UNEP report and the need for remediation in Ogoniland

Oil spill at Ogoniland

In recent times, the media has been awash with report of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which showed the level of despoliation of Ogoniland by oil explorers, doing business in the oil-rich region of the country. Alexander Chiejina examines the scenario and calls for necessary legal framework to end this impasse

In April 2010, the entire world watched in awe how 4.9 million barrels of oil spew into the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. For anyone who followed the frenzy the spill generated, one would think the world is going through its first oil spill.

Businesses were endangered and the environment compromised as the gush from the oil spill led to loss of aquatic life. The seriousness of the issue was underlined with the numerous visits of the United States President Barack Obama to the spill sites.

In less than two months after the spill, the American government was able to extract a $20 billion compensation for its people over the incident. However, there are spirited efforts to clean the environment and stronger indications that the $20 billion may only be a preliminary appeasement.

Driving this home, the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria, renowned for oil exploration, with the first oil well discovered in Oloibiri, now in present day Bayelsa, has over the years suffered several oil spills which have left a sour taste to inhabitants of the oil-producing communities.

With 606 oilfields, the Niger Delta supplies about 40 percent of all the crude the United States imports, and yet it is the world capital of oil pollution. Such spills at various occasions had led to slow poisoning of the waters and destruction of vegetation and agricultural land; no thanks to petroleum operations in the region.

Only recently, the United National Environment Programme (UNEP) analysed the damage oil pollution has done in Ogoniland, a region in the oil-rich labyrinthine creeks, swamps and waterways of the Niger Delta, the heartland of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.

Findings of the report handed over to President Goodluck Jonathan by the UNEP recently in Abuja, showed that the pollution of oil spillage operations have caused more devastating damage than imagined in the last five decades.
 

The report said the remediation needed in Ogoniland would be the biggest oil spill cleanup in history, costing an initial $1 billion (N151.01 billion) initial fund injection to kick-start the clean up. The report further revealed that 10 out of the 15 investigated sites which Shell, the Royal Dutch company, which has been involved in oil exploration and production activities said they had completely remediated, still had pollution exceeding Shell and the government’s best practice levels.

The UN body maintained that Ogoni communities are exposed to hydrocarbons every day as thick black oil floats around the creeks, while the impact on vegetation and fishing areas has been ‘disastrous.’
Coming with its exploration activities by these oil firms has been a significant pollution which has impacted negatively on the economic wellbeing of people of the area and led to serious social dislocation and conflict. Shell, which agreed earlier this month that an Ogoni community could seek compensation for oil spills in a British court, noted that most oil spills in the Niger Delta are caused by oil theft and sabotage attacks even as it cleaned up whatever the cause.

Even as the report of the UNEP assessment represents part of a longer-term goal to clean up contaminated sites for the benefit of local communities and people living in Ogoniland and parts of the Niger Delta and for the region’s sustainable development, environmentalists and concerned Nigerians have called for sanctions of these oil firms and payment of compensation to communities affected by oil spills which has not only polluted their land but also caused life-threatening health hazards.

In an interview with BusinessDay, Eugene Itua, chief executive officer, Multiple Development Services, Lagos, disclosed that looking at the overall incidence of oil spills in the country, equipment failure, operational/maintenance error by multinational oil companies operating in the host communities can be adduced as major source of oil spills in the country.

While noting that oil spillage is an environmental catastrophe which has a long history- some notable past spill includes the Escravos spill in 1978 where barrels of crude oil were spilled into the coastal waters, Itua, who is also an environmentalist, stated that the risk and safety management strategy as well as a legal framework to criminalise oil spill without immediate remediation by oil firms should be in place so as to reduce cases of such spillages in the country.

“The fact is this; in other countries, risk and safety management strategy are put in place to safeguard incidence of oil spills.

Regulations of the oil industry in Nigeria are weak and rarely enforced allowing the industry to self-regulate itself. One sure way to mitigate cases of oil spills is to put a legal framework in place which will criminalise oil spill without any plan for immediate remediation and/or compensation to the communities affected by the oil spill in the country.

