Nigeria: Oil-polluted Ogoniland could become environmental model

UN says clean-up operation following two massive oil spills in the Niger Delta could benefit other African countries developing their oil reserves

By John Vidal
Reposted from  guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 August 2011

Ogoniland is one of the most oil-polluted places on earth but it could become a model for other countries wanting to clean up their environments or avoid making the same mistakes, the UN has said.

“This could be the world’s biggest oil contamination clean-up,” said Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the UN’s environment programme (UNEP) director, Achim Steiner. “It is up to the government of Nigeria what happens now, but [from talks with President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja this week] there appears to be a willingness to act,” he said while in London.

Preliminary cost estimates to decontaminate and restore the devastated ecology of the 1,000 sq km of land and water are nearly $1bn for the first five years, with much more money possibly needed over the full 30 years it will take to clean up the region, said UNEP chief scientist Joseph Alcamo in London.

But he said that if governments and oil companies were prepared to put up the money to act, it could provide work to train tens of thousands of Ogonis, leave the area “pristine” and help many other African countries that were on the point of commercially developing their oil reserves.

São Tomé, Ghana, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia all expect to produce oil in the next 10 years. “One in 10 barrels of oil in the world presently comes from Africa. It is very likely that oil production will increase on the continent. Countries can learn from this painful experience,” said Alcamo.

As well as immediate measures, such as warning Ogoni people if they are drinking from polluted wells and proposing that the oil companies rethink their clean-up procedures, the UN recommended that a global centre for excellence for environmental restoration be set up in Ogoniland.

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image: UNEP Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland

Oil spills destroyed my village in Nigeria and decades of environmental and social injustice are still to be addressed

by Patrick Naagbanton, Thursday 4 August 2011
Reposted from  guardian.co.uk

Shell’s admission of liability for two massive oil spills in 2008-09 in my village of Bodo in the Niger Delta is a step forward in the long struggle for corporate accountability. An impoverished village that yesterday lay in ruins has today felt a welcome glimmer of hope and justice.

We are happy with the news that Shell could be forced to clean up the environmental devastation it has caused and to pay more than $400m in compensation. But our jubilation is overshadowed by more than five decades of environmental and social injustice yet to be addressed.

Bodo village is a fishing community in the minority Ogoni region of the Niger Delta. Shell was forced out of Ogoni in 1993, following mass protests led by writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed on 10 November 1995 alongside eight other campaigners. Shell’s vast network of oil wells, pipelines, flow-stations and gas flares remained in Ogoni and are an everyday reminder of what we have suffered.

Many of Shell’s rusty, leaky pipelines date back to the 1970s and have been poorly maintained ever since (see pages 31-36 and 43 of Friends of the Earth Netherlands report). It was equipment failure that caused Shell’s high-pressure Trans-Niger pipeline to rupture on 28 August 2008, gushing an estimated 2,000 barrels of oil per day into Bodo for weeks. The land and water was covered in thick layers of crude. Shell was also responsible for a second spill from the same pipeline on 2 February 2009.

Oil spills have effectively destroyed my community. Local farmers and fishers were forced to abandon their traditional ways of life. Bodo Creek is, ecologically speaking, dead. The fish that were not killed by the heavy pollution now reek of petroleum and cannot sustain a village population of 69,000 people. Shell has violated our basic human rights to food, water and livelihood. The compensation Shell offered us – £3,500 plus bags of rice and sugar – was insulting and wholly inadequate.

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Image: Ogoni Spill-Amensty International photos

Amnesty International Press Release
For Immediate Release
Thursday, August 4, 2011

Amnesty International, Responding to United Nations Report on Disastrous Oil Pollution in Nigeria, Demands Accountability from Shell Oil Company

Reposted from Amnesty International

Urges Institutional Investors to Urge Shell To “Clean Up Its Act” in Niger Delta

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, 212-633-4150, strimel@aiusa.org

(New York) – Amnesty International said today that Shell oil company has had a disastrous impact on the human rights of people living in the Niger Delta and must be held to account.  The organization was responding to a United Nations report – the first of its kind in Nigeria — on the severe and widespread effects of oil pollution in Ogoniland in the Delta region.

