Is the oil pollution in Nigeria mainly the result of sabotage and theft, or rather rusty and leaky pipelines? Is the situation the people’s own fault, or caused by the oil companies’ gross negligence? The truth is secondary to the company’s image, reputation and money, lots and lots of money.
Oil pollution has transformed the Niger Delta into one of the dirtiest places on earth. And that’s not an exaggeration if you believe the people who live there or have been to the area. The respected African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights describes oil pollution in Ogoniland, in the delta, as ‘a nightmare’. “Nowhere on earth is life more miserable than in Nigeria.” Geert Ritsema from Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) has visited the delta numerous times, and describes his trips as ‘shattering experience’. “When you see it for the first time, you can’t believe your eyes. It feels like you are walking where an atom bomb has exploded.”
There are major differences in opinion about the causes of the devastation: with oil companies such as Shell on the one side, and the communities in the Niger Delta supported by environmental and human rights organisations on the other. This has resulted in major lawsuits, such as the one launched by Milieudefensie. Shell claims that sabotage to the pipelines and the theft of oil are by far the main causes of the oil pollution. The ‘opposing party’ readily admits that sabotage and theft are significant and growing problems, but says that Shell is greatly exaggerating the role of these things in the situation.
What is the truth? The answer is important, because the mere mention of sabotage gives rise to the impression that the pollution is the Nigerians’ own fault: it is more difficult to feel compassion for people who damage to their own living environment on purpose, than for those who can do nothing about the situation. To find the answer, we need to understand the sources cited by both sides. And that is an impossible barrier to overcome, as there are no independent and verifiable information sources on oil pollution in the Niger Delta.
Joint Investigation Teams
The reporting of spills takes place as follows: when a spill is reported, a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is sent out, consisting of representatives from the oil company concerned, the government and the affected local community. These parties determine the nature, size and cause of the spill, and negotiate about compensation. The Nigerian government uses this as the basis for the official statistics. This means that oil spills are in fact recorded. However, the reports of these teams are not made public, and no copy is provided to the communities affected.
The exception to this rule is Shell. Or, in any case, Shell Nigeria has posted online the reports with Spill Incident Data since January 2011. A matrix shows such information as the amount of oil spilled, the cause and the report of the Joint Investigation Team. However, the data are not complete. For example, there is a report missing about an extensive oil spill on the coast of Nigeria (the Bonga spill) that occurred in late 2011. In the last two years, around 70 percent of the spills were apparently the result of sabotage. At least, according to Shell.
That’s very transparent of Shell. However, Amnesty International has severely criticised the working methods of the JITs, which they have described as ‘very lacking’. The human rights organisation states that the results have absolutely no credibility, because they are not independently verified. Organisations such as Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Friends of the Earth have criticised in particular the overriding role of the oil companies in determining the size and cause of the spills. In the JITs, it is usually the oil companies who establish the cause of a spill. “And their assessment cannot be disputed in any way whatsoever”, explains Amnesty. According to the human rights organisation, the oil companies have so much control over the investigation process that there is a ‘very disturbing conflict of interests”.
Misleading estimates
Agonisingly slowly, splinters of truth are emerging, usually about a specific spill. Because this is how it works: organisations such as Amnesty gather their own data, but they do not have the capacity to systematically review all spills. Furthermore, the Niger Delta is a heavily militarised area, which makes counter-research more difficult.
However, sometimes Amnesty is right on the mark. Recently, on behalf of Amnesty International, the independent US research agency Accufacts investigated a 2008 oil spill near the town of Bodo. The investigation revealed that this spill was actually 60 times larger than Shell claimed. According to Shell, which admitted that rust was the cause, the spill involved a total of 1,640 barrels of oil (1 barrel equals 159 litres). After studying video images of the spill, Accufacts concluded that oil had flowed out of the rusty pipe at a rate of 1 to 3 barrels per minute. Only after 72 days was the pipe repaired. By this point, somewhere between 103,000 and 311,000 barrels of oil would have leaked into the surrounding area. In light of this, Amnesty would now prefer to submit all oil spills to an independent assessment. Shell has not yet responded, pending the lawsuit by 11,000 [sic] Bodo residents against Shell. Shell has called on Amnesty to delay publication the investigation, to avoid the risk of “misleading the public with the Accufacts estimate”.
In another recorded case (on video), the 2002 Batan spill, the JIT determined on site that improper maintenance was the cause of the spill. On the video, you can hear the head of the investigation, a Shell employee, attempt to stop the cause from being included in the report, but the team still cites ‘equipment failure’ as the reason. The next day, Shell sent a letter to the community stating that the spill was due to sabotage, and that they should search for the perpetrators in the community.
