In this guest blog post, Professor Anna Zalik of York University Canada explores how governments and multinationals criminalise protest and gloss over the environmental injustices of oil extraction.

Q: What does the Canadian Government’s fury at opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline have to do with the Nigerian ‘legaloil’ campaign?

A: Both positions are about justifying private profits and criminalizing protest.

The Nigerian government raised fuel prices on 1 January 2012, an act that led to a national strike and widespread protest among a mass movement, at times identifying as Occupy Nigeria. For about a decade the oil multinationals in Nigeria have tacitly endorsed a campaign, supported through industry consultants, to describe their production as “legal”. This use of the term ‘legal’ aimed  to counter the call for ‘resource control’ among a youth insurgency movement which partly supported itself off the trade in contraband oil. Like a range of social and environmental rights organizations in Nigeria and internationally, the youth insurgency in the Delta rose from opposition to the social and ecological  injustices that secured private-industry contracts to lift Nigerian oil.  During the height of the Ogoni movement and following Ken Saro Wiwa’s judicial murder in 1995, there was widespread consensus that the partnership between the Nigerian State and the multinational oil industry was ‘unjust’ regardless of whether or not it was ‘legal’.

In the aftermath of the Saro Wiwa’s execution, the Niger Deltan movements became increasingly militant. Escalations in the ‘oil war’ in the Niger Delta from 2004 onward were accompanied by a campaign by the oil industry operating in Nigeria to reframe their activities as socially-responsible and to label resistance movements criminal. In contrast to the sympathetic portrayal of the Ogoni uprising in the 1990s, or the 2002 “Women’s sit-in” against Chevron (in which a group of women threatened to disrobe on a platform), armed militia activity in the Delta came to be depicted internationally as a kind of ‘competitive thuggery’.

Part of the strategy for criminalizing protest involved the transnational oil companies pathologizing Niger Deltan unarmed protest not only externally and internationally, but also in the minds of those most subject to the ravages of oil extraction. Some residents of the Delta’s riverine region would refer to any facility takeover or shutdown as ‘violence’, a view promoted by industry in its emphasis on avoiding work stoppages and outlawing demonstrations. Mainstream media and policy analysts played a role in this criminalization, through the use of terms like terrorism to describe the deepening ungovernability of the region. Ultimately, if a key tactic of unarmed resistance movements – like blockades – became known as ‘violent’ protest, civil disobedience – which garnered international sympathy -would become an ineffective strategy: it is unsurprising that the Niger Deltan resistance movements became increasingly radicalised.

The web site Legaloil.com promotes the discursive and material criminalization of the oil bunkering trade in the Nigerian context – equating it with conflict diamonds. The legaloil website was established in 2002-3 when control of the contraband trade was said to have slipped increasingly out of the hands of the military and oil industry employees that previously directed it, into those of the armed youth that formerly served as their henchmen. Legaloil.com functions as a directly ‘global’ intervention that presents data concerning bunkered shipments (the source of which is hard to verify or monitor, but becomes ‘real’ once presented as graphs and tables), tracks threats and attacks on installations, and endorses chemical fingerprinting as means to distinguish between licit and ‘illicit’ oil. The site also seeks to present its data, and its proposals, as legitimated by Nigerian sources. Indeed, to be successful internationally, the ‘legal oil’ label requires reshaping the way exploitation in the Niger Delta is understood locally and globally so that ‘abusive’ relations of extraction come to be associated with bunkering activities, rather than the (state-sanctioned) operations of multinational oil companies so criticized in the 1990s.

Yet despite such efforts, the armed strategy of the Niger Deltan insurgency was partially successful in transferring resources to its leadership, although not to the average Niger Deltan or Nigerian.  The Deltan insurgency has been subdued since the  rise to the presidency of a Niger Deltan, Goodluck Jonathan, an outcome that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. But as international attention to resistance in the Delta waned, so has international attention to corporate malpractice there. In the past month, Shell and Chevron operations in Nigeria have seen two major ‘accidents’, neither of which have received much attention in the global media.  Unfortunately, despite such business-as-usual in terms of the oil industry’s effects, some former insurgent leaders in fact supported Jonathan in critiquing the mass protests against the removal of fuel subsidies. Key Niger Deltan activists have endorsed Occupy Nigeria, however.

