Shell blames particularly the continuous oil spills on community sabotage to receive company damage awards. But Shell's own environmental expert resigned after the company ignored his report on severe pollution at Shell facilities in the Delta and refused to implement international environmental standards for its operations. In an effort to head off the executions, Ken's brother Owens met with then Shell Nigeria MD Brian Andersson to seek the company's intervention. Only at the 11th hour did the company finally issue a brief public statement urging clemency on humanitarian grounds. None of this is unique - I have heard very similar statements re good citizenship from Mobil executives who assure me that they use quiet diplomacy where they can.
Property needs protection.
Given the regime's dependence on oil exports for its economic survival, the Nigerian human rights and democracy movements have called for international oil sanctions to secure the release of political prisoners, return the military to barracks and implement the 1993 election results. The private sector position can be understood as self interest. I Nigeria could, over the medium term, find new markets, in Asia, to replace lost sales in the U.S. and Europe. They argue instead for the maintenance of the largely ineffective diplomatic sanctions currently in place in the U.S. and Europe, with the addition of a freeze on the personal assets of members of the regime, which is unlikely to be very effective. Nigeria is not South Africa, the argument goes, and sanctions cannot and will not work as they did against apartheid.