[IPSM] Will Royal Dutch Shell Turn B.C. into Nigeria North?

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Will Royal Dutch Shell Turn B.C. into Nigeria North?

June 7, 2007 (Victoria, BC) - A video released today draws attention to
the takeover this month of Shell Canada by Royal Dutch Shell and its
implications for a northern BC First Nation.

View Nigeria North video online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2RUhJGbjDM

The five-minute documentary by the Victoria-based Dogwood Initiative
focuses on Royal Dutch Shell's poor human rights track record in
Nigeria. It draws parallels to Shell's proposed coalbed methane project
in northern BC, which has been opposed by indigenous elders of the
Tahltan First Nation.

"Royal Dutch Shell admits to exploiting existing community conflicts in
its quest for oil and gas," said Will Horter, Executive Director of the
Dogwood Initiative. "What does this mean for the Tahltan, who are
struggling with BC's northern resource boom?"

Shell is attempting to develop a coalbed methane gas field at the shared
headwaters of the Nass, Skeena and Stikine Rivers - an area known as the
Sacred Headwaters. Many Tahltan oppose the project, and in 2005 evicted
Shell from their territory.

Full article:
http://oilsandstruth.org/will-royal-dutch-shell-turn-b-c-nigeria-north

#2:

Royal Dutch Shell Inherits Explosive BC Conflict
Don't light a match.
By Merran Smith
Published: June 12, 2007
TheTyee.ca

When Royal Dutch Shell's directors took the reins of Shell Canada 
earlier this month, they inherited a brewing resource conflict in a 
remote corner of British Columbia that bears a striking resemblance to 
Royal Dutch's difficulties in other parts of the world.

The setting is a remote alpine basin southeast of Dease Lake, where the 
shared origin of the Nass, Stikine and Skeena Rivers gives the area its 
local name: the Sacred Headwaters. A stunning, expansive wilderness, it 
is the territory of the Tahltan people, who have hunted and trapped 
there for generations. It also happens to be underlain by one of British 
Columbia's largest potential coalbed methane deposits, to which Shell 
Canada -- and now Royal Dutch Shell -- holds drilling rights.

Three years ago, with tenure to drill in hand, Shell Canada didn't waste 
any time. While most Tahltan were attending a funeral, Shell's 
contractors unceremoniously bulldozed an access road through a Tahltan 
trapper's camp and quickly drilled three exploratory wells in the heart 
of the headwaters. These actions outraged many Tahltan who, when they 
learned more about the impacts of coalbed methane development, became 
determined to protect their territory from the threats posed by the 
invasive drilling.

The next flashpoint in the Tahltan's struggle with Shell occurred in 
2005 when four Shell Canada employees in a pick-up pulled up to the band 
office in the small Tahltan village of Iskut. There, they were greeted 
by a group of Tahltan wearing regalia and beating drums. It wasn't a 
welcoming ceremony. The elders had gathered to read the Shell employees 
a notice evicting Shell from their territory. The Shell representatives 
quickly got back in their truck and drove away.

Complex internal politics

While the eviction of Shell was a unified demonstration of Tahltan 
power, there also exists a deep internal struggle within this northern 
nation. In the face of an unprecedented northern mining and energy boom, 
the Talhtan are scrambling to balance potential economic development 
with threats to their lands. They are also working to reconcile internal 
divisions between those within their communities who favor development 
and those who see the current scenario as simply too much, too fast. 
Compounding all this are the all-too-common tensions between the 
hereditary, family-based system and the elected band system.

The eviction forced Shell to step back and think about how it might more 
legitimately gain social license to the tenure area. In negotiating this 
access, they have focused on the Tahltan Central Council, a society set 
up to serve as the primary body for Tahltan treaty and resource 
development negotiations. So far Shell has been unsuccessful, choosing 
to cancel last summer's drilling program rather than risk conflict.
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Undisclosed concessions

Shell's latest proposal involves the company conducting a limited 
exploratory drilling program in exchange for a set of undisclosed 
concessions. Even if the Central Council accepts this deal, it is 
unlikely to be approved by the Iskut elders, who are resolute in their 
opposition to the project moving forward.

So far Shell Canada has proceeded cautiously in Tahltan country, wary of 
the damage newscasts showing First Nations grandmothers being dragged 
away by RCMP could do to its already tainted corporate image. The 
question is whether Royal Dutch Shell, which obtained the drilling 
tenure as part of the takeover of Shell Canada, will be as cautious.

After all, Royal Dutch is hardly adverse to dealing in -- and even 
exploiting -- deeply divided indigenous communities. In Nigeria, as in 
B.C., an aggressive resource development agenda has moved ahead despite 
unresolved indigenous claims. The result has been a decades-long violent 
conflict between Shell, the Nigerian government, and the Ogoni people 
that has severely tarnished Shell's international reputation. When the 
Nigerian military executed anti-Shell activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995, it 
sent shockwaves around the globe and sparked outrage that led to 
broad-based consumer boycotts of the petroleum giant.

Shell admits to a role in the Nigeria crisis. A leaked internal report 
Shell commissioned in 2003 states, "We sometimes feed conflict by the 
way we award contracts, gain access to land and deal with community 
representatives." It's an admission that does not bode well for the Tahltan.

Tahltan protests

Granted, B.C. resource conflicts look tame next to the tumultuous, 
violent political environment of the Niger delta. Tahltan elders 
blockaded the main access road into the Sacred Headwaters both in 2005 
and 2006, preventing access by Fortune Minerals and bcMetals, 
respectively. Both protests led to arrests, but they were also marked by 
cooperation and understanding on the part of the RCMP. Given this, and 
the peaceful approach of the Talhtan (many of the blockaders are 
grandmothers), it is highly unlikely that the conflict there will result 
in physical violence.

It is a violence of another kind the Tahltan fear Royal Dutch Shell will 
perpetrate. If the company pushes forward with its project before the 
Tahltan have decided upon a land-use plan for their territory, it will 
undoubtedly result in more blockades, arrests, and the upheaval of a 
fragile community. At a time of year when Tahltan families hunt moose 
and fish for salmon, they will be instead be fighting drilling 
operations -- camping not in the alpine headwaters but at the blockade 
site at the junction of Ealue Lake Road and Highway 37.

There are other deeper, more disturbing social consequences, too, for a 
village that already suffers from high rates of drug and alcohol abuse 
and suicide. With the social fabric already stretched, the turmoil 
caused by Shell and various mining companies pushes the community closer 
to a total social breakdown.

'When gas explodes'

Outside the headwaters, other factors promise to complicate Shell's path 
forward. For one, there is a real possibility Shell's activities in 
northern B.C. will draw international attention, especially given the 
growing interest of environmental organizations. The day Royal Dutch 
took over Shell Canada, One Sky, the Canadian Institute for Sustainable 
Living, released a report entitled When Gas Explodes, explicitly drawing 
the Nigeria-B.C. link. In the same vein, the Dogwood Initiative, a 
Victoria-based organization that works for community land rights, 
released a documentary video entitled British Columbia: Nigeria North?, 
which has received significant attention.

Then there is the growing public disapproval of coalbed methane (CBM) 
development in general. Just south of the Sacred Headwaters, the 
residents of the Bulkley Valley, including the Wet'suwet'en First 
Nation, have waged an effective and populist campaign against a proposed 
CBM field adjacent to the village of Telkwa. Protests against the 
project have seen over 600 people take to the street (this in a town of 
only 5,000). They have received support from the Tahltan elders and are 
likely to reciprocate should the Tahltan call on them.

Did Shell Canada's board brief Royal Dutch on the difficulties it faces 
in the Sacred Headwaters? Or did they simply unroll the B.C. Ministry of 
Energy and Mines' coalbed methane resource map and point to the shaded 
area indicating 8 trillion cubic feet of coalbed methane?

In the early days of coal mining, coalbed methane -- then known as 
firedamp -- was much feared by coalminers. This odorless, invisible gas 
surreptitiously collected in mineshafts, causing fatal explosions with a 
single spark. To warn them of this threat, miners took canaries 
underground with them where the birds' death served as a clear sign of 
danger.

It's the kind of warning Shell Canada's outgoing directors should be 
giving Royal Dutch Shell: in the Sacred Headwaters, an explosion is 
imminent.


-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
Coordinator, http://oilsandstruth.org
--
moderated radical news & discussion list:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green

In the contradiction lies the hope.
    --Bertholt Brecht.