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Shell Confirms Oil Spill On Bonny River
Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), has confirmed an oil spill from one of its facilities on the Bonny River in Rivers State.
Fishermen in Bonny first noticed the spill in early August and reported the incident to Bonny Local Government.
Chief Sodienye Abere, Chairman, Bonny Environment Consultant Committee, told the media yesterday that fishermen in the area noticed the spill on August 2.
"We went out to see things for ourselves and observed that the spill came from a facility belonging to Shell.
"We alerted Shell and they agreed that the pipeline belonged to them, but we expected them to have come to do a joint investigation with us by now," Abere said.
He said the spill was the seventh in the area this year, adding that six of them were from Shell.
Abere said the recent spill was one of the highest in terms of quantity and spread.
The spill, he added, stretched from Dutch Island near Okrika, Opobo Channel, to Finima toward the Atlantic Ocean.
"The community has been worried because all the aquatic life has been endangered.
He noted that dead fish, crabs and lobsters were floating in the water.
"Our own is tidal water setting. There is slow tide and ebb tide. The slow tide water comes up and the ebb water goes back," he said.
He blamed the spread of the spill on Shell's inability to intervene promptly.
Source: Leadership, 15th August 2010.
Oil Spill: Shell Appeals Against x15bn Judgement
By Tony Amokeodo, Martins Ayankola,Sola Adebayo and Chukwudi Akasike
The Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria Limited, on Tuesday, stated that it had appealed against the judgment of a Federal High Court in Asaba, which ordered it to pay N15.4bn damages to Ejama Ebubu Community in Rivers State over oil spill in the area.
The SPDC added that it had also filed an application for stay of execution of the judgment pending the determination of its appeal.
Chief Isaac Agbara and nine other plaintiffs had on behalf of the community, sued the SPDC in 2001 and joined Shell International Petroleum Company Limited and Shell International Exploration and Production BV as co-defendant to the suit.
In his judgment delivered on June 14, Justice Ibrahim Buba held that the plaintiffs' case had merit, saying that the extent of the damages caused by the oil spill in the area was not exaggerated.
The judge further directed the SPDC to depolute and rehabilitate the dry land and swamps to its pre-impact status.
But the SPDC had in a statement issued in Lagos on Tuesday, alleged that the spill in question occurred during the Nigerian civil war, when advancing troops set up the leak.
It said, "We were not operating in the area at the time because of the civil war. SPDC JV will continue to operate in an environmentally friendly manner."
Meanwhile, Delta State Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People and the Environmental Rights Agenda have hailed the judgement.
While Uduaghan said on Tuesday that the judgment vindicated his position that the judiciary was the last hope of the oil communities, ERA stated that the development signalled a ray of hope for the Niger Delta people.
The governor's comment was contained in a statement by his Communications Manager, Mr. Paul Odili, while that of ERA was made by its Media Head, Mr. Philip Jakpor.
Uduaghan said he rightly predicted the development in his speech at a recent book launch in Lagos.
MOSOP had also in a statement by its Press Officer, Mr. Sunny Zorvah, said, "If Shell wishes to convince the world that it values the Ogoni and others of the Niger Delta and not just profits, then it should take elementary lesson from the Gulf of Mexico BP spill, where even before ascertainment of cause and containment of the spill, local fishermen are being compensated to the extent that some affected fisher folks say they got more than their usual revenue from fishing. Our people deserve no less.
Source: Punch, 7th July 2010.
Shell Appeals x15.4bn Oil Spill Penalty
By Clara Nwachukwu
The Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, has said it is not willing to cough out N15.4 billion as oil spill penalty since the spill in question was caused by the Nigerian troops during the Nigerian civil war.
Hardly has the dust settled on the Federal High Court landmark ruling on Monday, awarding a N15.4 billion damages against Shell for a 1970 oil spill than the Anglo-Dutch oil giant filed an appeal against the judgment.
Accordingly, Shell told Vanguard in a text response, yesterday, that it had "filed an application for a stay of execution and an appeal against the judgment."
In its appeal, the company noted: "The spill in question occurred during the Nigerian civil war, when troops set up the leak. We were not operating in the area at the time because of the civil war."
