shell spokesman, Joseph Obari, maintained at the weekend that the Bonga spill did not hit affect the shoreline, arguing that the company should not pay any compensation.

Even so, our correspondent found out that a variety of groups were selling tens of thousands of compensation forms to residents of the oil producing communities in the state.

Ebrasin Leghemo, a member of the Koluama 2 community in Bayelsa, said that a firm of valuers, Dutch Nigeria Limited, had allocated 10,000 forms to the communities.

“There are three groups involved and we negotiated with them to give us 10,000 forms at the rate of N1,000 for indigenes and N2,000 for non indigenes,” he said, adding, “We are told that each claimant would get N400,000.”

Mr. Leghemo continued: “We heard that the House of Representatives has mandated Shell to pay $3.98 billion to the affected communities and we have secured the 10,000 slots for our community for impacted people amongst us.”

Meanwhile, various agents of the firm of valuers were in the area selling the forms in bulk. Some members of the various communities told our correspondent that they had paid between N1,000 and N1,500 to get one.

One resident, James Wilson, said he had filled out and returned a form he bought for N1,000. He said he filed claims for both the Bonga oil spill of December 2011 and Chevron’s rig explosion of January 2012. According to him, he had filed individual claims for N350,000 in damages from the two incidents.

However, Alagoa Morris, an environmental and human rights activist, has voiced concern over syndicates selling the forms to members of the oil communities. He disclosed that the activities of the ‘faceless syndicates’ were suspicious.

Mr. Morris urged the Bayelsa State government to investigate the firms behind the form-selling scheme to save unsuspecting members of the public from exploitation.

SOURCE

Extract from a comment received by Sahara Reporters

Welcome to Nigeria – The scamming “capital” of the world. From top to toe, from head to tail – all is rotten. In a country where the law enforcement and judiciary are corrupt and refuse to work with integrity, then the citizens and criminals will do as they like, knowing that next to nothing will ever happen to them, that there are no consequences to their bad behaviour. Even on the rare occasion that a cheat is caught, all they will do is bribe the police, bribe the lawyers, bribe the judges. Hardly a day passes that I myself am not cheated one way or another.

ENDS

PHOTO: London Rising Tide protestors outside the Royal Courts of Justice to highlight Shell’s devastating pollution in Nigeria

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Posted in: Africa, Environment, Litigation, Nigeria, Oil, Oil Spill, Shell, Toxic contamination.
Tagged: Niger Delta · Nigeria · Oil

The TRUTH will set you FREE.