Oil piracy and gas dragons

by Tony Carnie

A group of South African environmental activists flew to Nigeria to see how crude oil had changed the lives of ordinary Nigerians.
As I joined them, I will describe their journey to the Niger Delta.

Like the searing breath of a giant dragon, a tower of yellow flames shoot into the sky, turning the night to day. It has been burning 24 hours a day for nearly 40 years. Yet, children in the nearby village of Oshie and several other places in the Niger Delta pay no attention to it.
Some of the children who live closest to the dragon's flames have never experienced a pitch-dark night, says Comrade Chimela Oyi, Chairman of Oshie's Youth Committee.

In many parts of the world, oil companies are racing to find new reservoirs of natural gas, but in Nigeria, where natural gas is an unwanted by-product of crude oil, the gas is simply burned up into the sky. Oshie village is about half an hour's drive from the Niger Delta's "oil capital", Port Harcourt.
"I came here as a child, when there was still nice, fresh air and clean rainwater. We had good soils and forests, and we ate mushrooms, fish and wild animals. But, since the oil companies came here in 1972, we have been living in hellfire," Oyi fumes.

According to Oyi, the villagers were pleased at the arrival of the Nigeria Agip Oil Company, which is jointly owned by the government, Agip, of Italy, and the US-owned Phillips group. People had hoped to benefit from jobs, new schools and health clinics.
"Now, our drinking water is so terrible, you cannot even use it for washing," he says.
Oyi also blames oil leaks, unburned petroleum fumes and soot from the gas flares for the pollution of communal fishing ponds, localised acid rain and numerous cases of respiratory illnesses in the community of several hundred people.

Agip and Shell are among several multinational oil companies that operate in the Niger Delta under joint-venture agreements with the federal government of President Olusegun Obasanjo. The delta is also home to the minority Ijaw, Itsekiri and Ogoni people -- only three of Nigeria's lively mix of almost 300 ethnic groups who feel marginalized and exploited by the more dominant Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo majorities.
Nearly 10 years after Ogoni civil and environmental rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by military dictator Sani Abacha, the delta remains a hotbed of violence and civil unrest.

When I travelled to the oil-rich region as a guest of the Environmental Rights Action group of Nigeria, another 1,000 troops had just been deployed to the delta -- a place where many foreign "oil men" still travel under armed escort because they fear being attacked or kidnapped.
On a boat journey along the river delta, I saw an armed gunboat camped outside Shell's Nembe Creek oil-flow station. The entrance to the station is also protected by a barbed wire security fence and a sand-bagged gun shelter.

Apart from federal military forces and the notorious Mobile Police, the Niger Delta is also home to numerous heavily armed paramilitary gangs -- some of whom have been implicated in large-scale "oil-bunkering". Bunkering is a term used to describe the theft of large volumes of crude oil from the hundreds of well-heads and pipelines that criss-cross the swamps and rivers in one of the world's largest river deltas.
Barges hidden in remote creeks in the mangrove and palm tree forests are loaded with stolen oil, which is then ferried to pirate tanker vessels waiting in the Atlantic.

Some estimates suggest that as much as 5 % to 10 % of the country's oil wealth is leached in this way, and that the proceeds are used to fund armed groups, which comprise a growing army of unemployed youths.
Last year, there was intense conflict between rival warlords Alhaji Asari Dokubu and Ateke Tom. The tension cooled somewhat after Obasanjo invited the pair to Abuja to sign a ceasefire agreement. However, conflict over the control of bunker oil is just one dimension of a complex equation which is exacerbated by environmental pollution, ethnicity, political power struggles, resentment over a lack of development, and the plundering of oil revenue by the government elite.

Since 1999, nearly a billion dollars has been repatriated to Nigeria after legal efforts to recover the loot which was salted away by Abacha and other prominent figures in banks in Switzerland, the Channel Islands, Germany, and elsewhere.
In a recent interview, Alhaji Asari denied that he had been involved in oil bunkering. But, in the next breath, he declared: "I am not a Nigerian... I am an Ijaw man. There is a universally accepted legal theory that whatever is on the land belongs to the owner of the land. Whatever is on Ijaw land belongs to them... (so if anybody takes oil) he has the right to take it, but he has a duty to protect the environment."