The Canadian government has endorsed a parallel campaign to Legaloil.com so as to whitewash the tar sands, in reaction to a transnational movement opposing its social and ecological impacts. The Harper government has relied on Ezra Levant (Canada’s answer to Rush Limbaugh) and his poorly informed, orientalist book to try to rebrand the tar sands as Ethical Oil. This campaign persists despite serious accidents whose costs are absorbed by Canada’s Indigenous people. A recent example is the oil spill on Lubicon territory in Alberta last May which was hushed up in the national media just days before the federal election.

Opposition to Canadian tar sands expansion, as in the case of support for Niger Deltan environmental rights groups in the 1990s, is both domestic and international. Western Canadian aboriginal groups, social justice and environmental movements have come out in droves to speak against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline in hearings, acts that Canada’s government has labeled tainted by ‘foreign money’.  This week, a staff person of a far-from-radical Canadian environmental NGO signed a sworn affidavit concerning how the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office had described them as an ‘enemy of the people’ to their main funder. Opponents to tar sands expansion, it would seem, are increasingly “illegal”, according to Harper’s government.

Ultimately the protesters in Canada, like the Nigerian mass movement calling for a repeal of the fuel price hikes, call for a combination of resource and ecological sovereignty. They demand that restrictions on, and distribution of, oil and gas industry profits are made in the name of the public justice. They protest the ‘legally’ mandated extractive profiteering, of private industry-state partnerships in oil, gas and mining – profiteering which is increasingly understood as corporate theft of common property.

Nigeria’s oil spill agency, NOSDRA, says that Shell’s Bonga oil spill “is likely the worst in a decade.”

Peter Idabor of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency told The Associated Press on Thursday that oil from the spill in Shell’s Bonga field has spread to roughly 100 nautical miles. Idabor said he expects oil to begin washing ashore on Nigeria’s southern coast later Thursday.

Some of the largest recorded oil spills in Nigeria have been offshore marine spills like Bonga. Fisherpersons (rather than regulators) are usually on the frontlines of oil spill detection.[1] Regular spills have devastated the basic human rights of local communities who depend upon fishing for their livelihoods. According to some commentators, Nigerian ‘Bonny light’ crude is believed to spread especially thinly on the surface of water, resulting in a quicker, wider radius of contamination than heavier forms of crude.

Shell’s appalling record of oil spills in Nigeria dates back over 50 years and has shown no signs of improvement. In November 2011, NOSDRA Director General Peter Nduka was quoted as saying that:

Shell Petroleum Development Company alone had a record of 513 oil spills over the last couple of years and that the spills were yet to abate.

NOSDRA: taking a stand?

Once described as a “muzzled watchdog”, the Nigerian agency responsible for tackling oil spills has in the last few months shown potentially significant bite.

NOSDRA’s task of monitoring and responding to incessant oil spills in the Niger Delta is not an easy one. A small, under-resourced team of Nigerian inspectors cover a network of onshore pipelines and oil facilities that stretch over an area the size of Portugal, not to mention the expanding and largely unregulated offshore platforms, rigs, floating production and storage and offloading vessels (FPSOs) and oil tankers.

Effective egulation of offshore facilities is well beyond the capacity of Nigeria’s inspection regime. Oil giants like Shell and Exxon-Mobil with substantial offshore facilities operate without adequate oversight and repeatedly cause marine pollution with impunity.

The vast scale of Nigeria’s oil infrastructure is just one of NOSDRA’s many challenges. The regulator depends for transport on the same oil companies they are supposed to police. Political obstacles also remain. Turf wars with the Department for Petroleum Resources and state oil company, NNPC, have stunted NOSDRA’s effectiveness. Moreover its powers to enforce environmental regulations are limited to relatively token fines.

But NOSDRA may be renewing efforts to enforce higher standards on an oil industry known for over 50 years of environmental devastation in the fragile Delta region. Since October, NOSDRA has slapped substantially higher fines on major (and minor) players in the industry and heavily condemned corporate practices. In theory at least, Shell should face a steep fine for its latest spillage from Bonga.

• Indian oil firm, SEEPCO,[2] which is listed on the NYSE was fined N68 million ($413,000) for failing to report an oil spill from its facilities in Okpai-Oluchi, in Delta State. According to NOSDRA, the oil spill lasted for 136 days, causing severe pollution. Only after the local community petitioned the government, SEEPCO conducted a Joint Investigation Visit to the site on 9 July.
• Nigerian State owned Pipeline and Products Marketing Company Limited (PPMC) was fined N21.5 million ($130,000) for failure to report a spill in summer 2011 and non-compliance with the law.
• Italian oil major Agip was fined N1 million ($6,000) for failing to immediately contain recover and clean up an oil spill from its gas plant at Obrikom Omoku in Rivers State. The impacted site was further polluted when the oil spill caught fire.

