One probable reason that the oil companies are willing to pay the fines is that it’s cheaper to do so than it is to clean up their act. This could be because the Nigerian government gets plenty in royalties from the oil and gas giants, and wouldn’t want to irritate them with environmental concerns.

Normally, here’s the way things work with 1st world MNCs in the develping world: If the shareholders and customers back home find out their companies engage in unethical practices in the 3rd world, they boycott the product. The company’s value and profits drop until they clean up their act. One example of this was the boycott of Nike sweatshirts by US and EU customers because they were produced in Thailand using unethical labour practices.

Unfortunately shareholder/consumer activism is unlikely with oil and gas giants because people need oil too much to care about stuff like this. Any extra source of oil is a good thing, especially with oil prices floating around 100 USD a barrel. People back home will only make a big deal out of it if companies push their unethicality to extremes, like Shell with the Nigerian environment, or like Unacol did with slave labour in Myanmar.

Absolutely, the media, including bloggers, have a role to play in raising awareness on such issues. But with oil and gas giants specifically, it’s unlikely to make as much of a difference as with other industries. I think the long-term soultion would be to decrease our dependency on fossil fuels. It’s a necessity since fossil fuels won’t last forever and it’d help our environment too. Easier said than done of course.

Every nation needs leaders and a strong supporting citizentry to effect changes. Bloggers also play a starting role in this.

rather than looking at somewhere so far away from home, why not try to do an analysis on the island of sumatra, near aceh where people were protesting to achieve autonomy due to the exploitation of the natural resources? i believe rather than putting an end to corruption, which is almost the evil present in all man, might as well ask the oil companies to approach the locals and have them paid directly.

it’s not the best solution, they’ll still better, in my opinion, then being too ambitious by trying to snuff out corruption.

I’m always very careful and restrained to suggest a “non-corrupt” government as a solution. Such governments are usually the exceptions.

It’s not an impossible task, but it may take too long at too high a price.

I would rather focus on more immediate solutions.

I think the developed world has to pay attention to where most of their resources are mostly coming from. The price of oil (and other resources) is a function of “stability” in these countries.

And I think the more fundamental way of getting it done is to ensure that knowledge flows to these places. Getting “know-how” and technology that propagates knowledge is a fantastic way.

The OLPC project (http://laptop.org) is a case in point.

The purpose of this post is to remind our folks that we need to pay attention to where oil money flowing to. Ensuring that these funds go to improving the people’s lives will only do us good.