Stephen Kretzmann is the Executive Director of Oil Change International.

He has worked on energy issues and the global oil industry for the last nineteen years. After eight years with Greenpeace, he served as the environmental advisor to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People in Nigeria and was a co-founder of the human rights and environmental organization Project Underground. In 1997, he conducted the first independent soil and water samples in Ogoni, which proved the Ogoni claim of Shell's pollution and double standards on their land. He has also successfully campaigned to keep Florida’s coast free from oil & gas drilling, and represented various organizations at UN environmental negotiations.

While at the Institute for Policy Studies, Steve coordinated a global civil society effort to engage in the World Bank’s Extractive Industries Review, which recommended an end to Bank support for coal and oil projects. He has authored numerous articles and reports and is a regular commentator on issues of corporate accountability, climate, the global oil industry, environmental and human rights.

Steve founded Oil Change International in 2005 in order to carry out strategic, systemic campaigns focused on the oil industry. He is currently campaigning for climate justice and coordinating ShellGuilty.com, an international coalition effort designed to force Shell to end gas flaring in Nigeria. In April 2009, he testified in the US Congress on the impacts of the oil industry in Nigeria.

Blog Entries by Stephen Kretzmann

Shell's Settlement Doesn't Hide Unsettling Reality in Nigeria

2 Comments | Posted June 10, 2009 | 11:07 AM (EST)


After thirteen years and countless hours by lawyers, community members, and activists around the world, Royal Dutch Shell finally settled the Wiwa v Shell case in a New York court for $15.5 million.

Plaintiffs in the case, which included Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., and the families of other Ogoni men...

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War for Oil in Nigeria

2 Comments | Posted June 2, 2009 | 06:22 PM (EST)


Three weeks ago in the oil rich but impoverished Niger Delta, the Nigerian military reportedly attacked several villages, leaving hundreds, possibly thousands dead. It is the latest incident in the ongoing struggle between armed insurgent groups and the Nigerian military for control of the creeks, lowland rainforest, and mangroves from...

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