“Relying on these figures would be a serious misjudgement, with potentially significant ramifications for those living in the Niger Delta,” said Audrey Gaughran, Director of Amnesty International’s Global Thematic Issues Program. “UNEP must be aware that the figures have been strongly challenged for years by environmental groups and communities. They are totally lacking in credibility.”

Amnesty went on to highlight how UNEP’s use of Shell data raises serious anomalies:

Between 1989 and 1994 Shell itself estimated that only 28 percent of oil spilt in the Niger Delta was caused by sabotage. In 2007 Shell’s estimate had risen to 70 per cent. The figure now given by Shell has increased to more than 90 per cent. Amnesty International has repeatedly asked Shell to produce evidence to support these figures. Shell has been unable to do so.

Friends of the Earth International, the worlds largest network of environmentalists, also condemned UNEP’s uncritical announcement of the disputed Shell data. Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends the Earth International and director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria said:

We monitor spills regularly and our observations often contradict information produced by oil companies and Nigerian regulatory agencies. If the UNEP team would ask community monitors it would avoid falling into the trap of spinning Shell’s figures. The UN assessment is being paid for by Shell so we are not surprised that it tells Shell’s version of the facts. But the reality is that several studies have placed the bulk of the blame for oil spills in the Niger Delta on the doorsteps of the oil companies; particularly Shell.

Well No 1, at Oloibiri, Niger Delta

As any child educated in Nigeria will tell you, oil was discovered in Oloibiri, Nigeria in 1956. Oil spills in Nigeria date back to those early days of exploration and production and increased significantly with the expansion of infrastructure onshore and offshore in 1970s.

All the more shocking then that Mike Cowing, the UNEP’s leading expert on its study in Ogoniland, is reported to have made the startling claim that oil spills in the Niger Delta “have probably been continuing for nine years”, at a press conference in Geneva on 10 August 2010. Such glaring inaccuracy casts doubt over the credibility of the forthcoming report, which the authors have been forced to admit will be “controversial”.

Cowing’s statement is further evidence that UNEP is attempting to hide the historical impact of Shell’s oil spills. For village communities like Ejama-Ebubu, this adds insult to injury. They have waited over 40 years for Shell to clean up several massive oil spill that devastated their land. The Federal High Court in Nigeria fined Shell over $100 million in damages from the spill. However, Shell has refused to pay, and as of writing the damaged ecosystem has still not been cleaned up. Devastating spills like these have been commonplace throughout the Delta for almost as long as oil production in Nigeria.

A three-year investigation by the United Nations will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the Niger delta, causing outrage among communities who have long campaigned to force the multinational to clean up its spills and pay compensation.

The $10m (£6.5m) investigation by the UN environment programme (UNEP), paid for by Shell, will say that only 10% of oil pollution in Ogoniland has been caused by equipment failures and company negligence, and concludes that the rest has come from local people illegally stealing oil and sabotaging company pipelines.

UNEP’s heavy focus on sabotage and theft comes as no surprise, as the study is being bankrolled by Shell and the Nigerian government.  UNEP’s report is in direct conflict with local environmental groups who monitor almost daily spills caused by neglect. They claim that the majority of spills are the result of mechanical failure; in other words, worn out, leaky infrastructure (like this abandoned Shell well-head in K-Dere, Ogoniland, above right).

It is widely known that Shell under-reports its spill volumes and frequencies. UNEP’s confidence in Shell’s data is misplaced, misleading, and unfortunate, coming at a time when oil companies are under increasing pressure to address the risk of oil spills.

Aggressive independent oversight is part of the solution, but this is unlikely to be provided by a Shell-sponsored report. UNEP’s findings are a distraction from the destructive legacy of Shell’s oil spillage in the region, which Amnesty International called a ‘human rights tragedy’ in a recent report.

Whilst oil production continues apace, there is very little sign that Shell is doing anything to repair & replace its ageing pipelines which are causing widespread pollution in the Niger Delta. Shell has stalled for years on a comprehensive clean up of 52 years of spilling. Never lacking excuses when held responsible, Shell claims lack of funding, security concerns and now blames the problem entirely on impoverished locals.

This rhetoric is welcome, but Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) is a muzzled watchdog, easily overshadowed by oil giants, like Shell. 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, with widespread human misery and environmental devastation the result.

President Goodluck Jonathan must empower Nigeria’s environmental regulators to bite as well as bark. Allowing companies a free hand to pollute will continue to devastate the Delta’s marginalised poor, and make a mockery of Nigeria’s sovereignty.

So poor is Shell’s record that over the weekend, the Nigerian government had to remind the company to respect international standards when it does get around to cleaning up a fraction of over 2,400 spill sites in the Delta.

