"Oil Industry Has Brought Poverty and Pollution to Niger Delta"

Amnesty International recently issued a damning report on the manner in which the oil industry has destroyed Nigeria's Niger Delta Region. The title says it all: "Oil Industry Has Brought Poverty and Pollution to Niger Delta."

The Amnesty report notes: The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) describes the region as suffering from “administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructure and services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic conflict.” This poverty, and its contrast with the wealth generated by oil, has become one of the world’s starkest and most disturbing examples of the “resource curse”.

Oil has generated an estimated US$600 billion since the 1960s. Despite this, many people in the oil-producing areas have to drink, cook with and wash in polluted water, and eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins.

“More than 60 per cent of people in the region depend on the natural environment for their livelihood,” said Audrey Gaughran “Yet, pollution by the oil industry is destroying the vital resource on which they depend.”

Oil pollution kills fish, their food sources and fish larvae, and damages the ability of fish to reproduce, causing both immediate damage and long-term harm to fish stocks. Oil pollution also damages fishing equipment.

Oil spills and waste dumping have also seriously damaged agricultural land. Long-term effects include damage to soil fertility and agricultural productivity, which in some cases can last for decades. In numerous cases, these long-term effects have undermined a family’s only source of livelihood.

The destruction of livelihoods and the lack of accountability and redress have led people to steal oil and vandalize oil infrastructure in an attempt to gain compensation or clean-up contracts.


Black Looks blog has written quite extensively on the catastrophe as well...

Shell pays blood money to Ogonis

The Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has agreed to pay $15.5 million in blood money to a group of Ogoni plaintiffs. The group had filed a lawsuit in US court alleging Shell's complicity with human rights abuses in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The multinational pretended that the agreement was a "humanitarian gesture," presumably thinking that someone might be fooled. If Shell is suddenly concerned with "humanitarianism," perhaps they could stop the toxic gas flaring and other environmental and resulting human devastation that they are causing in the Delta.


Other sources on the story...
-The Independent (UK daily)
-This Day (Nigeria daily)
-AllAfrica.com
-Essay by Ken Saro Wiwa Jr. (background)
-Shell Guilty (pressure group)
-Shell (corporate press release)

Africa's top oil producer needs at least $40 billion to meet MDGs

According to the BBC, more than half of all Nigerians live poverty (though it doesn't say what the standard is). This despite the fact that the country is one of the world's most important oil producers.

The poverty advisor to former president Olesegun Obasanjo recently said that Nigeria needs between $5bn to $7bn per annum to achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015.

According to the UPI, Nigeria has taken in an estimated $300 billion in oil revenue since the 1970s, or an average of roughly $8 billion a year.

I suspect that if even half of those revenues had actually gone toward poverty reduction or other broad-based social programs, Nigeria would be in a lot better shape than it is now.

Somali petrol

Maybe I'm ignorant, but until recently, I was not aware that there was oil in Somalia.

Apparently, quite a bit.