Asari is also a senior figure in the Niger Delta Peoples' Volunteer Force, which has its roots in the Ijaw secessionist rebellion of 1965, led by Isaac Adaka Boro. Boro was sentenced to death for leading an uprising against the newly independent government. He was later pardoned and fought for the federal government against the Biafran secessionists.
Boro was shot -- some say murdered -- near the end of the Biafran civil war.

Earlier this month, the government banned a so-called "million man march" at Port Harcourt to commemorate the death of the Ijaw revolutionary icon, who has been cast in the same mould as the Ogoni's Saro-Wiwa. Asume Osuoka, a spokesman for Nigeria's Environmental Rights Action group, sees oil as the main cause of poverty among his 140 mm countrymen.
"We have been ruled by a group of thugs since the first military coup of 1966. Oil and gas account for about 90 % of our revenue, yet not more than 30 % of this revenue is used for development. The rest is stolen by the government... " he says. "It is not that Nigerians are bad by nature, but you cannot survive here without being part of the corruption, which was legalised and institutionalised by Babangida."

Osuoka was referring to Ibrahim Babangida, another former military general who seized power in 1985. He plans to stand in the next presidential election in 2008.
"Because of oil, the citizens do not matter in Nigeria. Normally, a state taxes its citizens to raise money. But, because this state no longer depends on them for revenue, there is no incentive to create development." Osuoka also argues that there are strong links between Nigeria's history of political thuggery and the oil companies.
"Big oil operates in total contempt for the people, which can be seen in the fact that we have the worst record for gas flaring and oil pipeline leaks in the world," he says.

In the village of Rumuekpe, we met Chief C.J. Okpara, who described the situation using an allegory about his visit to a Port Harcourt restaurant.
"At the end of the meal, I reprimanded the waiter for failing to provide us with toothpicks. "I told him that I would complain to the manager, but he told me to "please go ahead", because his master was aware," says Okpara. "It is the same with our complaints about oil industry pollution in Nigeria: the master is aware. So, he will not punish the servant."

The Shell group, the largest foreign oil company in Nigeria, appears to acknowledge that oil revenues have not benefited the majority of the population. Speaking five years after the Ken Saro-Wiwa/Ogoniland crisis, which severely dented Shell's reputation, spokesman Heinz Rothermund said that delta residents had legitimate cause to demand a more equitable share of oil and gas revenue.
"For our part, we realise that we still have a long way to go. We are still working at building bridges in Nigeria, in a sincere attempt to overcome the difficulties we have experienced in this country," he said.

Rothermund noted that there were still critical concerns about state corruption and the security of Shell staff and contractors (several hundred of whom had been held hostage or threatened with violence). Several of the company's operations had been shut down by armed groups. Oil rigs had been blockaded, and oil pipelines had been sabotaged or vandalised.
Two months ago, Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer told a conference in London that revenue from oil should be a force for good, and that his group was trying to support development projects among local communities. But these projects, however worthwhile, could not be a substitute for government development plans, he said.

Van der Veer praised Obasanjo for carrying out a transparent agenda "with impressive vigour", but he also noted that Shell had become the first company to publicly disclose the revenues it paid to the government.
"If we get it right, transparency will create a virtuous circle where improved governance encourages more investment, which in turn, leads to improved and sustained economic and social development."

But for Tim Concannon, an activist who has been involved with the Ogoniland oil disputes since the early 1990s, Shell has played a key role in fuelling conflicts in several parts of the world, including the Niger Delta.
"If Shell is serious about being an ethical company, it has to move beyond nice words, glossy brochures and esoteric audit systems," he says. "Shell needs to shake off its old habits and begin delivering real answers to these problems."