Minister of Environment John Odey has asked Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to ensure that its plan to carry out the clean-up of some 268 sites in the Niger Delta conforms with the Federal Government’s guidelines on environmental standards.

And on Tuesday, Nigeria ‘cautioned’ Exxon Mobil over its frequent oil spills from its offshore facilities. Yet oil companies do not speak the language of reminders and cautions. ‘They will only respond if the boot is on their neck,’ observes an on environmental and waste management expert in Nigeria. ‘They won’t improve anything by themselves.’

The necessary challenge for the Ministry and the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency is to turn their political capital in the wake of Deepwater Horizon into enforceable environmental protection for oil-producing communities who have suffered decades of neglected spills.

Post-Deepwater Horizon, governments face a stark choice. Do nothing, and the oil companies will continue drilling deeper in our seas, lakes and oceans, endangering lives and livelihoods in order to maximise profit. Or take action, by halting further offshore drilling and imposing tougher regulations that force companies to avoid oil spills, conduct proper clean up responses and to pay for the damage that currently falls on local communities.

Guy Hibbert’s tense thriller (starring Naomi Harris (28 Days Later), Johdi May (Defiance) Patterson Joseph and David Oyelowo) follows two women as they investigate the  circumstances that led to the deaths of four hostage oil workers and their militant captors in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

A fictitious oil company, ‘Krielson International’, stands in as a thinly veiled corporate giant, whose corrupt deals and failed development projects infuriate local communities.

Without giving too much away, the oil company, Krielson, and the Nigerian military are profiting hugely from illegal practice of oil bunkering, at the expense of local communities and ultimately risking the lives of their own workers.

It may sound like a thriller plotline, but it bears a striking resemblance to real life events in the Delta, and in particular one of the darker chapters of former President Obasanjo’s repressive rule of Nigeria.

As scholar and author Ike Okonta writes:

20th August 2006. On that afternoon, soldiers of the Joint Task Force, a contingent of the Nigerian Army, Navy and Air Force deployed by the government to enforce its authority on the restive oil-bearing Niger Delta, ambushed fifteen members of the MEND militia in the creeks of western delta and murdered them. The dead men had gone to negotiate the release of a Shell Oil worker kidnapped by youth in Letugbene, a neighbouring community. The Shell staff also died in the massacre.

Spokesmen of the Nigerian government had sought to represent the fifteen militias as ‘irresponsible hostage-takers’ in the wake of the slaughter. But those massed at the hospital that morning spoke only of heroes who had fallen in the battle for ‘Ijaw liberation.’

Okonta interviewed Oboko Bello, an Ijaw civil-society leader who traced a clear chain of command between Shell and the soldiers who murdered the boatful of MEND insurgents and Shell workers:

“Shell was in direct communication with the commanders of the Joint Task Force, even up to the time our young men set out in their boats to rescue the Shell worker in Letugbene. These young men were not hostage takers. They were Ijaw patriots, selflessly working to repair the damaged peace between the oil company and our people. For this they were ambushed and murdered by soldiers in the service of Shell.”

Then, as now, the Delta is betrayed by broken promises and military violence. With no end in sight to the devastation of the ecosystem and the ongoing exploitation of Nigeria’s oil, it is unlikely that the wider drama of the Delta’s will end as upliftingly as Hibbert’s movie.

As Ghana’s Daily Graphic reports:

The Chief Economist of Shell Trading, Mr Roberto Siebert, told the Daily Graphic at the Oil and Gas Summit in Accra that “we have the expertise in trading, environmental management, exporting and importing and diversity in the contest of strong business principles”, adding that “Shell will also ensure that Ghana benefits from the perspective of health, safety and environment”.

Mr Siebert said Shell had a global spread and it was respected wherever it found itself because of its commitment to ensuring strong business principles that do not only ensure the benefit of the company, but also the countries in which it operated.

For evidence of Shell’s lack of ‘commitment to business principles’, Ghanaians may look to Nigeria, where Shell and other oil companies have effectively lost their ‘social license’ to operate in the Niger Delta region. Decades of routine gas flaring and oil spills have polluted the environment, destroyed livelihoods and in many areas have contributed to a total break down of community relations.

The company’s excessive reliance upon heavily armed government security forces has also led to grave human rights abuses. For many locals, Shell is the object of fear and anger, but not respect.

Shell is a late arrival in the rush for Ghana’s oil. Other oil majors such as Exxon Mobil have already had their attempt to gain a foothold in the country’s prized Jubilee Field frustrated by a government seeking a deal on better terms. It remains to be seen whether the Ghanaian government and civil society will draw lessons from the Nigerian experience and block Shell’s advances before it becomes too late.

