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.
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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.
