Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of Environmental Right Action (ERA) in this interview speaks on happenings in the oil and gas sector. He is particularly worried about the ecological problems besetting the nation. Excerpts:
Nigeria has not implemented the United Nations Environmental Programme report. What is happening?
That report was exactly one year old on the 4th of August 2012.It is very disturbing that government has been very silent on the recommendations of the UNEP report. There are different segments of recommendations made by UNEP, some of which are for emergency action which means you don’t wait till tomorrow to take action. This is something so serious that government ought to have taken action right from when the report was issued.
For example, the report shows that some places in Ogoni have benzene in their water up-to levels 900 times above world water standards. Benzene causes cancer and it is advised that no one should drink that water.
The report also recommended that government should immediately notify the citizens living in areas where water and soil are so dangerously polluted and they should advise them not to drink it. But all this has not been done. The report has not been used to educate the people about the inherent dangers in their environment so they are living in ignorance.
One other thing the report recommended was that it will take 30 years to clean water and five years to clean the land. You have to clean the land first because if you clean the water first the pollution from the land will wash back into the river.
Having pollution to that depth and considering the number of years needed to clean it is a very serious business. The Ogoniland should have been declared Environmental Emergency Zone. It is a zone of colossal disaster and it requires an emergency action.
There are communities in Ogoniland where nobody lives any more; a whole village has been shut down and the houses are just collapsing. The water body they depend on was polluted by major spillage in 2004.
Government has set up Hydro-Carbon Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP). I think that is a good step by government but it is coming too late. It appears also that it is a fire-fighting measure by the government because they know people will ask them what they have done with the report in the last one year.
Besides, the project is being overseen by the Minister of Petroleum Resources instead of the Minister of Environment. So why did government tell us that the Minister of Environment will run the project when you know that her counterpart will run it.
What does it take to clean up Ogoniland?
The United Nations Environment Programme recommended that the process for the clean-up of Ogoniland alone requires a structural set-up of investment to the tune of $1billion. Our projection one year ago was that we would require about $100 billion to clean up the Niger Delta. It looks to me that it is a modest estimate because the pollution there is continuing. It is now that some oil companies are responding to the plight of Niger Delta. It used to be business as usual. We heard that Shell has planned to bury their new pipelines about four metres down.
So cleaning of the Niger Delta is a life-time investment. You need 25 years to clean up the Ogoniland. You need another 100 years to clean up the entire Niger Delta. And what is the life expectancy in a Niger Delta person? It is about 40 years. So many people there, their lives have known nothing other than pollution.
What do you think is the implication of all this?
Government’s inaction on the report has so many implications and this is why Environmental Right Action convened a one-day summit to mark the first anniversary of this report on August 4 in Abuja.
It is not a report that can be pushed under the carpet. The non-implementation of the report shows we don’t really care about our survival. When you allow pollution to continue to destroy fish, water, our health will be in jeopardy. Fishing is a major employer for most people living in coastal areas so if you destroy that possibility of working as a fisherman or fisherwoman, then you are throwing a lot of people into the unemployment market. So continuous inaction means perpetual growth of the army of the unemployed.
Also, it is against the human rights of the people to pollute their living environment. You are cutting their lives. It is like sentencing them to death, even though you are not hanging or shooting them. Palliatives in this sense will not help. We need drastic, immediate, urgent action.
Fifty six years after oil was discovered in Nigeria, poverty is still on the high side. What is the missing link?
I think oil and gas discovery in Nigeria has impacted more negatively. Before oil and gas discovery, the major income earner for Nigeria in 1970s was agriculture. The railway was working then, the economy was well structured.
Oil made it possible for the military to hang on to power for so long. Oil companies operate better under dictatorship than democratic government. Challenging oil corporations to respect human right is a huge joke.
Fifty-six years after oil discovery, industries are shut down, more unemployment. Everything has been negative. This is why organizations like OilWatch and ERA are campaigning that no new oil wells should be opened up by the government. We don’t need to development new oilfields. We need to take a pause and ask ourselves: what are we doing with what we have got so far? How well off are we? Where is the oil wealth leading us to? Is oil not going to be exhausted one day? When that happens, what will be the next step? If the world decides to stop using this oil as energy source, what will become of Nigeria? These are questions we need to answer.
You advocated no new oilfields be opened at all. Does that mean call for suspension of investments in the oil and gas sector?
There is a lot of investment involving clean-up, replacement of obsolete equipment, training of manpower in the oil and gas industry and investment in developing alternative energy source. We don’t need to investment in an archaic sector. What do we need oil blocs for? To increase production, isn’t it?
Now if you are losing as much as you are exporting through oil theft, why don’t you stop it to improve your productive capacity? You are already producing double of what you are selling. You don’t make new oilfields with double production.
We are producing over two million barrels per day. We are probably producing four million but we are selling only two million barrels per day. So why allow the fat cats to be sucking the blood of the people. We have very well trained technicians to monitor and police what we pump and sell out. These international syndicates stealing Nigeria’s oil are not spirits. They can be seen where they are loading and their barges too can be noticed.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation [NNPC] should be compelled to publish the exact figures of what it pumps from the ground. A situation where it publishes only what it pays government is not good enough. We need to know exactly how much is coming out from the well compared to what we are exporting so as to enable us know what is missing in-between. What is missing in-between will either be what is being spilled into the environment or stolen by agents of politicians, security apparatuses or local operators.
Of late, accusing fingers have been pointed at bush refineries [illegal refineries]. But that is just a tip of the iceberg. Recently, the Minister of Finance said 200,000 barrels of oil are stolen daily. I don’t think local refineries can steal that quantity.
Why should multinational oil companies show disregard for environment when we have offices like the Department of Petroleum Resources?
We have agencies that are expected to carry out certain functions but the functions are either being subverted wilfully or by the context in which they operate. Corporations are in business to make profit and many of them operate unethically. They ought to see profit alongside environmental security and safety but many of them just see the profit alone.
That is why the operation in the long term is not sustainable. The long term will not be profitable because one day they are going to account for the destruction of the ecology. We are in a situation where operators in the sector can get away with everything–government is not going to hold them to account. And if communities raise their voices, they have enough resources to continue to drag the case for as long as possible so that the case dies off.
The issue of gas flaring is still on the front burner with attendant losses of lives and revenue. What is the way out?
Gas flaring is harmful to the health of Nigerians. So why do we allow it? When the Federal Executive Council recently sent PIB [Petroleum Industry Bill] to the National Assembly, we expected it to have a strong stand on gas flaring. The first bill we saw had a better stand on gas flaring. That was why we said the one they called fake is not actually fake. The PIB I saw has a terminal date for gas flaring.
Source: Equities Spotlight
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