Oil spills heighten tension in the southeast

Tension is growing in the Niger Delta, southeastern Nigeria, following a rash of oil spills which, in combination with communal and industrial disputes, have disrupted crude oil production by three transnationals, industry sources said on Friday.

US multinational ExxonMobil Corp’s Nigerian subsidiary shut its Qua Iboe oil export terminal on Thursday after it was besieged by protesters from the local Eket community who accused the company of neglect. ExxonMobil said a group of protesters forced their way into the facility on Thursday and attempted to vandalise it. “As a result the terminal has been temporarily shut down as a safety and environmental precaution,” Exxon Spokesman Yomi Adeyemi-Wilson said.

Another US multinational, Chevron Corp, reported on Thursday that a faulty valve on one of its pipelines had caused the leakage of an estimated 140 barrels of crude near its Escravos operational base in the western part of the delta. However, the company denied allegations by several coastal communities that it was responsible for an oil slick that caused massive fish deaths in areas adjoining Escravos.

Banji Ajaka, chairman of the Ilaje local council, in which the affected communities are located, told reporters he had petitioned Nigeria’s Department of Petroleum Resources to have the spill cleaned up. “We are awaiting their response to quickly help in alleviating the sufferings of our people by compelling these companies to clean up and pay us compensation,” he said.

Hopes of an early clean-up of another major spill that occurred last week at Royal/Dutch Shell’s Yorla oilfield in Ogoniland dimmed on Friday after a strike by the company’s Nigerian white-collar employees paralysed its main operational bases in Port Harcourt and Warri. There are fears that any delays in the clean-up operation will worsen the environmental impact of the spill and increase the likelihood of a violent backlash by local people.

“All these are signs of renewed restiveness in the region where expectations that (President Olusegun) Obasanjo will make a difference from the long decades of negelect suffered by communities in the area have disappeared,” Obudu Waritimi, an environmental activist in the southeast, told IRIN.

He said two years into Obasanjo’s four-year term none of his promises to
redress the neglect had materialised. “In fact many communities in the Niger
Delta think it’s time to go back to the barricades,” Waritimi added.

Governors of the six main Niger Delta states have adopted the popular demand
by militant activists for increased local control of the region’s oil wealth. They are currently engaged in a bitter Supreme Court battle with the federal government over control of revenue from offshore oil production.