When Shell sold its onshore oil operations in Nigeria to the Renaissance Africa Energy Company last year, the divestment transformed the fossil fuel giant’s climate performance – helping it become the first energy major to report zero routine flaring.

One year on, gas flaring at some of these assets has increased significantly, while Shell has continued to benefit commercially from them, according to a new investigation by nonprofit group Data Desk, shared exclusively with Climate Home News.

Since March 2025, Shell has traded 8 million barrels of oil from the Niger Delta’s Forcados terminal, which was included in the Renaissance deal, Data Desk’s analysis of information supplied by commodities data firm Kpler found.

It is a similar picture at the Bonny terminal, where Shell’s operations were also transferred as part of its onshore exit. Shell is recorded as having traded 3 million barrels of oil from this facility, south of the city of Port Harcourt, since the deal went through.

Multimillion-dollar oil shipments

Using an average 2025 global Brent crude price of $69 per barrel, 11 million barrels of oil shipped from the two terminals since the completion of Shell’s divestment would be worth $759 million.

Shell chartered the tankers carrying the oil to buyers around the world – from Ivory Coast and South Africa, to Canada and Italy, the Kpler data shows.

“Whoever is running Shell’s old oilfields in Nigeria needs to get that oil to market,” said Neil Atkinson, former head of the Oil Industry and Markets Division at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“So it may well be that while Shell no longer runs a facility, the firm that took it over may have an arrangement to continue selling oil through Shell, thereby making use of their connections and trade networks,” Atkinson said.

Shell’s shipping and chartering arm made a profit of £24.8 million (about $33 million) in 2024, the most recent date available, up from £17 million the year before.

Asked about Shell’s continuing ties to the two terminals, a Shell spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on trading activities or specific customer relationships.”

Renaissance did not address a question from Climate Home News about its ongoing commercial ties with Shell.

Environmental legacy

The new reporting raises fresh questions about how energy majors present their climate performance to investors and consumers, and the environmental legacy they are leaving behind after selling fossil fuel assets in countries such as Nigeria, where Shell has operated for nearly a century.

Many of Shell’s onshore oil fields had been in production for decades by the time the company sold its Nigerian onshore subsidiary over a year ago for $2.4 billion to Renaissance, a consortium of Nigerian companies and an international firm that aims to double oil production by 2030.

Six months after finalising the deal, Renaissance CEO Tony Attah said the company had already boosted output at Shell’s former fields by 100,000 barrels per day.

At the same time, gas flaring increased at most of the fields where the activity was detected, according to Data Desk’s analysis of satellite data, despite Renaissance’s pledges to foster sustainable energy development and protect local communities.

Gas is a by-product of oil drilling. In places that lack infrastructure to process this gas, like the Niger Delta, it gets burned off instead.

Earlier this year, Climate Home News reported on the impact on local communities of increased gas flaring at several other fields in the Niger Delta since they were sold by Shell to different Nigerian companies in recent years.

Besides billowing out toxic chemicals that cause air pollution and wasting a potential energy source, global gas flaring is estimated by the World Bank to release the equivalent of 400 million tonnes of CO2 annually – higher than France’s greenhouse gas emissions each year.

Gas flaring renaissance?

Comparing the year before the sale’s completion to the year after, satellite data shows daily flaring rose at 10 of the 13 Renaissance blocks where it was detected. Flaring fell at two blocks and was unchanged at one other, while five had no detectable flaring in the dataset.

The OML 32 block, located in the heart of the Niger Delta, was one of the assets that Renaissance took over last year. Here, average daily flaring was more than 20 times higher in the year ending March 2026 compared to the year before, according to Data Desk’s analysis of satellite data from the Colorado School of Mines’ Earth Observation Group.

The Renaissance-operated OML 21 and OML 28 onshore blocks saw increases of 390% and 93%, respectively, in average daily flaring in the year after the sale’s completion.

A spokesperson for Renaissance said the company’s environmental management framework included a plan to reduce flaring.

“Renaissance Africa Energy Company Limited has a multi-year gas flaring reduction strategy through its Flare Elimination and Monetisation Plan, developed in accordance with applicable laws and regulations,” the spokesperson said.

Shell’s spokesperson said it “cannot comment on operational matters relating to assets under new owners/operators”, adding that both the company and the Nigerian government had conducted “extensive due diligence” with regard to its divestments in Nigeria.

“Dodging accountability”

Before the deal, Shell said three years ago that its remaining Nigerian assets accounted for about half of the total routine and non-routine flaring in its integrated gas and upstream facilities. Shortly after selling these assets, the company announced it had achieved zero routine flaring – five years ahead of a global 2030 target set by the World Bank.

Shell’s exit from onshore operations in Nigeria followed years of accusations of environmental harm, including oil spills. Residents of two Nigerian communities are currently taking legal action against the oil major in the UK and a trial at the High Court is due to begin next year.

Shell says the majority of spills in the Niger Delta were caused by theft and sabotage and it is therefore not liable.