Even as Shell battles against the court ruling, the Anglo-Dutch company announced the discovery of 70,000 barrels per day oil from its Gbaran-Ubie project in the Niger Delta, which it said would provide an important new source of energy for export and domestic markets.
"When fully operational next year, it will be capable of producing one billion standard cubic feet of gas a day (scf/d), equivalent to about a quarter of the gas currently produced for export and domestic use in Nigeria.
"It will also produce as much as 70,000 barrels of oil per day. The project's gas processing plant is now producing 200 million scf/d from the first two wells out of a planned total of 33," Shell said in a statement yesterday.
"This project will deliver substantial benefits for the country," argued Mr Mutiu Sunmonu, Managing Director of SPDC. "It will provide liquefied natural gas and oil for export and gas for electricity generation in Nigeria."
Ruling, a ray of hope —ERA/FoEN
Meanwhile, Shell's appeal came even as environment activists described the Federal High Court ruling in Asaba, Delta State, as signalling "a ray of hope for communities in the Niger Delta."
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) in a statement noted that communities in the oil rich Niger Delta had tirelessly demanded justice for their environmental rights that had been violated by oil corporations in the past five decades of oil exploration.
In a statement hailing the ruling, ERA/FoEN said the judgment was a further indication that no matter how long it took, the violation of the rights of the people of the Niger Delta must be accounted for.
"While we acknowledge this welcome token forced on Shell by the court, this sum cannot be said to be adequate in remediating the impacts of Shell's pollution which the Ejama-Ebubu community has suffered for over four decades.
"The ruling, on our own shores, signals a ray of hope for other Niger Delta communities that have suffered the same fate and have been made to pass through the tiresome legal technicalities that the oil industry always unleashes on poor communities," said ERA/FoEN Executive Director, Nnimmo Bassey.
Mr Bassey remarked that "It is a shame that Shell allowed the community to go through the harrowing court procedures that has culminated in this judgement," even as he added that the Shell would likely not going accept the court decision and would explore time_wasting legal processes to deny the people their rights.
Reiterating ERA/FoEN's position on the need for a comprehensive audit of the Niger Delta, Mr Bassey insisted that "No amount of compensation can eliminate the impact of oil spills on farmlands, rivers and streams or make up for livelihoods lost in Ejama_Ebubu or other impacted communities."
"The Nigerian government cannot overlook the lessons from the British Petroleum (BP) pay_outs resulting from the Gulf of Mexico spill in the United States. It must compel the oil companies polluting the Niger Delta to do same. Shell can no longer hide its monstrous atrocities on the ecology of the Niger Delta. It must not only pay the compensation, it must also clean up its mess in line with international specifications for such actions," Mr Bassey insisted.
Source: Vanguard, 8th July 2010.
Activists, Groups Write Jonathan on N'Delta Oil Spills
By Success Nwogu
A global coalition of leading human, environmental and children's rights groups, prominent individuals and experts on Sunday urged President Goodluck Jonathan to protect the people of the Niger Delta by toughening laws on the
operations of oil companies.
In a letter titled, "Oil firms must compensate the people of Nigeria," which was published in the Opinion Page of The Observer newspaper of London, the coalition also said oil companies operating in the region must pay an "ecological debt' by "investing in an independent compensation body responsible for dealing with the impact of oil spills."
They lamented that the people of the region were not receving adequate protection from government, while oil companies such as Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil had gone unpunished, in spite of being "largely responsible for decades of oil spills that destroy livelihoods and violate human rights."
The coalition said it was unlike the price being paid by BP for its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The letter, which was endorsed by 43 signatories, in Nigeria and across the world, reads, "Grilled in Congress, shares down to £3 and forced to pledge billions of dollars in compensation, BP is paying the price for the damage it has caused in the Gulf of Mexico – and rightly so. Yet in Nigeria, as you report (Anger grows across the world at the real price of 'frontier oil,' Business), oil companies such as Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil have been largely responsible for decades of oil spills that destroy livelihoods and violate human rights.
"Villagers in Nigeria have nowhere to turn for adequate remedies. A global coalition of leading human, environmental and children's rights groups, prominent individuals and experts is calling on oil companies in Nigeria to begin repaying their ecological debt by investing in an independent compensation body responsible for dealing with the impact of oil spills.
