A true story of oil, intelligence, and consequence

Three months after Lithuania's refinery director was kidnapped and murdered, Gene Sticco arrived to secure the facility at age 26. He thought he was protecting American oil executives in a post-Soviet backwater. He was actually entering a fifteen-year career operating where corporate security, intelligence agencies, and organized crime converge.

UNCONVENTIONAL reveals the invisible apparatus that keeps your tank filled. Shell Oil maintained its own 1,200-officer police force in Nigeria and infiltrated government ministries. The CIA shared classified intelligence with corporate security divisions. Private military contractors waged war in Iraq while oil executives calculated the cost-benefit analysis of paying ransoms versus accepting casualties. This wasn't deviation from normal operations—this was the system functioning exactly as designed.

Sticco built and operated that machinery across Lithuania, Nigeria, Iraq, and Pakistan, coordinating with intelligence services from multiple nations while managing security operations that blurred every line between corporate interest and national security. He saw colleagues kidnapped in Port Harcourt, watched private security forces engage in combat operations protecting pipelines, and participated in intelligence networks that monitored activists using state-level surveillance techniques.

When Nigerian communities sued Shell for decades of environmental devastation, Sticco testified against his former employer. His witness statements revealed what Shell had denied: the parent company directly controlled its Nigerian operations, making it legally liable for the pollution. The UK Supreme Court agreed. In 2024, Shell announced its exit from Nigeria's onshore operations after eighty years, abandoning what had become a terminal liability.

This is documented reality from someone who operated inside the system, not outside criticism from activists. The apparatus exists because we demand it exists. Every gallon you pump requires navigating relationships between corporate divisions, intelligence agencies, organized crime, and host militaries that protect critical infrastructure by any means necessary.

You're not outside this system. You're funding it. And you deserve to know how it actually works.