These fines are still relatively tiny and will not provide an effective deterrent against pollution by oil giants. Under current regulations, a single payment of $7,000 to NOSDRA completely discharges oil companies from having to clean up major oil spills. Such token fines would be unthinkable in the US or UK, but companies like Shell have exploited the lack of oversight for decades.

Statutory fines for pollution in Nigeria are simply not commensurate with the long-term damage caused by oil spillage and high costs of remediation. Estimates of the total cost of cleaning the Niger Delta vary from between $20bn – $500 billion, and the UN says that the process could take up to 30 years.

Nigerian regulators need real powers, but the Petroleum Industry Bill is set to further weaken an already chaotic system. Until Nigerian the government clamps down on polluters and diversifies its policies and economy away from heavy dependence on oil, the onus is on home states such as the UK, EU and US governments to fill the void and hold corporations like Shell and Exxon-Mobil to account through judicial mechanisms and government sanctions.

Envisat ASAR image analyzed by SkyTruth (http://www.skytruth.org) - data courtesy European Space Agency

The Bonga oil field, one of Shell’s largest offshore oil facilities was shut down on Tuesday 20 December after a massive oil spill. The cause? It appears to be a combination of human error and / or equipment failure. What the BBC describes as “leak during a transfer of oil to a tanker” led to a reported 40,000 barrels of crude oil spilling into Nigerian waters.

Sattelite images show a clearly identifiable slick that measures 356 square miles. Digital scientists Sky Truth have published the shocking images which show an enormous mass of crude oil afloat in the Gulf of Guinea. [UPDATE 22 Dec: The AP reports that the oil spill is "moving to the coast" where it could impact heavily on local fishing communities.]

Skytruth also provided detailed measurements of the visible oil slick:

it is about 70 km (45 miles) long, 17 km (10 miles) wide at it’s widest, and covers 923 square kilometers (356 square miles) of ocean

This is a major spill, even by Shell Nigeria’s shocking standards. In August 2011, Shell was heavily condemned by the UN for failing to comply with basic industry measures and covering up the extent of the pollution in the Niger Delta. Fifty years of oil pollution could take up to 30 years to clean up, according to UNEP.

This latest spill casts serious doubt over the viability of Shell’s offshore drilling programme. Shell has held up Bonga and other “ultra-deepwater” facilities in Nigeria as being safe and secure operations that use cutting edge, clean technology. That a spill of this magnitude could occur despite the technology deployed shows that Shell’s deepwater drilling poses severe risks to the environment.

Deepwater drillling activity has expanded aggressively across the West African rim and poses substantial threats to the coastal environment. In more remote and inhospitable regions like the Arctic, where Shell and other companies are planning to drill next summer, the consequences of a deepwater spill could be even more catastrophic.

North Sea Troubles:

Earlier in August 2011, Shell was responsible for causing the worst oil spill in the area in the UK North Sea for over a decade. A leak in a pipe between an oil well and the Gannet Alpha offshore platform spilled 1,300 barrels of oil into the sea. Shell has yet to clear the remaining oil trapped inside the 4 kilometre subsea pipeline. The company may face a criminal prosecution following an investigation by the Department for Energy and Climate Change. Gannet Alpha is 113 miles (180km) off Aberdeen.

A damning investigation into rusty, ageing rigs in the North Sea by the Express newspaper revealed an appalling level of risk on board Shell’s oil platforms. Bill Campbell, ex-group auditor for Shell International and safety campaigner said:

data showed there were 85 gas releases and 443 dangerous occurrences last year. “The probability of an undesirable event is extremely high,” he said.

Watch the video by you and i films here:

The protest coincides with the 16th anniversary of the execution of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists for their campaign against the environmental and social devastation caused by Shell and the Nigerian military regime. In response to peaceful protests by the minority Ogoni people in Nigeria, Shell collaborated with the military in a series of brutal crackdowns in the 1990s that claimed the lives of thousands. In October 2011, Platform released a new report on Shell’s role in recent human rights abuses perpetrated by the Nigerian military. The report also reveals how Shell has fuelled conflict through payments to armed gangs in the Delta region.

