Nigerian oil spill detection agency finds Mobil’s estimate of oil spilled  “doubtful”

Today Exxon-Mobil admitted to a “minor” spill that occurred three days ago in Akwa Ibom state. This is the fourth oil spill at an Exxon-Mobil facility in Akwa Ibom state in the last six months.

An official from Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) confirmed the report of the June 21 spill, adding that the agency “observed that the volume (of oil spill) claimed by the oil firm is doubtful. The oil deposits were sighted at the shoreline, if the volume was insignificant as claimed, it will not get to the shoreline, which is about 20 kilometers from the spill location.”

NOSDRA detected the oil spill on Monday and then commenced investigation, including into the cause of the incident and the impact on the marine environment.

Following the May 1 spill, protests by women and youth in the local areas disrupted oil production at Mobil facilities for two days, with reports of soldiers beating protestors, including one woman who suffered a broken leg.

Those protests led to a May 20 meeting with stakeholders from the Akwa Ibom State Government, Mobil, and core host communities. Among the topics raised was “the issue of the oil company playing one community against another.”

By ADAM NOSSITER, New York Times

Published: June 16, 2010 (online); June 17, 2010 (page A-1 )
[Photo: Jane Hahn for the New York Times]

Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old

BODO, Nigeria — Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless.

A boy playing by Bodo Creek in Bodo, Nigeria. As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, experts said.

The Niger Delta region contains fragile wetlands.

Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.

Not far away, there is still black crude on Gio Creek from an April spill, and just across the state line in Akwa Ibom the fishermen curse their oil-blackened nets, doubly useless in a barren sea buffeted by a spill from an offshore Exxon Mobil pipe in May that lasted for weeks.

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

Small children swim in the polluted estuary here, fishermen take their skiffs out ever farther — “There’s nothing we can catch here,” said Pius Doron, perched anxiously over his boat — and market women trudge through oily streams. “There is Shell oil on my body,” said Hannah Baage, emerging from Gio Creek with a machete to cut the cassava stalks balanced on her head.

That the Gulf of Mexico disaster has transfixed a country and president they so admire is a matter of wonder for people here, living among the palm-fringed estuaries in conditions as abject as any in Nigeria, according to the United Nations. Though their region contributes nearly 80 percent of the government’s revenue, they have hardly benefited from it; life expectancy is the lowest in Nigeria.

“President Obama is worried about that one,” Claytus Kanyie, a local official, said of the gulf spill, standing among dead mangroves in the soft oily muck outside Bodo. “Nobody is worried about this one. The aquatic life of our people is dying off. There used be shrimp. There are no longer any shrimp.”

In the distance, smoke rose from what Mr. Kanyie and environmental activists said was an illegal refining business run by local oil thieves and protected, they said, by Nigerian security forces. The swamp was deserted and quiet, without even bird song; before the spills, Mr. Kanyie said, women from Bodo earned a living gathering mollusks and shellfish among the mangroves.

With new estimates that as many as 2.5 million gallons of oil could be spilling into the Gulf of Mexico each day, the Niger Delta has suddenly become a cautionary tale for the United States.

As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, or nearly 11 million gallons a year, a team of experts for the Nigerian government and international and local environmental groups concluded in a 2006 report. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 dumped an estimated 10.8 million gallons of oil into the waters off Alaska.

So the people here cast a jaundiced, if sympathetic, eye at the spill in the gulf. “We’re sorry for them, but it’s what’s been happening to us for 50 years,” said Emman Mbong, an official in Eket.

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Larry Bowoto, after the jury verdict in the Bowoto v. Chevron trial

Plaintiffs from Nigeria appealed their case against Chevron before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, urging the court to order a new trial of Bowoto v. Chevron. Theresa Traber, arguing for the plaintiffs, described several legal errors that resulted in the judge’s denial of a new trial.

Most of the appeal argument centered on whether the judge presiding over the trial had erred in her instructions to the jury, which contradicted her ruling that Chevron had to prove that the military was acting reasonably when it shot, killed, and tortured peaceful protestors.

Read more here.

Photo credit: Kendra E. Thornbury for Sweet Crude

from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05iht-edejikeme.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

I.H.T. Op-Ed Contributor

The Oil Spills We Don’t Hear About

By ANENE EJIKEME

Published: June 4, 2010

The disastrous BP oil spill is now believed to be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Even worse than Exxon Valdez. Exxon Valdez stirs up strong memories. Who can forget the images of birds covered in black oil slick? Imagine an Exxon Valdez happening every year for 50 years. Pretty unimaginable.

Yet, this is what residents of Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta have been living with for the last 50 years.

Experts estimate that some 13 million barrels of oil have been spilt in the Niger Delta since oil exploration began in 1958. This is the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez every year for 50 years.

Although the Obama administration has come under much criticism for not responding quickly enough, nor adequately, to the BP oil spill, there is no denying that top government officials, including the president himself, have felt compelled to speak about the spill and to insist that BP will be held accountable.

How differently things play out in Nigeria. Not only does the Nigerian government usually not bother to issue statements, it never feels compelled to decry such spills.

Even more striking, perhaps, is the very different ways in which the international media deals with oil spills. Of course, it is entirely appropriate that the U.S. media have been giving constant coverage to the BP Gulf spill.

But it is not just the U.S. media that have been covering the Gulf disaster with great dedication. Media around the world are covering the Gulf oil spill in a way that not even the Nigerian media covers oil spills in Nigeria.

I would be willing to bet that even residents of the smallest Nigerian villages have heard about the Gulf oil spill. By contrast, I know few people in the United States who have heard about the oil spills in the Niger Delta. Yet Nigeria is among the top five suppliers of oil to the U.S.

The Niger Delta, which is home to more than 30 million people and is considered one of the world’s most important ecosystems, produces almost all of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings.

Dead fish and oily water are part of daily life for Niger Delta residents, as are gas flares. Some middle-aged Niger Delta residents have never had a night of total darkness. There is a law against gas flaring in Nigeria, but it continues to be widely breached.

Oil companies operate in Nigeria with little or no oversight from the government. It must be noted that the government has part ownership in the subsidiaries of all the oil multinationals which operate in Nigeria.

A year ago, Amnesty International published a report, “Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta.” The report focused on Royal Dutch Shell because Shell is by far the largest operator in the Delta. According to the Oil Spill Intelligence Report, a 10-year study commissioned by Greenpeace, although Shell operates in more than 100 countries, 40 percent of all its oil spills happen in Nigeria. That’s simply staggering.

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