According to Atkinson, Shell pivoted away from onshore oil fields that “might have become more trouble than they were worth” while remaining a major player in Nigeria’s oil industry.

Top green jet fuel producer linked to suspect waste-oil supply chain

The London-based company has invested billions in offshore gas development in the country. It has also retained a 25.6% stake in Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG), a liquefied natural gas producer based on Bonny Island.

As the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies seek to meet their climate targets, a strategic shift “to dodge accountability” by selling more problematic assets is under way, said Sophie Marjanac, director of legal strategy at the Polluter Pays Project, an organisation that campaigns for the oil industry to cover the cost of its environmental damage.

“By dumping ageing, polluting infrastructure onto smaller operators, they leave behind contamination, and communities facing ongoing harm with little chance of justice,” Marjanac said.

The post How Shell is still benefiting from offloaded Niger Delta oil assets appeared first on Climate Home News.

How Shell is still benefiting from offloaded Niger Delta oil assets

As global oil prices rocket due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, traditional jet fuel has become hard to come by and has nearly doubled in price, leading airlines across much of the world to raise ticket prices or cancel flights.

While greener fuels produced from plants or green hydrogen remain more expensive, the cost gap has narrowed and experts told Climate Home News that this could boost demand in the struggling sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry.

Matt Ridley, sustainability and innovation director at the OneWorld airline alliance told Climate Home News that “higher jet fuel prices narrow the green premium, reinforcing the role of SAF in cutting lifecycle emissions while reducing exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets.”

Marie Owens Thomsen, chief economist and sustainability lead at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade group for airlines, said the world is currently seeing “the highest jet fuel prices that we’ve ever had in the history of jet travel”.

The problem predates the war but has been worsened by it, she said, adding that as demand for oil-based products like diesel has declined because of the electrification of road transport, many of the oil refineries that produce jet fuel were struggling to make a profit.

The crisis could “wake people up” to the problem of depending on “oil monopolies in the Middle East”, she said, adding that ramping up SAF production is critical for energy security.

“Khaki is the new green”

Some in the military sector seem to be taking note. Rheinmetall, a long-term supplier of the German air force, has partnered with a company called Ineratec which is developing technology to produce e-SAF based on hydrogen. And during the Biden administration, the US Department of Defense invested $65 million in an American e-SAF startup called Air Company.

Summing up the changing reasons for interest in SAF, Marcella Franchi from SAF producer Haffner Energy told the SAF Investor Summit in February that “khaki is the new green”. Speaking before the US bombed Iran, she gave the example of Canada, which she said is pursuing SAF production to avoid reliance on oil-based jet fuel from its “very unsettling neighbours”.

Since conflict has flared in the Middle East, Susan van Dyk, a former academic turned SAF consultant, told Climate Home News that a temporary narrowing of the cost gap is not, by itself, enough to make SAF take off. But the energy crisis may push governments to support SAF, she said.

The European Union and the UK have both mandated that, from January 2025, fuel suppliers at their airports must blend at least 2% SAF with oil-based kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.

But, at least before the latest oil crisis, the EU and UK faced pressure from some airline and fossil fuel executives to water down these rules. The uncertainty these calls have created is damaging investment in production, SAF producers have said.

Book and claim

Speaking at the SAF Investor Conference in February, African airline executives and SAF producers said the design of the EU and UK mandates hinders non-European producers from contributing.

Under current rules, the SAF has to be physically delivered to planes at EU and UK airports to count towards the mandate, which favours SAF produced in or close to European airports – even though the raw materials to make it, such as waste oil, are often imported from regions like Southeast Asia.

Wakina Mutembei, Kenya Airways’ sustainability and innovations lead, told the conference that the EU and UK should adopt what is known as a book-and-claim system, where SAF supplied to planes outside of Europe can count towards a fuel supplier’s compliance with the EU and UK’s mandates.

This would be a “business opportunity”, she told the London audience, to use abundant Kenyan crops and used cooking oil and lower production costs “to produce SAF that is cheaper for the European market and the UK market”.

“If we are all complaining that the cost of SAF is higher, why not go to a market where it’s cheaper to produce it?” she asked, noting that this would create jobs in Africa and earn foreign currency.

Francis Mwangi, senior engineer at Kenya’s Civil Aviation Authority, told Climate Home News in an interview that if SAF is produced in Africa “you might find that, even relatively, the price might not be as far from the normal Jet A1 [oil-based jet fuel]”.

IATA’s Thomsen also called for a book-and-claim system, saying it “is definitely a way of making this teeny-tiny, bespoke, private-deal kind of market grow into a global market” by removing geographical constraints.

Shipping SAF long distances to be pumped into planes is inefficient, she said, adding that “without book and claim, this market will not scale”.

The post Oil crisis could boost struggling sustainable aviation fuel industry appeared first on Climate Home News.

Oil crisis could boost struggling sustainable aviation fuel industry

Harjeet Singh is a climate activist and strategic advisor to the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, as well as founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation.

