Boycott Shell Now

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The battle for democracy and corporate accountability in Nigeria continues, as the native Ogoni people fight against the brutal military government and Shell Oil, which has devastated the environment in Ogoniland and imported arms for the regime (see “End Environmental and Human Rights Abuses in Nigeria” for more background). The World Council of Churches (WCC) recently endorsed a boycott of Shell, estimating that over 3,000 Ogoni have died and over 30,000 have been displaced in the last four years of conflict, and noting that between 1982 and 1992, Shell’s Nigerian operations spilled 1,626,000 gallons of oil in 27 separate incidents.

Now this social and environmental devastation seems poised to be repeated in the Peruvian Amazon, where Shell Oil is planning a 40-year, $2.7 billion natural gas drilling project. If the project begins as scheduled in July 1997, it will place one of the largest gas operations in South America in a rainforest area that Peru’s government has set aside as a homeland for uncontacted indigenous peoples.

On May 14, Project Underground held an International Day of Action Against Shell, timed to coincide with Royal Dutch/Shell’s annual shareholders’ meeting in the U.K. Picketers at Shell gas stations from Washington, D.C. to Vancouver, Canada showed solidarity with protestors in London, who called on shareholders to divest their shares in Shell.

At the meeting, Shell rejected a shareholders’ resolution — which won 41 million of the total 357 million shares (11.5%) — demanding that an outside auditor examine Shell’s record to see if the company has honored its stated commitment to environmental protection and human rights.

You can still protest Shell’s abuses — and their rejection of the resolution — by boycotting Shell, and writing a letter to the company telling them why. Address your letter to:

Mr. Phillip J. Carroll, CEO
Shell Oil Corporation
P.O. Box 2463
Houston, TX 77252
Phone: (800) 241-4044
Fax: (713) 241-4044

To find out more about Shell’s operations in both Nigeria and Peru, call Project Underground at (510) 705-8981 or e-mail them at shanna@moles.org to order their 1996-1997 “Independent Annual Report” on Royal Dutch/Shell. You can also request boycott postcards to send to Shell, or an entire “Shell Boycott Pack” with a timeline of the Ogoni struggle against Shell and other information on the issue.

To get the latest new information as it develops, join Essential Information’s “Shell-Nigeria- Action list,” an unmoderated e-mail forum for the exchange of information and grassroots action ideas. To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail to listproc@essential.org with the message:

subscribe shell-nigeria-action <your e-mail address>

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate