In early 2024, Shell announced plans to sell off all its onshore oil and gas interests in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, meant to conclude its exit from the troubled area—a process that started over a decade ago. The word “divestment” is often used to describe these shares and asset sell-offs involving all the major Western oil and gas corporations that reaped enormous profits exploiting the “sweet crude” for decades. Nigerian regulators recently approved the sale of the remaining onshore stakes of Italian giant ENI to Nigerian-registered companies.

Of all the deals, Shell’s January announcement attracted the most attention—with communities that have borne the impact of pollution over the past decades protesting. A public petition by concerned groups called on the Nigerian regulators to reject the share sale—calling it an elaborate scam by the corporation to evade responsibility for billions of dollars in liability for decades of environmental, health, and livelihood destruction. By selling its stakes in the Niger Delta to Renaissance—a consortium reportedly founded by former Nigerian Shell executives and individuals tied to state power—Shell transfers responsibility to entities with no capacity and motivation to undertake the extensive remediation needed.

The transferring of the real costs of fossil fuel production to states and citizens, including some of the most vulnerable people, is an integral part of Big Oil. Even before accounting for global warming, petroleum extraction sucks life from the lands and the people in sites of extraction. Nigeria’s Niger Delta is probably the world’s most glaring example, containing some of the most environmentally devastated fossil fuels extraction sites. Here, international oil and gas companies have long evaded responsibility for monumental pollution levels described as “an environmental genocide” in a recent report by the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC). It is the outrage over these situations in the Niger Delta, in addition to climate change concerns, that has informed calls for fossil fuel corporations to divest in favor of cleaner fuels.

However, Shell and the other corporations are not divesting from Nigeria. While moving away from the onshore, Shell and ENI are expanding their investments in offshore deepwater drilling in Nigeria’s Gulf of Guinea, away from the communities and where the notoriously lax government regulation is almost nonexistent.

Shell’s history in Nigeria reveals complex and troubling realities dating back to the 1930s during British colonial rule. Shell was part of the empire’s resource exploitation strategy from the onset. Since then, Shell has dominated Nigeria’s oil industry, and the company forged strong ties with successive Nigerian governments, including some of the most brutal and corrupt military dictatorships. This legacy allowed Shell to operate with near impunity, adopting reckless cost-cutting practices that severely harmed local environments, communities, and economies. In the 1990s, Bopp Van Dessel, a Dutch Shell environmental studies manager posted to Nigeria, quickly resigned after being appalled by the company’s utter disregard for even the most basic environmental standards. In Van Dessel’s words, “Any Shell site that I saw was polluted.”

The situation worsened even as the corporation faced increasing global scrutiny with the Shell Boycott campaign. This campaign in the West was motivated in large part by the significant resistance from Niger Delta communities, particularly the Ogoni people, whose leader Ken Saro-Wiwa led the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). The Ogoni struggle brought the devastating environmental impact of Shell’s oil spills, gas flaring, and waste dumping, as well as the broader exploitation of Nigeria’s resources, to the world’s attention. Despite the growing international condemnation, however, as the Nigerian government lacked the political will to hold it to account, and as its home governments—the UK and Netherlands—remained complicit, Shell’s operations continued to devastate the Niger Delta. With the material support and encouragement of Shell, the Nigerian military junta at the time brutally suppressed local resistance, including the execution of Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists in 1995. During the period, Shell was reaping its highest global profits from the Niger Delta.

Following community outcry, scientific studies such as the 2011 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on Ogoniland and the 2023 BSOEC report reveal extensive soil contamination from persistent oil spills that rendered large farmland areas infertile, depriving local communities of their primary means of livelihood. The contaminated soil, laden with hydrocarbons, has left vast tracts of land toxic and unusable for agriculture. Drinking water sources have also been severely impacted. The BSOEC report documented alarming levels of toxic substances with cancer-causing chromium found in the Bayelsa State environment at over 1,000 times levels that the World Health Organisation considers safe. These findings corroborate the UNEP report, which revealed benzene concentrations in Ogoniland’s drinking water to be a shocking 900 times above WHO safety limits. Air pollution compounds the problem with routine gas flaring of associated gas continuously releasing cocktails of harmful substances into the atmosphere to cause all manner of health problems—from respiratory issues to cancer.

The UNEP’s 2011 report estimated that a comprehensive cleanup of Ogoniland alone would require at least $1 billion and take over 30 years to complete, while the BSOEC projected that addressing the environmental damage in Bayelsa would require a minimum investment of $1 billion annually over a 12-year period. Together, Ogoniland and Bayelsa represent only a fraction of the broader Niger Delta, suggesting that the cost of remediating the entire region would be exponentially higher.

Selling off assets to indigenous concerns to evade responsibility for pollution is not new to Shell. In 1985, the company sold its refinery in Curaçao to the local government for a symbolic one dollar, with the sale contract ensuring that Curaçao could never hold Shell liable for pollution, past or present. Decades later, Curaçao is still grappling with a massively polluted landscape, a legacy of Shell’s operations that left behind contaminated soil, toxic emissions, and an economic burden the island continues to bear. This pattern of asset divestment, disguised as a step toward sustainability, exemplifies Shell’s strategy of externalizing its environmental liabilities onto weakened states and communities while maximizing profits and maintaining a facade of corporate responsibility.

Shell’s recent Nigeria move would be a final stamp on the privatization of joint ventures between Big Oil and the state, now controlled by a network of power brokers whose reach extends from the presidency to local thugs. These powers have built a system where resource wealth is siphoned off by elites while the communities suffering the worst effects of fossil extraction remain impoverished, poisoned, and powerless.

In a recent meeting in Abuja with the head of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPC), a grim reality was laid bare. Long a bureaucracy for stealing public wealth, the so-called national energy company is on the verge of collapse. The official said what we all know: The Nigerian oil industry is a massive scam. Crude oil and gas pipelines, astonishingly, have been operated for decades without a metering system, making it impossible for regulators to accurately determine the volume of petroleum reaching export terminals. This entrenched opacity has enabled monumental oil theft by both international oil companies and state agents. Meanwhile, these actors hypocritically complain about smaller-scale theft associated with artisanal refineries.

Artisanal refineries, while visible and often blamed for pollution, mask the environmental devastation caused by Shell and other major players. By allowing these informal operations to proliferate, the state, Shell, and other IOCs conveniently avoid accountability for their own stealing and role in environmental destruction. They deflect blame onto impoverished communities forced into artisanal refining by systemic poverty, lack of access to energy in sites of extraction, and the absence of viable economic alternatives. This corrupt arrangement shifts attention away from the deeper structural failures, leaving the true culprits untouched while the Niger Delta’s communities continue to bear the brunt of this exploitation.

As environmentalists push for decarbonization, the Niger Delta offers a stark reminder: Without local environmental accountability and restitutions for affected communities, the energy transition can neither be just nor complete.

There is no denying that fossil fuel divestment is crucial in addressing climate change. However, the communities that have borne the brunt of extraction cannot be left behind as we seek to achieve our decarbonization objectives. A just transition must incorporate a just divestment framework that prioritizes reparations, environmental remediation, and sustainable development for the very communities whose land and lives have been devastated in the name of fossil fuel profits. Green energy must not become another chapter in a long history of inequality. The same power dynamics that enabled fossil fuel extraction must not be allowed to persist into the future.

Shell should not be allowed to simply pack up and leave its onshore operations in the Niger Delta, abandoning the people and communities who have endured decades of environmental and social harm. A responsible exit demands that Shell fulfill its obligations to the land it profited from by addressing the catastrophic legacy of its operations. This must include, firstly, comprehensive environmental remediation. Shell must fully pay for cleanup efforts to address contamination of soil, water, and air. These projects must meet rigorous standards and involve independent verification to ensure thorough restoration. Secondly, it must include reparations: compensation is essential for the health crises, economic losses, and social disruptions caused by Shell’s operations.

The Niger Delta stands as a testament to the urgent need for a justice-centered approach to the energy transition—one that prioritizes the well-being of those who have borne the environmental and social costs of fossil fuel extraction. Climate action is incomplete without addressing the human cost of extraction. Following the recorded failures of COP29 in Baku, the climate finance debate must address the stark realities faced by extraction communities and center petroleum corporations on the question of responsibility: The polluter pays!