From our friends at Platform and their Remember Saro Wiwa program:

remember saro-wiwa UNEP Report: Analysis & action Following coverage in The Guardian today of UNEP’s outrageous decision to “exonerate” Shell over oil spills in Nigeria, we present analysis of this controversial issue. Read on and take action below. Global Outrage at UN Report The UNEP’s report is in direct conflict with local environmentalists and communities who have witnessed and monitored spills for many years. We take a look at the manipulative PR and politics behind Shell’s ‘exoneration’. Read more. What’s Shell & UNEP Trying to Hide? Any child educated in Nigeria knows that oil was discovered in Oloibiri, Nigeria in 1956, and that the history of oil spills is almost as long. So why does UNEP think otherwise? Read more. More Harm Than Good? There are some things the debate over oil spills in Nigeria cannot change. Shell must clean up all oil spills. But the UNEP could undermine the pressure on Shell to take action. Read more. Take Action You can help hold Shell to account: email Mike Cowing , (head of the UNEP study) and cut and paste the following questions. Please personalise, share and add your own views. 1. Why has the UNEP decided to echo Shell’s widely disputed analysis of the number and causes of oil spills in Ogoni? 2. How does UNEP justify announcing its findings on the causes of oil spills when this is not the subject of the study? 3. Why does UNEP claim that oil spills in the Niger Delta have been occurring for only 9 years? 4. What guarantees can UNEP give that its study will not be subject to undue influence from either Shell or the Nigerian government, since both are funding the project?

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Newly-signed Transparency Law requires companies to disclose payments on a country-by-country, and project-by-project basis

President Barak Obama signed into law today the financial reform bill passed by Congress last week-–with a landmark provision on transparency, which requires all extractive industries companies that file with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the U.S. to disclose the payments they make to governments wherever they operate.

Notably, these companies must disclose the payments on a country-by-country, and project-by-project basis–a level of specificity that will improve the ability to monitor the level of resource wealth that returns back to communities where oil, gas, and minerals are extracted.

This law breaks new ground by providing a means for people in resource-rich communities to hold their governments to account for their payments to governments around the world.

Read more about the importance of transparency in extractive industries here.

Photo: Carolyn Kaster – AP

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On July 5, 2010, a Nigerian federal high court ordered Shell Nigeria to pay 15.4 billion naira (roughly US$100 million) in special and punitive damages to a Rivers State community for an oil spill that occurred in 1970. The Ejama-Ebubu community filed suit in 2001 seeking damages and mandated clean-up of this spill, which has affected an area of approximately 630 acres.

Justice Buba, who entered the July 5, 2010 judgment, awarded damages based on the value of crops, loss of income from farming, and hunting; “injurious affection”; water supply; health hazards; and shock, fear, and desecration of shrines, among other elements. The award also included punitive damages of 10 billion naira (US$66.8 million) for “general inconveniences, acid rain, pollution of underground water and hardship to the population who have been deprived of the right to self sustenance, education and good life.”

Calling for more than just a monetary remedy, the judge directed Shell Nigeria to “de-pollute and rehabilitate the dry land swamps to its pre-impact status.”

In making these findings, Justice Buba wrote that “from the nature of the damages caused, the amount of general damages claimed is not exaggerated” and that “upon calm assessment on the unchallenged evidence of the plaintiffs,” he had “come to one and only inevitable conclusion, that the case of the plaintiffs have merit and accordingly accept the evidence that is capable of belief.”

More here.

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JINN Joins Civil Society Coalition in Calling for a New Compensation Body to Address Oil Spills in the Niger Delta

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 1, 2010

CONTACT:
Abby Rubinson
Justice In Nigeria Now
(415) 990 0792

Civil Society Coalition Calls for a New Compensation Body to Address Oil Spills in the Niger Delta

BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster has heightened international concerns about the environmental dangers of offshore drilling around the world and led to President Obama declaring it America’s “environmental 9/11”.  This oil spill has been correctly identified as a massive emergency and it is time to recognise that the ongoing oil spills, conflict and human rights abuses in the Niger Delta should also be acknowledged as an emergency demanding a concerted international response.

The lack of parity in the levels of response afforded to the US Gulf of Mexico oil spill, when compared to that given to the ongoing devastating spills in the Delta, have prompted us to highlight this situation and call for urgent action by the US, British and Nigerian governments and oil companies including ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron.  As a coalition of leading Nigerian and International human, children and environmental rights  group we are extremely concerned about the impact these spills have on the ability of children and their parents to access their basic human rights. We have witnessed firsthand the suffering that has been caused by these ongoing spills. Like our friends in USA, we have seen the horrific impact that oil spills have had on the environment and humans’ ability to produce the food they need to survive.

However, whilst the American government has secured a $20 billion package from BP to compensate the communities affected by the Gulf of Mexico spill, communities in the Niger Delta are offered little or no justice. The recent devastating oil spills by ExxonMobil in Akwa Ibom state highlight this case perfectly. Whilst we welcome the Nigeria Oil Spill Response Agency (NOSDRA) taking a greater interest in these recent oil spills, we are calling for urgent action as there is clearly a failure by both regulatory bodies and oil companies to achieve even basic outcomes in response to oil spills and their prevention. When one considers that the ExxonMobil oil spills are just some of an estimated 300 such spills that affect the Niger Delta on average each year, it is clear that this situation cannot and must not be tolerated any more.

We believe that the following steps are needed to address the issues of oil spills and environmental degradation in the Niger Delta:

In the short term: Read the rest of this entry »

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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.”

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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.

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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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Get a closer glimpse of the rally outside the Chevron Shareholder’s meeting May 26 through a slide show and moving videos of Niger Delta activists Omoyele Sowore and Emem Okon.

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