President Goodluck Jonathan must lead this process and toughen Nigeria's regulatory framework to protect the people of the Niger Delta."
The signatories include the Nigeria Liberty Forum, UK; Ijaw Peoples Association of Great Britain and Ireland; Centre for Social & Corporate Responsibility, Nigeria; Gender And Development Action, Nigeria; Bayelsa Non-Governmental Organisations Forum, Nigeria; Socio-Economic Rights & Accountability Project, Nigeria; Prof. Rick Steiner, USA; and Communities for a Better Environment, USA.
Others include Michael Watts, University of Berkeley California, USA; Patrick Bond, senior professor, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa; Centre for Civil Society Environmental Justice project, South Africa; Niger Delta Professionals For Development, Nigeria; Gordon Roddick, UK; and the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, Nigeria; and Scottish Education and Action for Development, Scotland.
Source: Daily Champion, 5th July 2010.
Gulf spill a Familiar Story in Oil-soaked Nigeria
By JON GAMBRELL (AP) – 58 minutes ago
IWUO-OKPOM, Nigeria — The brown spots run like a trail of blood down the deserted coastline near this fishing village. Just underneath a handful of sand lies spilled oil.
Oil powers this West African nation's economy but is killing its southern shores. Villagers here say the spillage regularly washes ashore, ruining their fishing nets and meager livelihoods. Children whose parents can't afford school fees pass the time flipping bottle caps into tin cans.
While the world is transfixed by the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, oil spills have become a part of everyday life during the 50 years that foreign firms have been pumping out Nigeria's easily refined fuel. Environmentalists estimate as much as 550 million gallons of oil have poured into the Niger River Delta during that time — at a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon Valdez disaster per year.
Black crude stains the coasts of the Niger Delta, a region of swamps, mangroves and creeks almost the size of South Carolina or Portugal. But who is responsible, and who should clean up? The answers are as murky as the fouled waters.
"They pay when they spill in their own country. All those oil companies come from white-man countries," said Samuel Ayadi, a pastor and fishermen's representative. "In our country now, they leave the fishermen in pain."
Colonized by the British in the late 1800s for its palm oil, Nigeria became an oil power after Royal Dutch Shell PLC struck its first working well in 1956 in the Niger Delta. Other foreign firms moved in, among them Chevron Corp., Italy's Eni SpA, Exxon Mobil Corp. and French major Total SA, all working across the delta in partnership with the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.
Much of the oil heads to the U.S.
OPEC figures put daily production at about 2 million barrels. But the profits come at a steep ecological price.
According to government figures, Nigeria suffered more than 6,800 oil spills from 1976 through 2001, losing some 130 million gallons — 3 million barrels.
Under the worst-case scenario, the Gulf Coast spill is sending 2.5 million gallons a day into the ocean where the offshore rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20.
Environmentalists say the Nigerian government figures don't include what is lost in attacks by militants demanding a bigger share of the profits for the delta region, and in communities too remote or dangerous to enter.
In Iwuo-Okpom, an Atlantic Ocean village of 7,000, a tiny flame on the horizon marks an offshore Exxon Mobil oil platform. On this coast, in January 1998, a pipeline of the company then known only as Mobil broke and spilled
about 1.6 million gallons into the ocean, one of Nigeria's worst spills. The slick spread as far as Lagos, a city of 14 million people 200 kilometers (120 miles) northwest.
Tade Amuwa, a 35-year-old woman who smokes fish in Iwuo-Okpom, says those caught near the village cook poorly.
"All these things, they all go black," she said, sweeping her hand across oil-soaked driftwood and puny, discolored fish.
In a statement, Exxon Mobil's Nigerian subsidiary said it used airplanes and boats to spray dispersants on recent slicks, though "regrettably some oil did reach shoreline areas." The subsidiary said it also offered contracts for locals to help with the cleanup. Village leaders denied receiving any such offers.
More than 4,300 miles (7,000 kilometers) of pipelines and flow stations snake through the delta, some of them decades old, corroded and prone to failure under the pressure.