Events like the Shell Live Wire are used by the company to dissociate itself from human rights abuses and environmental devastation that results from its activities in Nigeria and elsewhere. The protest in London seeks to challenge Shell’s “social licence to operate”, thereby weakening its ability to commit abuses with impunity. The protest was organised by London Rising Tide and according to Indymedia encountered limited resistance from security:

Centrepoint security at first overstepped the mark, pushing people and trying to snatch the banner, but they retreated indoors and closed off the entrance when they realised they were being filmed, allowing the protest to continue right outside.

Hundreds of leaflets were handed out to interested passers-by, and police, who arrived after around 40 minutes, waited for instruction up the command chain before deciding to leave the protest alone.

A new report today published by Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) has called on Shell to accept responsibility for the pollution caused by oil spills in the Niger Delta, and to begin by paying US$1 billion as an initial down-payment towards the clean-up.

The report highlights how Shell’s pollution has wrecked lives and livelihoods in the town of Bodo, Ogoni, which was home to 69,000 people. Shell had caused two major oil spills there in 2008-2009 which became  the subject of a UK lawsuit filed at the High Court in April. The company was forced to admit liability and could be made to pay up to $410 million in compensation and clean up the damage. Amnesty condemned the company’s response to the spills:

Shell – which recently reported profits of US$ 7.2bn billion for July-September 2011 – initially offered the Bodo community just 50 bags of rice, beans, sugar and tomatoes as relief for the disaster.

CEHRD’s Coordinator, Patrick Naagbanton said:

“The situation in Bodo is symptomatic of the wider situation in the Niger Delta oil industry. The authorities simply do not control the oil companies. Shell and other oil companies have the freedom to act – or fail to act – without fear of sanction. An independent, robust and well-resourced regulator is long overdue; otherwise even more people will continue to suffer at the hands of the oil companies.”

AI also acknowledged that the UK government’s proposed cuts to the legal aid budget could make the UK courts inaccessible to the victims of corporate human rights abuses, such as Shell’s in Nigeria:

This report reinforces the need for victims of the overseas operations of UK companies to have access to justice in the UK. This is now under threat because of provisions in the Government’s Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders that would change the balance of costs against complainants bringing cases such as Bodo to the UK courts, and in favour of the multinational corporations defending such cases. If the Bill passes, such cases would no longer be viable.

Buying a copy of the report enables Platform to do more campaigning for human rights and corporate accountability in Nigeria. Your support is already having a real impact:

• In the last 10 days, over 13,900 of you signed a petition demanding that Shell is held accountable for its human rights abuses in Nigeria.
• Following the public outrage and media generated by the report, on Wednesday 5 October, the House of Representatives, part of Nigeria’s legislative body ordered an official investigation into the allegations that Shell fuelled violence in the Niger Delta by paying armed militant gangs.

The campaign is long and hard, but your ongoing support is vital. Please take a moment to support the campaign by getting yourself a copy (or two!) of the new report. Thank you in advance, and extra thanks go to our friends at New Internationalist for hosting the report in their inspiring shop!

PS. If you can’t afford to buy a copy now, the report is also available in pdf.

The action has collected over 14,900 signatures since Wednesday 19 October. Let’s see if we can hit 20,000 by the end of the week! Please sign the petition now.

The interview includes reference to the different ways that Shell’s ‘community development’ projects have undermined stability, and the company’s appalling record of environmental destruction and oil spills. The full report is available here.

That’s how filmmaker Sandi Cioffi describes Nigerian oil, known as ‘sweet crude’ because it is low in sulphur and therefore cheaper and easier to refine.

The trailer below is for Sweet Crude, the film. An amazing and insightful documentary by Sandi Cioffi, it looks at the appalling legacy of oil companies, in particular Shell and Chevron in the Niger Delta. The film features accounts of brutal military repression of protesters, including women, in the Delta, the role of oil companies in the conflict, and local forms of resistance.

“We’re looking at a time-bomb, and when it blows, it will blow us all away…”

This week a report by Platform London, ‘Counting the Cost’, found that between 2000 and 2010, Shell fuelled violence in the Niger Delta by paying huge contracts to armed militants. One of the towns mentioned in the report is Rumuekpe, which I recently visited. I spoke with women activists from the town, who told me how militants paid by oil companies had terrorized the town to the point when everyone had to flee, abandoning their homes, property and farms, and seek refuge in nearby Port Harcourt. During the period of terror some 60 people were known to have been killed. What is left is a ghost town. On the day we visited, the women and I were fearful that we were being watched and it was too dangerous for me to stay for any length of time or walk through the town centre. The women also pointed out that in those towns and villages which did not have oil, people lived in peace, confirming for many that it was the oil and the oil companies who were responsible for the violence and militarization of their town.