According to reports in This Day, it could take 30 days before Chevron drills a relief well to put out the fire. In this video, Chevron Nigeria’s Executive Director Supo Shadiya refuses to provide even an estimate of when the disaster will end:

“I can’t give you a guess as to when we will be able to put out the fire.”

Chevron’s casual attitude towards the ecological impact of the disaster has been widely criticised. Chevron has dismissed local environmental concerns:

“There’s no known scientific basis to really talk about damage to the environment.”

However, the dead fish washing up on the nearby beach is one indication of a potentially serious environmental impact from the explosion and fire. Locals also report that 82 people have been poisoned from eating contaminated fish. There is an urgent need for independent and transparent monitoring of the disaster.

Chevron says it is providing “food” to the local community in Bayelsa State. Yet this is a poor substitute for proper environmental management and mitigation measures.

Click on the image to view the full video from NTD

Shell’s major oil spill at the offshore Bonga facility in Nigeria is threatening the livelihoods of at least 13 different coastal communities, reports Reuters. As thick crude oil continues washing up on Nigeria’s shoreline, Shell is denying responsibility and claims that “non-Bonga oil” from a third party spill is to blame. A local resident from Bisangbene told the Vanguard newspaper that Shell’s Bonga spill had ruined livelihoods in the fishing village. Mr. Goodnews Gereghewei said:

our occupation is predominantly fishing and our fishermen have withdrawn from the sea because of the massive oil spill due to fear of being roasted alive since they fish mostly at night with local lamps.

The oil spill has coated beaches “in a film of black sludge with a rainbow tint,” sparking angry local protests.

So far, the environmental impact has also killed fish, contaminated drinking water and damaged local fishing boats. Nigerian officials have suspended fishing off the coast due to the threat of heavy oil contamination from Shell’s Bonga spill. Fishers from Akwa Ibom in the eastern Niger Delta have also been affected. A second leak has also been confirmed on Shell’s onshore Nembe pipeline.

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…”

PLATFORM featured on Channel 4 News this evening, providing analysis on two current news stories – the revelations of the full extent of environmental devastation in Ogoni land contained in the UN’s new report, and Shell’s admission of liability for two recent oil spills in Bodo, Ogoniland. Campaigner Ben Amunwa helped provide background research as the story rapidly unfolded.

Also, Shell’s spills in Nigeria were the top story on BBC World News, which featured a lengthier analysis from PLATFORM.

Earlier in the day, PLATFORM’s analysis was also quoted in msnbc.com’s report on the same story, available here. The article covered Shell’s double standards in Nigeria, and the potentially ground-breaking implications of the company’s admission of liability for the 2 recent oil spills in Bodo.

The lawyers and rights groups have said the amount of oil in these two spillages alone was approximately 20 percent of the amount that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico following the BP  disaster.

“BP did more in 6-months for the U.S. communities than Shell has done in 50 years for the Ogoniland,” said Amnesty International’s [Audrey] Gaughran.

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.

Another week of publicity is keeping the spotlight firmly on the forthcoming Shell trial, with BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme dedicating a prominent feature to Shell’s role in the Niger Delta executions, Al-Jazeera News interviewing Ben Amunwa from remember saro-wiwa (see video), and an excellent article by Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International in the world’s largest blog, the Huffington Post.

A noon rally outside the courthouse where the historic Wiwa v Shell trial is due to take place was well attended by international media, Niger Delta activists and concerned citizens from across America. Here you can watch a video of the rally made by volunteer Nick Gulotta. Further video footage and testimony was produced by Caitlin Clay and Masha Medvedkov from human rights group Witness.  You can also view some of the recent news coverage here, and visit ShellGuilty for the latest updates on the trial.

Demonstrators called for corporate accountability, stressing that Shell’s human rights abuses in the Niger Delta continue on a daily basis. Flags and banners brought a splash of colour and to the civic buildings around Foley Square, Manhattan. Spokespeople from Amnesty International US, Friends of the Earth US, Oil Change International and PLATFORM.