Re-posted from All Voices
By AkanimoReports

ENVIRONMENTAL rights advocacy groups in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s main oil and gas region, have joined Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) in expressing strong concerns over the stated agenda of the United States and a number of other developed countries at the forthcoming United Nations climate talks in Durban, South Africa, from November 28 to December 9.

Co-ordinator of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), Mr. Patrick Naagbanton, told AkanimoReports in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, yesterday that the global grassroots environmental federation is calling on other governments to stop these countries from undermining the globally-agreed framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to ensure stronger targets for legally binding emissions cuts in line with science and equity.

The climate talks have been deadlocked since the beginning of the decade because of the failure of developed countries – those historically responsible for the bulk of the climate-changing emissions – to deliver on their moral and legal obligations for climate action.

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photo credit: Kendra E. Thornbury
http://www.sweetcrudemovie.com/photoGallery.php?SECTION=1&SHOW_GALLERY=YES&DB_OFFSET=15

Nigerians seek $1 billion from Shell for oil spills

By Mira Oberman | AFP – Thu, Oct 20, 2011

Re-posted from AFP

A Nigerian tribal king filed a lawsuit in a US court seeking $1 billion from Royal Dutch Shell to compensate for decades of pollution that sickened his people and damaged their lands, his lawyer said.

The suit was filed a day after the US Supreme Court said it will consider a lawsuit accusing Shell of human rights abuses in Nigeria in a landmark case that could make companies liable for torture or genocide committed overseas.

That case will assess the potential liability of corporations — including multinationals with a US presence — under the Alien Tort Statute, a US law dating back to 1789 that scholars say was meant to assure foreign governments that the United States would help prevent breaches of international law.

The latest case alleges that Shell’s Nigerian operations are “well below internationally recognized standards to prevent and control pipeline oil spills” because the Anglo-Dutch company “has not employed the best available technology and practices that they use elsewhere in the world.”

It cited a recent United Nations report that found that contamination was widespread in the Nigerian Delta after 50 years of oil extraction left groundwater badly contaminated and the soil soaked with hydrocarbons to depths of five meters.

The suit was brought on behalf of the people of Ogale in the Eleme local government area, where the UN team found the most serious groundwater contamination and people drinking water laced with cancer-causing benzene at 900 times World Health Organization guidelines.

Scientists found an eight centimeter layer of refined oil floating on the groundwater that served the wells. The oil was linked to a spill that had occurred six years earlier and was not properly cleaned up.

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photo credit: © Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR

From the website of Amnesty International: http://blog.amnestyusa.org/business/shell-accused-over-misleading-figures-on-nigeria-oil-spills/

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

UNEP Ogoniland Oil Assessment Reveals Extent of Environmental Contamination and Threats to Human Health

Reposted from United Nations Environment Programme
Ogoniland, Nigeria

Read full UNEP Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland

Abuja, 4 August 2011 – The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health.

A major new independent scientific assessment, carried out by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), shows that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in the region has penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed.

The assessment has been unprecedented. Over a 14-month period, the UNEP team examined more than 200 locations, surveyed 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way, reviewed more than 5,000 medical records and engaged over 23,000 people at local community meetings.

Detailed soil and groundwater contamination investigations were conducted at 69 sites, which ranged in size from 1,300 square metres (Barabeedom-K.dere, Gokana local government area (LGA) to 79 hectares (Ajeokpori-Akpajo, Eleme LGA).

Altogether more than 4,000 samples were analyzed, including water taken from 142 groundwater monitoring wells drilled specifically for the study and soil extracted from 780 boreholes…

…Next Steps Recommendations

Through a combination of approaches, individual contaminated land areas in Ogoniland can be cleaned up within five years, while the restoration of heavily-impacted mangrove stands and swamplands will take up to 30 years.

However, according to the report, all sources of ongoing contamination must be brought to an end before the clean-up of the creeks, sediments and mangroves can begin.

The report recommends establishing three new institutions in Nigeria to support a comprehensive environmental restoration exercise.

A proposed Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority would oversee implementation of the study’s recommendations and should be set up during a Transition Phase which UNEP suggests should begin as soon as possible.

The Authority’s activities should be funded by an Environmental Restoration Fund for Ogoniland, to be set up with an initial capital injection of US$1 billion contributed by the oil industry and the government, to cover the first five years of the clean-up project.

A recommended Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Centre, to be built in Ogoniland and supported by potentially hundreds of mini treatment centres, would treat contaminated soil and provide hundreds of job opportunities.

The report also recommends creating a Centre of Excellence in Environmental Restoration in Ogoniland to promote learning and benefit other communities impacted by oil contamination in the Niger Delta and elsewhere in the world.

Reforms of environmental government regulation, monitoring and enforcement, and improved practices by the oil industry are also recommended in the report.

Full article

image: UNEP Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland

Public meetings staged throughout Ogoniland during each phase of the study helped to build understanding of UNEP’s project and to foster community participation,