For thirty years, global climate talks perfected policy paralysis around the primary cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. Within the UNFCCC negotiations, the “consensus card” was played with surgical precision by the fossil fuel industry and wealthy producer nations to block meaningful action.

For decades, talks were restricted to the “demand side” – reducing emissions – while the “supply side” – the extraction of oil, gas, and coal – was treated as a forbidden subject. This so-called progress was a treadmill, leading nowhere despite plenty of sweat.

The breaking point: from Belém to Santa Marta

The failure peaked at COP30 in Belém, where, despite widespread support, the final outcome contained no fossil fuel phase-out mandate. Instead, the world watched as the COP30 Presidency announced a “roadmap” initiative at the very end of the talks – a face-saving measure that lacked formal standing in the process.

The halls of Belém were once again crawling with lobbyists, ensuring that “consensus” remained a tool for delay. Recognising the UNFCCC logjam, Global South countries in the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative demanded a series of dedicated conferences.

Colombia, the biggest producer among them, broke the status quo by pioneering this new path: the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, joined by the Netherlands as co-host.

The pioneering conference in Santa Marta in late April moved us from the “if” to the “how”, signalling a shift from airy pledges to the reality of implementation. But as the dust settles, a more ancient struggle is resurfacing: the struggle for the “pen”.

The invisible hand of control

History shows that when developed nations can no longer block a process, they attempt to colonise it. In Santa Marta, we witnessed the opening gambit of a familiar play – exclusion followed by takeover. Critics signalled this early on in an open letter, calling out the systemic disregard for African lives and environments in global policy and the persistent marginalisation of Indigenous Peoples’ voices and concerns.

Under the guise of “technical support”, wealthy nations fought to steer the outcome of workstreams towards Global North-dominated institutions. Despite the expertise they may bring, why are the recognised bodies for this process exclusively based in an area representing only 20% of the world’s population?

The hastily assembled report containing the “Chairs’ Takeaways” from Santa Marta requires scrutiny and raises the following concerns:

• The Roadmap Trap: Connecting national transition plans to the Science Panel on the Global Energy Transition (SPGET) and the NDC Partnership. These bodies, largely dominated by Western experts, risk imposing frameworks that treat sovereign developing nations as markets for the private sector. Will “science” be used to legitimise a Global North-centric status quo while ignoring debt, trade and finance rules, and other forces that shape national policy?

• The Financial Architecture: Pushing the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) to lead the work on macroeconomic dependencies on fossil fuels. Expertise matters, but whose stability is going to be prioritised? Is it the communities losing their livelihoods, or the global financial systems that grew fat on fossil fuel rents?

• The Trade Filter: Bringing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – a club of wealthy nations – into “producer–consumer alignment”. This is a coup to ensure the international trade system keeps serving the West and its elites under the guise of “coordination”.

The “dos and don’ts” for developed nations

For decades, the responsibility of rich nations to provide public finance for climate action in vulnerable countries has been replaced by private sector “leverage”. Developed nations must stop using “climate finance” as a tool to open new markets for their multinational corporations and put actual, grant-based finance on the table to support the transition in the Global South.

They should also refrain from forcing every initiative back into the UNFCCC gridlock, where meaningful progress on a fossil fuel phase-out has been systematically blocked.

Finally, it is critical that the Santa Marta process is recognised as a sovereign space for historically silenced nations to hold polluters accountable, rather than being treated as a showroom for Western exports.

This requires addressing the hypocrisy of so-called “front runners”. Canada, France, Ireland, Australia and Norway attend these conferences as “leaders” while greenlighting oil and gas expansion. You cannot lead a transition while pouring fuel on the fire. Leadership requires immediately ending expansion; anything else is an expensive photo-op.

Unity as the ultimate tool

For developing nations, the path forward is radical unity. Global North diplomacy often seeks to divide and conquer through bilateral deals that bypass collective power. Developing nations must refuse to be cowed.

This is a chance to move beyond tools that prioritise debt and trade over development. Collectively, the Global South can build technical and financial frameworks that advance energy sovereignty and justice. South-South cooperation must be the primary engine of a fair transition that holds historical polluters accountable.

The road to Tuvalu 2027 – reclaiming the agenda

The announcement that Tuvalu will co-host the second conference in 2027 is a political necessity. Tuvalu, a least developed country, is a living symbol of the climate crisis and a vanguard of justice.

Tuvalu must have the power to set the agenda from day one. This cannot be another “safe space” for dialogue without commitment, as seen at the first conference. The road to Tuvalu must advance a mechanism that gained wider support in Santa Marta but was ignored in the Chairs’ Takeaways: a Fossil Fuel Treaty.

We need a framework to manage the decline of fossil fuel extraction based on fair shares and equity, turning international cooperation into support for resilient, renewable economies.

The process has only just begun. Santa Marta was the spark, but Tuvalu must be the engine room of implementation. The Global South must take the pen to script the transition rooted in equity and justice.

The post Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition