Drilling and Killing

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Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship is an award-winning audio documentary produced by Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill, mixed and engineered by Dred Scott Keyes. The piece was first aired in 1998 on Democracy Now!

The documentary revealed for the first time that Chevron played a role in the killing of two Nigerian villagers by facilitating an attack by the Nigerian Navy and Mobile Police (MOPOL).

In an interview with Democracy Now!, a Chevron official acknowledged that, on May 28, 1998, the company transported Nigerian soldiers to their Parabe oil platform and barge in the Niger Delta, which dozens of community activists had occupied. The protestors were demanding that Chevron contribute more to the development of the impoverished oil region where they live. In the interview, Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole was asked:

Q: Who took them in, on Thursday morning, the Mobile Police, the Navy?

A: We did. We did. Chevron did. We took them there.

Q: By how?

A: Helicopters, yes, we took them in.

Q: Who authorized the call for the military to come in?

A: That's Chevron's management.

Soon after landing in Chevron-leased helicopters, the Nigerian military shot to death two protesters, Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu, and wounded several others. The eleven activists were detained for three weeks.

During their imprisonment, one activist said he was handcuffed and hung from a ceiling fan hook for hours for refusing to sign a statement written by Nigerian federal authorities.

Nigerian activists charge that Chevron's oil operations pollute their land, severely hampering fishing and farming, their only means of livelihood. The U.S. multinational Chevron Texaco is the third largest oil producer in Nigeria. Oil money provides roughly 80 percent of the dictatorship's revenue.

"It is very clear that Chevron, just like Shell, uses the military to protect its oil activities. They drill and they kill," Nigerian environmental attorney Oronto Douglas told Democracy Now!.