• We Are Fully Ready For Cleanup, Says FG
• Expert Urges Caution
FOR International Oil Companies (IOCs), including Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Ogoni is one big piece of cake, — full of oil deposits (currently 750million barrel reserve in OML 11 alone) and very cost effective to exploit. So, the attraction to ‘stay put’ remains irresistible, despite decades of deadly agitation by local communities whose means of livelihood and general environment, according to a United Nations agency, have been utterly compromised and would need, at least, 30 years of effective cleanup.
Troubled on many fronts after decades of its operations (mainly during the military era), mixed reactions now trail Shell’s ‘alleged’ plan to sell off its 30 percent holding and those of Total (10 percent) and ENI (five percent) in OML 11, located in the heart of Ogoni region of Rivers State.
The ‘suggested’ sale of the OML license in the oil fields was immediately followed by Federal Government’s announcement of its preparedness to fully execute the cleanup of the area as recommended in the environmental assessment report submitted to it by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, two weeks ago — the same period feelers of Shell’s planned license sale hit the alternative media — reportedly said the government would review extant frameworks setup to undertake the process.
But describing the report of secret sale of SPDC’s license in OML 11 as ‘possibly a rumour,’ Mr. Moritz Abazie, CEO of Port Harcourt-based Strides Energy and Maritime Ltd, explained that Shell, which is still being hunted by spillover from its original operation of that field, had, before now, relinquished its equity holdings in the Ogoni oilfield to the NPDC.
According to him, “plans on how to reopen the field can only come from NPDC.” On the report that Shell plans to sell the license to Ogoni stakeholders, Abazie explained that granting equity participation to host communities is (already) one of the strategies proposed in the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) for managing host community restiveness. “The objective,” he said, “is to have these community equity holdings managed as a trust for the individual communities respectively by their representatives.
“Strategies that seek to empower individuals rather than empower host communities collectively has proved counter productive in the past; attempting to implement any model along that line now will be an exercise in futility,” the Strides Energy boss told The Guardian in an electronic mail exchange.
Yet, stakeholders consider both developments as being too ‘exact’ to be a mere coincidence. While Ledum Mitee, an environmental activist, delegate at the recent National Conference and Chairman of Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), said any sell-off that would write the obituary of Shell’s activities in OML 11 would be welcomed by the communities (since shell’s relationship with the Ogoni people has broken down irretrievably), Nnimmo Bassey, Director, of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, another environmental activist, called for complete stoppage of oil activities in Ogoniland in line with the UNEP report, accusing Shell of fighting to avoid liability in the area. Mitee, in an exchange with The Guardian, however, stressed that the position he canvassed is on his personal capacity and does not represent that of any organisation.
Efforts to confirm the alleged plan to sell the oil mining licence in Ogoni from SPDC did not yield fruits. “No comments,” Mr. Igo Weli, the General Manager, Nigerian Content Development department of SPDC in Nigeria, said in response to the question. The Guardian had, on Thursday, sought out Mr. Weli at a business function in Port Harcourt to provide answers to some of the issues relating to the alleged strategy for SPDC’s pullout from the Ogoni oil bloc.
Although the General Manager provided detailed answers to questions bordering on Shell’s activities in the area of local content development and other matters unconnected with OML 11, he chose to be silent on the matter.
A Long Rough, Rugged Ride…
TWO years ago, specifically on August 1, 2012, UNEP had said it was backing Federal Government’s decision to proceed with the cleanup of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta, a threat by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) notwithstanding.
Exactly four days earlier (July 28, 2012), the Ogoni had threatened to occupy strategic economic installations in their locality, except the government expeditiously implemented the UNEP recommendations without recourse to its (government’s) own Hydro-Carbon Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP). It was not clear whether UNEP’s open declaration of support for Government’s new implementation initiative, one year after it recommended a five-year clean-up of oil spill that would cost not less than $1 billion, is a direct fallout of MOSOP’s recent threat.
UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, had said: “On the anniversary of the Ogoniland assessment, there are now clear and encouraging signals that the government is keen to move on the recommendations – this is a welcome development for the people and the environment of this region who have suffered, and continue to suffer the legacy of some 50 years of unsustainable oil exploration and production.”
“UNEP stands ready to assist the government and its agencies with expertise for getting the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project up and running so as to improve the lives and livelihoods of the Ogoni people.”
That (Steiner’s support for HYPREP) was two years (precisely 25 months) ago after UNEP held discussions with the then Director-General of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), Peter Idabor, and declared that it was engaged with the government to chart transformative pathways forward in order to carry out the recommendations.
