Human rights abuses: How complicit are oil companies?

Major international oil companies often operate in some of the world's least developed countries ruled by corrupt and repressive regimes that care everything about oil revenues and little about the fate of the environment or the lives of the people in the path of development.

Some companies -- unfettered by environmental regulations or government oversight - have engaged in practices that would be criminally liable in the US, and leave a landscape and local communities devastated by oil spills, toxic pools of drilling mud, poisoned rivers and streams and destroyed forests, and polluted air.

The basic rights of indigenous peoples are trampled and their protests are too often put down with murderous attacks by government or private security forces. But how complicit are oil companies?

Clearly, the companies are responsible for the environmental damage. However international tribunals have also developed a standard for corporate complicity in human rights abuses, according to a 2007 UN report. One criterion: "Knowingly providing practical assistance, encouragement or moral support that has a substantial effect on the commission of the crime." Companies may also be considered liable if they derive an indirect economic benefit from the wrongful conduct of others, depending on the "closeness of the company's association with those actors."

The $15.5 million Shell agreed to pay will be used to compensate the families of the executed activists, establish a trust fund to benefit the Ogoni people and pay a portion of the plaintiff's legal fees. Shell said the settlement was a "humanitarian gesture." It said said that while it had no part in the violence that took place, the company acknowledged that "the plaintiffs and others have suffered."

Shell no longer operates in the Ogoni region, but continues to be the biggest international oil company in Nigeria. The company did not respond to Platts' request for information about its past and current environmental practices in Nigeria. A posting on its web site said Shell is "committed to cleaning up spills and remediating the land."

The military dictatorship that ruled Nigeria has been replaced by an elected president, although a US State Department report cites international observers who said the 2007 election was characterized by "massive fraud and serious irregularities." The department also said government officials at all levels "continued to commit serious [human rights] abuses." Despite the country's oil wealth most Nigerians remain impoverished, providing fertile soil for armed militants and bandit gangs whose attacks on oil facilities have cost lives and seriously disrupted production.

Oil companies need to go where the oil is and that sometimes takes them to countries where the social, environmental and political rights of indigenous peoples count for little. However, those oil operations and the companies' involvement with the host governments are increasingly being challenged. For example:

-ExxonMobil is being sued on behalf of villagers from Aceh, Indonesia, who allege that the company paid and directed Indonesian government security forces that committed atrocities in protecting ExxonMobil's liquefied natural gas facilities.

-Twenty-five Indians and 9 police reportedly died in Peru's northern Amazon province of Utcubamba in April, when police broke up a demonstration by 5,000 Indians protesting oil and gas exploration on their land. The Peruvian Congress subsequently withdrew two decrees intended to open part of the jungle to petroleum and other energy-related projects.

- Chevron and other international oil companies are accused of complicity in human rights abuses because of their investments in energy projects in Burma - investment critics charge that help fund Burma's infamous military dictatorship . Chevron acquired a minority interest in the Yadana pipeline natural gas pipeline with its acquisition of Unocal in 2005, an interest that was grandfathered when the US imposed sanctions on Burma in 1997. Chevron says its in-country community development programs "help improve the lives of the people they touch and thereby communicates our values, including respect for human rights." Prior to being acquired by Chevron, Unocal settled a law suit that accused it of complicity in alleged human rights abuses in Burma.

But even if not complicit, when in order to operate in a country a company must accommodate itself to a regime that rules at the point of a gun, it can leave a deep stain on its reputation that proves very hard to wash away.