“One shouldn’t lose sleep over the fact that there is an extensive network of pipelines between the fields in the Niger Delta, as well as numerous small networks of flowlines in other parts of the country- the narrow diameter pipes that carry oil from wellheads to flow stations- allowing many opportunities for leaks. In onshore areas, most pipelines and flowlines are laid above ground. Many of the pipelines are as old as twenty to twenty-five years. Even Shell admits that most of the facilities were constructed between the 1960s and early 1980s to the then prevailing standards. SPDC [Shell Petroleum and Development Company] would not build them that way today.

Late Ken Saro-Wiwa, former MOSOP leader

He added that “many governments in Nigeria in the past have earned billions of dollars since drilling began in 1958 but gave little to their people and have been largely unable to pressure companies into cleaning up the mess. Nigeria can lean on the drama in the Gulf of Mexico to demand environmental standards from oil companies operating here. If these multinational companies were to pay hefty compensations for their abuses, this will go a long way in reducing incidence of oil spills.”

Lending its view, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria, said the $1billion restoration fund was negligible and should be increased to $100billion. ERA/FoEN, in a statement, said it welcomed the report and that the environmental assessment of Ogoniland, despite its short comings, had not only vindicated its worst fears about the state of the environment in the area and the entire Niger Delta, but also showed “Shell’s atrocious breach of minimum requirements of the Environmental Guidelines and Standards for Petroleum Industries in Nigeria and its own standards.

“The UNEP assessment with documented evidence of widespread pollution in Ogoniland is not at all surprising. It has only vindicated our position that Shell, and not the people, is wholly responsible for this environmental assault.  While we frown at continued under-reporting of oil spills by oil companies and their regulatory agencies, we reiterate our conviction that Shell has a moral duty to own up to its spills and to remediate and compensate the impacted people,” Nnimmo Bassey, executive director, ERA/FoEN, noted.

Echoing the sentiments of Bassey, Ledum Mitee, former president, Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), said the only option was for the company (SPDC) to commence, without delay, a remediation exercise in Ogoniland, and not to infuriate the angry people the more with comments that the pollution was caused by a third party. Mitee noted that it was appalling that government was spending billions of naira on programmes for communities whose youths (ex-militants) carried guns against it for abject neglect and plundering of their land, while in respect of the Ogoni people, who opted for non-violent protests, had done nothing and that, after buying some years in which it brazenly continued with its inaction on Ogoni land, it was still talking about studying the UNEP report before determining the next line of action.

He stated that the former MOSOP leader (the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, and other Ogoni leaders), who were executed in 1993, have been justified by  the UNEP report because the battle for which they were killed was their quest for recognition that Ogoniland had been devastated and despoiled and appropriate remedial measures should be taken.

According to him, “ the late Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the government for alerting the international
community  to  the plight of his people and leading non-violent protests against it, spoke and wrote about all that is contained in the 2011 report, nearly two decades ago and that what was required now was action, not  words.”


While the report blame the problem of despoliation of Ogoniland on Shell and the Nigerian government, Shell wound up its oil drilling in Ogoniland 20 years ago, even as it remains a stakeholder in the company that is tasked with maintaining the region’s ageing pipelines.

No doubt, the UNEP report exposed the insensitivity of Shell and the irresponsibility of the Nigerian government. It showed that Shell has not kept to its own minimum standards. It has not kept to minimum standards of the Nigerian state and has performed below international acceptable standards.

Successive governments seemed to have failed in their responsibility to keep a rampaging oil explorer in check to the consternation of hapless citizens. The entire picture shows issue of neglect that was encouraged by officials with self interests.

Only an insensitive company could play hide and seek with the people from whose veins it’s been drilling oil and declaring billions of dollars in profit. In 2009, Shell announced a global profit of $31 billion for the previous year; a good percentage of that obscene profit came from Nigeria.

Sadly, it could close its eyes to the plaintive cries of Ogoni widows whose husbands were murdered by government hangman or to the wistful sobs of Ogoni youths whose only source of livelihood, the waters of Ogoniland, has been destroyed by oil activities; the soil is poisoned, the waters made toxic and the air is noxious.

Recall that SPDC was sent out of Ogoni land in 1993 and was yet to return to the area, with the umbrella organisation of the Ogoni people, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), urging the Federal Government to let another oil company operate in the area, to ensure peace.