Oil companies can't be blamed for all the spills. Militant groups have targeted pipelines, kidnapped oil workers and fought government troops here since 2006. Fearing attacks and kidnappings, firms are hesitant to send staff to spill sites, and often confine employees to offshore platforms and military-protected compounds.
In Ogoniland, a swampy, oil-rich portion of the delta, villagers rebelled and drove out the oil companies in the 1990s. Still, Shell pipelines run throughout the area.
As the tide ebbs at Bodo City, a town in Ogoniland, exposed mangrove roots drip black from spilled crude. There are no birds in the sky or fish in the creeks.
"They died," said Mike K. Vipene, a youth leader in Bodo City. "They won't be coming back."
Villagers blamed a failing Shell pipeline. Caroline Wittgen, a Shell spokeswoman, said the company wouldn't comment on individual spills. A recent Shell environmental report said that almost all the oil spilled from company lines last year — more than 4 million gallons — resulted from sabotage.
Criminal gangs often tap into pipelines in remote, unprotected areas. Government estimates suggest they steal as much as 15 percent of the delta's oil, loading some onto ships for sale on the black market. Others run refineries in the bush, producing bootleg gasoline to sell at rickety roadside tables throughout the delta.
The incentive for the thefts is simple, says Young Kigbara, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People: "Poverty; everybody wants to survive."
Though thefts continue, violence has calmed in recent months with the offer of a government amnesty. Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria's new president, is from the delta and has promised to make peace a priority.
But the amnesty deal now appears to be faltering and demands for compensation persist. Okon Sunday, the village chief in Iwuo-Okpom, wants Exxon Mobil to pay his community billions of dollars.
If compensation isn't treated seriously, militancy is inevitable, he said. "It is conflict to crisis, crisis to full-fledged war."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gWJz3LJ_YYoLGT1QPdapzo0wvpDQD9GOCMDO0
Pollution of Niger Delta
BP America Debacle: Nigeria Gains From A Sad Episode
BY IDOWU OYEBANJO
As I lay awake listening to President Obama of US bully BP, the British Oil giant, into putting $20billion in an independently managed account to settle claims arising from the oil spill and suspend dividend payments to its shareholders for the rest of the year, I knew that a long-drawn battle had commenced between the to love-lust world powers.
The realities on ground show that the 'special relationship' enjoyed by Britain and the US 'ended' a long time ago. To shy away from this truth is to de-emphasis the fury of British citizens over the manner, which "their" company had been treated by the US. Beyond the set aside fund, BP still has to pay for the clean-up effort and on-going operations to capture leaking oil and eventually to plug the well entirely.
Also, BP will pay lost income to oil workers laid-off because of a six-month moratorium on deep water drilling imposed by the US government because of the spill. For one thing, BP holds the pension and retirement benefits of millions of British citizens and any move that will undermine the survival of BP will be frowned at everywhere in Britain.
In view of the fact that the full impact of the spill cannot be accounted for immediately, if after a period of time it emerges that the amount set aside will not be enough to cover all the legitimate claims against BP, the company will have to dig deeper for more funds. There are fears already that BP will not be able to survive this onslaught. As a consequence, some banks in America have already issued warnings to traders not to sign any contracts with BP that lasts more than a year.
Another credit-rating agency downgraded the company's debt as Banks seek to protect themselves for fear BP might not be able to make good on its promises. The cost of insurance against a debt default has gone up immediately for BP as the US vows to hold BP accountable for all the costs of clean-up and compensation. Other oil companies have also openly denied and condemned BP saying the spill was largely as a result of gross negligence of safety standards by BP.
If things continue this way, it may even be alleged that the act was intentional to "waste" some of the oil reserves of the US or "force" the US to have a second look at "climate change". The oil spill will make America think more about a clean energy future but not yet to the extent of having to pay for it, or to tackle it as most people in the US believe tackling climate change will lead to an "energy tax".
What can Nigeria benefit from this episode? First, we have good reason to believe that American companies operating and causing oil spill in the delta of Nigeria should equally be held responsible for the "criminal" act perhaps, employing a reputable British company to handle the pursuit of legitimate claims from locals will suffice. In this atmosphere of mistreatment, I bet that no American company will be spared!
oyebanjoidowu@yahoo.com
You Pass Death Sentence On the People When You Pollute Their Streams, Farmland, The Atmosphere...