“The immediate need is for the necessary funds to be mobilised and to be deployed to take the project forward at a scale and speed commensurate with the challenge. Everyone has a part to play in realising significant and positive results from the government of Nigeria, local authorities and the oil industry to NGOs and local communities,” said Director of UNEP’s Division of Environmental Policy Implementation, Ibrahim Thiaw, who had, on August 4, 2011, presented the UNEP report to the government.
The UNEP Report on Ogoni Spill, as presented to President Goodluck Jonathan — who was at the time newly sworn in as substantive President after filling the void created by the ill heath and subsequent death of his former boss, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua — was a scientific assessment of oil pollution in Ogoniland, underlining serious public health and environmental impacts.
Stressing the need for swift action to prevent the pollution footprint from spreading further and exacerbating the already tragic legacy for the Ogoni people, the UNEP Report proposed an initial $1 billion to cover the first five years of clean-up operations. While some on-the-ground results could be immediate, overall, the report estimated that countering and cleaning up the pollution and catalysing a sustainable recovery of Ogoniland could take 25 to 30 years and will require long-term financing.
One year after, Mrs. Alison-Madueke, the Petroleum Resources Minister, announced that the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project had been established to “fully implement the United Nations Environment Programme’s Assessment Report on Ogoniland.”
The cleanup, according to the government, was to be conducted under this new initiative (the HYPREP), which would, first, define the scope, actions and financing of the project.
But MOSOP’s Provincial Council Chairman, Prof. Ben Naanen, immediately rejected the idea threatening to “occupy economic installations, including the Oil and Gas Free Zone in Onne, the Port Harcourt Petrochemical Plant, Notore Fertiliser Plant, two refineries and government-owned farms, located in four local council areas.”
Naanen had told The Guardian that the Ogoni people had already been mobilised to carry out the threat.
THE multinational oil firm has been grappling with decades of frosty relations squabbles with the Ogonis as a result of oil spill and other environment-related ‘offences,’ forcing it to shut down the majority of the 23 fields on the bloc.
The firm had completed the sale of its stakes in OML 18, 24 and 29 in the Niger Delta (AEI 728) and is reportedly planning to auction its holding in OML11, according to an online medium.
The Anglo-Dutch company had tried to avoid outright sell-off, taking the decision to offload its stakes in OML 11 only after attempts to safeguard it failed; after a decade of conflict with local communities, Shell, in early 2000s succumbed to pressure by allowing the Oza and Asaramattoru marginal fields to be carved out of the block and sold to local stakeholders. Millennium Oil & Gas, which, which has since ‘merged’ with Hardy, a British company, got Oza; while Henry Macpepple’s Suffolk Petroleum, acquired Asaramatoru.
In 2009, SPDC was made to cough out at least $15.5 million to tame legal issues, which had continued despite its ‘sacrificing’ of the two marginal fields. In fact, the two companies that acquired the marginal fields were not allowed to work on them, as Shell’s relations with the Ogoni people got even worse. Although this was not done glaringly, Shell, 10 years after, agreed to transfer its operating role in OML 11 to the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). This move is also considered to have yielded little or no results as the Ogoni people insisted on seeing the Anglo-Dutch Company out of its land.
This, no doubt, precipitated the planned pullout, as Shell reportedly moves to sell its licenses in the Ogoni region of Rivers State, which has ceased to pump oil since the 1990s, when Ogoni communities ensured there is no resumption of operations.
An online news platform, www.thestreamng.com, argued that “the group wants to kick-start the disposal process before Nigeria’s presidential election scheduled for next February, but it won’t complete a deal with a buyer until Goodluck Jonathan’s successor has been elected. As has been the case with previous asset sales in the Niger Delta, Shell is intent on selling only to a Nigerian group and, if possible, one that is controlled by prominent Ogoni figures, who alone can restore good relations with the local population.
‘The future buyer will need to find a partner with particularly deep pockets. After 20 years of lying unused and damaged from sporadic clashes, oil infrastructure, and particularly pipelines, is in a disastrous state, and oil leaks have polluted the entire region.
The online news platform also made specific reference to possible go-betweens in this special transaction, especially as “the arrival of a new stakeholder on OML 11 will take place only if the local Ogoni community agrees to it.
The website further said that “a handful of prominent businessmen who have served for years as intermediaries between the Ogonis and the Federal Government could well be called back into harness. Continue reading