Raymond Anyadike, a professor of climatology at the Department of Geography of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, told journalists on Thursday… that acid rain could only fall within the Niger Delta region because of the huge quantity of sulphuric dioxide and methane in the air as a result of gas flaring.

“The government should direct oil companies to embrace gas re-injection in which gas is capped instead of flaring,’’ Anyadike advised.

Gas flaring creates thick plumes of smoke across the Niger Delta region, releasing over 250 identifiable toxins, and contributing more CO2 to the atmosphere than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa combined. The question of who should pay for the widespread environmental and health costs of gas flaring is yet to be determined. Some communities in Nigeria have lived beside flares for over three decades, and many people have no choice but to use water that is contaminated by acid rainfall and other pollutants to drink and bathe.

Professor Anyadike, who is one of the founders of the Nigerian National Committee on Climate Change, also warned that climate change is inducing freak weather patterns in Nigeria that could disrupt this year’s harvests.

Shell, the largest oil company in the region, continues to deny that the wasteful practise of gas flaring is linked to anything but the slightest environmental damage. Nick Wood, Vice President of Communications at Shell says:

The World Bank has reported that the environmental and health significance of gas flaring in the Niger Delta was low. Any negative effects of flaring are confined to the immediate vicinity of the flare and will have little or no impact on the health of the local populations.

Local communities and environmental rights groups including activists from the Ogoni people have long been calling for an end to gas flaring as one of the major grievances against oil multinationals such as Shell and Chevron. Thus far, the oil companies have made little progress, blaming a lack of funding on the Nigerian government, which is a partner in the joint-ventures.

Gas flaring has been outlawed in Nigeria since 1984, but it is currently cheaper for oil companies to pay the insignificant fines than to invest in stopping the practice.

Oil Multinational Charged in the Hague For Pollution in Nigeria
Tuesday 1 ^st December

Amsterdam & London – A unique court case, brought by four Nigerian victims of Shell oil spills, in conjunction with Friends of the Earth Netherlands, begins on Thursday 3^rd December in the court at The Hague. This is the first time in history that a Dutch company has been brought to trial before a Dutch court for damages abroad.

Villagers in Ikot Ada Udo survey the damage caused by a Shell well head that sprayed toxic oil and gas onto their farmland in August 2006 and August 2007.

The Nigerian farmers and fishers, who lost their livelihoods after oil
from leaking Shell pipelines streamed over their fields and fishing
ponds, are claiming compensation from the Anglo-Dutch oil giant. They also
want Shell to clean up the oil which remains in the land, so that they
can return to farming and fishing.

The four victims of the leaks are from three Nigerian villages.

They have subpoenaed both Shell’s subsidiary in Nigeria and Shell’s Dutch headquarters. They allege that as the result of Shell’s negligence,
agricultural lands have been devastated, drinking water polluted, fish
ponds made unusable and the environment and health of local people harmed.

Ogoni elder and plaintiff in the Shell oil spills case, Chief Barizaa

Shell denies all responsibility and contends that the Dutch court has no jurisdiction over its Nigerian subsidiary. Therefore, at Shell’s request, the court will first address the question of whether Shell Nigeria can be called to account before the Dutch court. Then it will consider whether the Shell parent company is liable for the pollution in Nigeria, something which the oil giant disputes.

Geert Ritsema of Milieudefensie said, ‘Shell earns billions in
profits. At the same time, the company does not comply with law, is
responsible for environmental pollution and harms the interests of
farmers and fishers in Nigeria, who have no other means of earning a
living. It is sad but predictable that Shell is resorting to legal technicalities to avoid taking responsibility for the environment.’

According to Milieudefensie, the oil leaks in the three Nigerian villages are not just isolated incidents. For the people of the Niger Delta, oil spills are a daily occurrence, part of Shell’s systematic routine of pollution and contempt for the rights of the local population over four decades.

Speaking on behalf of the victims in Nigeria, Lawyer Chima Williams of ERA, Milieudefensie’s Nigerian sister organisation, said: ‘These people have tried in many ways to get Shell to clean up the mess, but they have got nowhere. Now, as a last resort, they are trying to obtain justice in the Netherlands.’

Representatives of the Nigerian community in the Netherlands have announced that they will organise a courthouse rally in solidarity with the four Nigerian farmers during the legal proceedings on Thursday.

Contacts:

NL-

Press office Milieudefensie, (+31) 020 5507 333
Lawyer Chima Williams of ERA, (+31) 06 295 938 76 (only on Wednesday 2^nd and
Thursday 3^rd Dec)

UK-

Ben Amunwa, PLATFORM/remember saro-wiwa, (+44)7891454714, ben[at]remembersarowiwa.com.