BY BISI ALABI WILLIAMS
The activist Nnimmo Bassey, Director of Environmental Rights Action, ERA, fielded questions from Asst. Political Editor, Alabi Williams on the relationship between the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the endless leakages that is
a recurring event in the troubled Delta region of Nigeria. Excerpts
The oil s pill in the US Gulf of Mexico has brought to the fore what people in Nigeria's Niger Delta have lived with for decades. To what extent can we compare the two disasters?
The spill in the Gulf of Mexico is just one incident, whereas the spills in the Niger Delta, Gulf of Guinea, are a continual story. According to official records, there are at least 300 oil spill incidents every year in the Niger Delta giving an indication that we have a new spill virtually everyday. When we note that spill incidents are grossly underreported and that spill volumes are equally understated, it makes it impossible to compare the incidents going by the records available.
However, there are a number of grounds on which the two gushers in the two gulfs can be read. First, we learn from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico that oil corporations will always understate the volumes of spill until the evidence is overwhelming and the figures cannot be easily cooked. The figures released by BP keep changing. Consider these volumes: 1,000 barrels per day as at April 25; 5000 barrels per day by April 28; 12,000 -25,000 barrels by May 27; 20,000 – 50,000 barrels per day by early June. Now the figures hover around 100,000 barrels a day despite the sucker cap that has been placed over the broken pipe.
The Nigerian government documented 6,817 spills between 1976 and 2000, which according to analysts amount to one spill a day over 25 years. A 2007 report by Nigerian scientists and the World Conservation Union concludes that "an estimated 1.5million tons of oil has spilled in the Niger Delta ecosystem over the past 50 years, representing about 50 times the estimated volume spilled in the Exxon Valdez oil spill. "
We can give a few examples of bigger spills that have occurred in the Niger Delta:
• The Escravos spill of 1978 in which 300,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled into the coastal waters
• Shell's 1978 spill caused by tank failure at Forcados Terminal in which 580,000 barrels were spewed
• Texaco's Funima-5 offshore blow out in 1980 that released 400,000 barrels of oil
• Mobil's spill at Idoho in 1998 with a reported release of 40,000 barrels of crude oil.
• The Shell in 2008 spill at Ikot Ada Udoh spill where a capped well failed and spilled an unreported volume of crude oil for months before it was stopped
• Agip oil spills at Kalaba, Bayelsa State raged for over two months starting from February 2009 before it was stopped.
• Exxon has reportedly had four spills since May 2010 and released unknown quantities of crude oil in the ecosystem. The local people are still suffering from the impacts of the spill.
• We can also point at the oil spills at Gokana (2007), Aleibiri (1998) and Goi (2004) all attended with fire breakouts that destroyed water bodies and forests.
Environmental monitors report incidents that are too numerous to list here. Interestingly, official sources inform that there are more than 2000 oil spill sites that require remediation. This fact underlines the falsehood in industry propaganda when they claim that they do engage in clean up of spills. If they do, how did over 2000 spills accumulate?
The response of the US government and the BP in confronting the damage appears rather swift. Can we also compare our response here in Nigeria to that of the US?
The response by the US government and BP is something that the Nigerian government as well as the oil companies operating in Nigeria should pay close attention to. Having said that, we must add that the oil spill response of BP has revealed some interesting cautionary stories.
One is that BP did not have an adequate site-specific oil spill response. Analysts report that BP stated in their plan that they would protect aquatic species such as walruses that are not found in the Gulf of Mexico. Ongoing investigations already reveal that short cuts were taken in the drilling process thus possibly hastening the accident. We have also learnt that none of the oil majors has a ready response plan for similar accidents if they should occur. What we learn from this is that the best industry standards may not be good enough, after all.
The US government response would shame Nigerian government officials. They know that pipelines should be replaced after being in operation for say 15 years, but because of the worship of money in the petro-dollar cult they turn blind eyes to the rotten pipes criss-crossing the Niger Delta. The ancient pipes erupt at will and the corporations cry "sabotage" so as to escape responsibility.