The report from the United Nations Environment Program is based on two years of in-depth scientific research. It found that oil contamination is widespread and severe, and that people in the Niger Delta have been exposed for decades.

“This report proves Shell has had a terrible impact in Nigeria, but has got away with denying it for decades, falsely claiming they work to best international standards,” said Amnesty International Global Issues Director, Audrey Gaughran, who has researched the human rights impacts of pollution in the Delta and is the author of a groundbreaking 2009 report, “Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta.”

The U.N. report, which was conducted at the request of the Nigerian government and paid for by Shell, provides irrefutable evidence of the devastating impact of oil pollution on people’s lives in the Delta – one of Africa’s most bio-diverse regions.  It examines the damage to agriculture and fisheries, which has destroyed livelihoods and food sources. One of the most serious facts to come to light is the scale of contamination of drinking water, which has exposed communities to serious health risks. In one case water was found to contain a known carcinogen at levels 900 times above World Health Organization guidelines. The U.N. Environment Program has recommended emergency measures to alert communities to the danger.

“This report should also be a wake-up call to institutional investors. In the past they’ve allowed Shell’s public relations machine to pull the wool over their eyes, but they will now want to see the company cleaning up its act in the Niger Delta – that means putting real pressure on Shell to avoid spillages, compensate those already affected and disclose more accurate information on their impacts,” said Gaughran.

The report reveals Shell’s systemic failure to address oil spills going back many years and  describes how sites that Shell claimed were cleaned up were found by UNEP experts to be still polluted.

Full press release

Shell accepts liability for two oil spills in Nigeria

By John Vidal

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Reposted from guardian.co.uk

Oil giant faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars following class action suit brought on behalf of communities in Bodo, Ogoniland

The impact of an oil spill near Ikarama in the Niger delta. Photograph: Amnesty International UK

Shell faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars after accepting full liability for two massive oil spills that devastated a Nigerian community of 69,000 people and may take at least 20 years to clean up.

Experts who studied video footage of the spills at Bodo in Ogoniland say they could together be as large as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, when 10m gallons of oil destroyed the remote coastline.

Until now, Shell has claimed that less than 40,000 gallons were spilt in Nigeria.

Papers seen by the Guardian show that following a class action suit in London over the past four months, the company has accepted responsibility for the 2008 double rupture of the Bodo-Bonny trans-Niger pipeline that pumps 120,000 barrels of oil a day though the community.

Ogoniland is a small region of the Niger delta which threw out Shell in 1994 for its pollution but then saw eight of its leaders, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed by the government.

The crude oil that gushed unchecked from the two Bodo spills, which occurred within months of each other, in 2008 has clearly devastated the 20 sq km network of creeks and inlets on which Bodo and as many as 30 other smaller settlements depend for food, water and fuel.

No attempt has been made to clean up the oil, which has collected on the creek sides, washes in and out on the tides and has seeped deep into the water table and farmland.

According to the communities in Bodo, in two years the company has only offered £3,500 together with 50 bags of rice, 50 bags of beans and a few cartons of sugar, tomatoes and groundnut oil. The offers were rejected as “insulting, provocative and beggarly” by the chiefs of Bodo, but later accepted on legal advice.

Shell’s acceptance of full liability for the spills follows a class action suit bought on behalf of communities by London law firm Leigh Day and Co, which represented the Ivory Coast community that suffered health damage following the dumping of toxic waste by a ship leased to multinational oil company Trafigura in 2006.

Many other impoverished communities in the delta are now expected to seek damages for oil pollution against Shell in the British courts. On average, there are three oil spills a day by Shell and other companies working in the delta. Shell consistently blames the spills on local youths who, they argue, sabotage their network of pipelines.