It is a huge shame that Nigerian leaders do not understand that for a people who depend directly on environmental resources the environment is their life. Pollute the streams, farmlands and the atmosphere and you have literally passed a death sentence on the people. Our environment is more valuable than any heap of money that may accrue from resource extraction. This is generally accepted as the truth.
Some people say there is the difference in the location of the spill in the US and that of the Niger Delta. They say one is offshore
and the other onshore. Does it really matter where the spill takes place?
Nigeria has both onshore and offshore oil fields and extraction is ongoing on both locations. We have equally had spills off shore as already mentioned: the Mobil spill of 1998 and the one that is currently ravaging the Ibeno environment in Akwa Ibom State. Capacity to monitor offshore activities are limited both for local people and civil society groups.
Government agencies who should monitor and regulate activities in all these locations have to largely depend on oil company facilities and cannot be as strict as they ought to be in their work. We see also in the US that there is a game of musical chairs wherein regulators have industry background and are so chummy with oil industry officials that they are unable to adequately monitor or regulate the industry. The height of this play is currently playing out in Nigeria where an industry person has been saddled with overseeing the Ministry of Petroleum — it is a recipe for trouble.
The Niger Delta has experienced huge spills onshore and offshore with severe consequences for the people, the
environment and the nation. The difference is that we can readily see the onshore spills because our farms and swamps are visibly impacted. When spills occur offshore the impact is visible when the crude gets to the shore or are spotted by fishermen. Oil companies respond by using chemical dispersants and sometimes simply set the floating crude on fire. This is being done in the Gulf of Mexico. These practices have untold impacts on aquatic lives, on fisheries and the overall food chain. In other words, oil spills do not just affect the environment, fishes and animals, they affect us and vitally so.
Due to advancement in science and technology, damage control and assessment in the US was equally swift. Do we have an idea of the losses in the Niger Delta, in terms of environment and material losses?
The technologies deployed in attempts to contain the spill in the Gulf of Mexico indicate good determination to solve the problem. In Niger Delta the best technologies regularly deployed are the shovel-bucket technologies. When the contractors get tired of turning the soil to hide the crude oil, they simply set the rest on fire — burning swamps, forests and even rivers in this way.
We do not know for sure, but going by the immensity of the devastation of the Niger Delta environment, it may well be true that even if all the money generated by government from oil extraction in the region were to be set aside for a thorough environmental remediation such amounts may not be sufficient for the job. It is as mind-boggling as that.
Compensation in the US is huge; will you say compensation in the Niger Delta is commensurate with damage done over the years; if not what steps can be taken to remedy the losses?
The US government got BP to lay down $20 billion for compensations to those whose livelihoods have been impacted. In Nigeria, our compensation regime is so laughable that even when the oil companies decide to extend token to impacted communities they up the figures a little bit. And payments of compensations here come after protracted struggles as well as manipulation of community leaders through bribery and divide-and-rule strategies.
We recall that some years ago, Ijaw Aborigines demanded that Shell pays them $1.5 billion for environmental devastation over a period of three decades. They took their case to the National Assembly and when it was decided that the people had a good case, the oil company declared that the National Assembly was not a judicial body and so could not impose fines on them. When the Ijaw people went to court and their claims were affirmed, the corporations still stalled. The disdain with which the people and their environment are treated contrasts starkly to what we see in the US.
Impact assessment is now standard world wide for company's doing business that impact heavily on the environment. How compliant are multinationals in the Niger Delta with best global practices?
As we have seen in the Gulf of Mexico oil transnationals work very strenuously to gain waivers for items like the Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA). In the case of the Gulf of Mexico, it appears it was a matter of cutting and pasting from other documents. In Nigeria we can safely say that the documents may not be worth the paper on which they are written. In fact, some of the plans assessed in the USA from the major oil companies there revealed a uniformity that shows that studies are seldom carried out specifically for particular jobs as would be expected.
The EIA has become a perfunctory requirement for project approval whereas if it is properly conducted it could actually be a project stopper. It would be a project stopper where the expected impacts cannot be adequately mitigated. The EIA law in Nigeria was enacted in 1992 and no substantial project should be approved without a thorough assessments.
Environmental groups such as Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria have over the years embarked on training workshops in communities to ensure that they demand for participatory EIAs before any project is designed or executed in their territories. This became necessary when construction started on the West African Gas Pipeline project (WAGP) without a proper EIA. An EIA so properly called must be conducted with participation of communities that would be impacted. They are expected to see the terms of reference for the exercise and also participate in aspects of the assessment.
When the EIA document is drafted it is expected to be made available to every stakeholder — in languages that they understand. This was not the case with the WAGP. In fact Chevron only conducted an EIA in the Badagary portion of the pipeline with the excuse that this was the only portion that was new.
When communities questioned the accuracy of even that partial EIA the amended versions were to be assessed for further comments on the internet.
How many village people have access to the internet? Furthermore, there was no EIA in the gas fields where infrastructure were installed to gather the gas. And there were no impact studies on the existing pipeline that conveys the gas from Escravos to Badagary before it heads out to Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana. This is just one example.
What should government and communities begin to do?
What government has to do is simple. Review all existing joint venture agreements. We hear that the current ones
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have had their time and are due for review. The review and the new agreements should be available to the public. This is the only way Nigerians can be convinced that the government is serious about efforts to bring some measure of transparency in the sector. Government should also immediately equip and empower the Directorate of Petroleum Resources (DPR) to be able to independently monitor and measure the amount of crude oil being extracted from Nigeria daily. At present it is only the oil companies who have some idea of what is going on. Where the government does not know exactly how much oil is extracted daily, any talk about oil reserve figures for Nigeria is a wild speculation.
The figures given by industry cannot be trusted as Shell was caught manipulating figures in 2004. The company was exposed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which alleged among others that 'Between January 9 and May 24, 2004, Shell announced the reclassification of 4.47 billion barrels of oil equivalent, or approximately 23 per cent of previously reported "proved reserves," because they were not proved reserves as defined by applicable law.' It also stated that 'As a result of the Defendants' knowing or reckless overstatement of their oil and gas reserves in their financial statements, the Defendants' Commission filings, specified above, as well as other public statements, contained materially false and misleading statements and disclosures. These filings contained untrue statements of material fact concerning the company's reported proved reserves and omitted to state facts necessary to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading.'
Communities are on the fence-line of impacts. Their task is primarily to monitor their environment, report incidents and demand that clean up is adequately carried out. Cleaning up oil spills is serious business and not a job for local contractors who have no skills, no equipment and no knowledge of the toxicity of crude oil. It is often the case too that when oil spills occur, communities insist on negotiating for compensations before they would allow any clean-up effort. And that is only allowed sometimes when community people are awarded the clean up jobs. This must stop. Oil spills must be cleaned up and done so safely and thoroughly.
With the best of equipment and knowhow, this is a tall order, a mission impossible, but it is the minimum that can be demanded in the circumstances. And then they must demand and receive just compensations because impacted environments can never be the same again. The best that communities can ask for is the protection of their environment by refusing the opening of new oil fields and wells in their communities. The oil should be left in the soil. People need soil and water to survive, not polluting crude oil.
What should NNPC be doing, because it is the eye of the country doing joint venture partnerships in oil and gas?
The NNPC is too cosy with the oil companies and needs to be overhauled — not merely reshuffling the same old hands. The corporation has become such a money-spinner for the officials that this public corporation would even be concealing funds from the Federal Government. As the senior partner in the joint ventures that has crippled the Niger Delta environment, NNPC needs to apologise to the federation for not living up to its mandate. This body needs to wake up from slumber, fulfil its part of the joint ventures and ensure that Nigeria does not continue to be raped while they watch in pitiful impotence.
The ineptitude of NNPC can be measured by the state of our refineries. In fact the less said the better.
A visit to Ubeji community behind the Warri refinery reveals very quickly to any observer that the NNPC is as guilty of environmental despoliation as Shell, Chevron, Exxon, Agip and their co-travellers. It is a huge embarrassment. The community river has been so polluted the people cannot use it for anything anymore. Shallow wells in parts of the community yield condensate and nothing is being done about it. The health of the people and their environment must mean something to the NNPC and to the government. But when?
Source: The Guardian, 4th July 2010.
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