“The news that Shell has accepted liability in Britain will be greeted with joy in the delta. The British courts may now be inundated with legitimate complaints,” said Patrick Naagbartonm, coordinator for the Centre of Environment and Human Rights in Port Harcourt.

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Congress needs to end its dependence on all special interest money

by David Donnelly, national campaigns director for Public Campaign Action Fund, and Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International – 08/02/11

Reposted from The Hill

Noticeably absent from this week’s debt ceiling deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans were the billions in taxpayer subsidies Congress continues to dole out to Big Oil, despite overwhelming support among Americans to end these handouts and in the face of staggering oil company profits released last week. When it came to taking on Big Oil, Congress and the Obama administration blinked.

Cutting Medicare for low and middle-income seniors? On the table. Closing loopholes for profitable, multinational corporations? Not under discussion.

The world’s largest oil companies announced another round of billion dollar profits last week. BP made $5.6 billion. Shell got even more, with over $8 billion. And ExxonMobil’s profits were $10.7 billion – an astounding $117 million a day from April to June. Gas prices are still at record levels and everyday taxpayers are footing the bill for billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies these companies get every year. Big Oil is making big profits—and the American people are paying the price. In fact, we’re paying it twice – once when we fill up our tanks and once when we pay taxes.

And while the 12-member “Super Congress” that will be appointed as part of the deal would technically put cuts to these subsidies on the table, you can bet oil companies will harness their significant political clout to keep their free money. With just 12 members to focus on—instead of 535–that pressure might be even stronger.

Why do these oil companies have so much sway? Just follow the money. A recent report from Public Campaign Action Fund and the League of Conservation Voters found that 93.5 percent (159 of 170) of U.S. House members who received campaign contributions from the political action committees (PACs) of the largest oil companies in the first half of the year voted to maintain these wasteful subsidies. And the three top Republicans in the House – House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) – received a combined $96,000 in dirty energy money from these PACs in the first six months of the year alone.

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photo – Washington DC – Capitol Hill: United States Capitol, by wallyg  Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial license. 

Four Communities: Imiringi, Elebele, Otuasega and Oruma stage peaceful protest against Shell, Friday, 08 July 2011

Reposted from Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria)

INTRODUCTION:

Four communities where Shell Petroleum Development Company [SPDC] operates in recently issued a 14 days ultimatum to the company, demanding for implementation of agreement reached with the communities in 1999. The communities include: Oruma, Otuasega, Elebele and Imiringi; all Ogbia speaking Ijaw communities in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, few kilometres to President Goodluck Jonathan’s community, Otueke.

Following the ultimatum to Shell, leaders of the community had appeared before the Joint Military Task Force [JTF] at the expiration of the time with a view to settle the matter amicably. Unfortunately, Shell could not convince the aggrieved communities that are demanding that the company honour the agreement it reached with them in 1999, and they decided to stage a peaceful protest to the heavily guarded Shell facility, the Kolo Creek Logistic Base.

ERA’s field monitor witnessed the protest that took place on the 7th of July 2011 and some of the protesters spoke with him.

TESTIMONIES:

We are here for a peaceful protest but if the JTF handles this matter in a violent way we shall only retreat and return in full force. Then it will be too bad for Shell because Shell has cheated us for too long. The Kolo Creek communities have been known to be very peaceful but if the soldiers and Shell take undue advantage of our peaceful disposition today to intimidate us, we shall not take it. If we hear any gun shot or if any of our members is injured here today by the soldiers, the rest of the state and the country will hear our action. All we are demanding for is that Shell should respect the agreement it reached long ago with our people; these four communities. They agreed to extend electricity to our communities but they are not doing so; while benefiting heavily from our oil wells. This is not a fresh demand, it is an agreement reached with us that we are trying to enforce.  — Amakiri Joseph, Vice-Chairman of the Community Development Committee [CDC] of Oruma

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