In several of the cases studied by Amnesty, Shell, when investigating the spill with representatives from the government and the local community, did not want to specify the cause of the spill on site. The reason given by the Shell employees was “that they had to finalise that decision in their offices.” There are cases documented by Amnesty in which Shell personally changed the cause from ‘rust’ to ‘sabotage’. However, it is impossible to say how often this occurs.
Missed opportunity
The truth has been coloured, and talking about it is explosive. That was the case, for example, during the investigation by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) into the oil pollution in Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta. UNEP conducted this investigation at the invitation of the Nigerian government, and Shell paid for the study (at a cost of 10 million dollars). The fat was in the fire when the British newspaper The Guardian reported in 2010 that the investigation exonerated Shell from nearly all blame: only 10 percent of the oil pollution in Ogoniland was allegedly due to obsolete oil installations and negligence, while 90 percent was caused by the Nigerian people. The newspaper based its article on statements from Mike Cowing, the head of the UNEP team.
Almost immediately, UNEP distanced itself from Cowing’s statements. The percentages given were apparently those of the Nigerian government, and were based on figures from the oil industry. Furthermore, the purpose of the investigation was not to determine the cause of the pollution. This provided a good opportunity for Friends of the Earth Nigeria to fiercely criticise UNEP. According to Nnimmo Bassey of FoE Nigeria, the report – which had not yet been published – was nothing but rubbish. “This is a case of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’.”
However, when the UNEP report was published a year later, it only generally reported on the causes, and no percentages were included. The main conclusion was that Shell did not observe the best practices of the oil industry nor its own procedures. This report, with the above conclusion, was welcomed by Friends of the Earth and other parties.
The UNEP investigation was a missed opportunity to discover the truth. The team visited 200 locations, inspected 122 kilometres of pipeline, took 4000 soil and water samples, studied 5000 medical files and held 264 meetings with local communities, which were attended by more than 23,000 people. You can’t easily repeat such an investigation.
Figures
So, what figures are available? Shell says that, before 1995, rusty pipes and disruptions were the main cause of spills. The company also states that, between 1989 and 1994, approximately 28 percent of spills were the result of sabotage, and approximately half were due to rust. No one disputes these figures, probably because of the low percentage attributed to sabotage.
However, there is no consensus on sabotage figures after 1994. Shell identifies sabotage as the main cause of spills, and gives percentages for various periods, varying from more than 60 percent to 98 percent. These figures are not always hard and fast, however. With great fanfare, Shell claimed that, in 2008, 85 percent of spills were due to sabotage. But two years later, the company significantly lowered this percentage, to 48 percent. For 2009, Shell provides two different figures: 85 and 98 percent. Needless to say, this lack of clarity does help the company’s credibility.
The percentages given relate to the volume of the total oil pollution as a result of sabotage, not to the number of oil spills. In 2008, for example, a single case of sabotage (a blown-up pipeline) was responsible for half of the oil pollution for that year. Furthermore, the figures say nothing about the consequences. A relatively small oil spill can be disastrous in a fishing community.
The actual level of truth present is impossible to determine. Amnesty International has asked Shell to substantiate the percentages, but – to date – no response has been received. Amnesty indicates that there is indeed evidence that the number of oil spills due to vandalism and sabotage has increased in recent years, but the organisation does not provide any figures.
To the frustration of organisations like Amnesty, Milieudefensie and Friends of the Earth, the public’s perception of the situation is that most oil pollution is due to sabotage. What’s more, the media has failed to notice the juggling of the figures. Slowly but surely, a consensus is building in the West that the situation is the Nigerians’ own fault.
Money, lots of money
The perception of the sabotage versus rust issue is sometimes more important than the truth – to parties on both sides. This emerged, for example, from statements made in the Dutch radio programme Vroege Vogels (‘Early Birds’) from the VARA network. On Sunday morning 27 May, a story was broadcast about Shell’s culpability in an oil spill near the village of K-Dere, in the Niger Delta, which involved 10,000 litres of oil. According to Vroege Vogels, Shell was found to be at fault based on “an internal, hand-written report from the oil company, which is in the possession of VARA’s Vroege Vogels.” Vroege Vogels wrote on its website: “In recent weeks, Shell has continued to suggest in the news that the spill was possibly caused by sabotage and oil theft by the local population. However, this document reveals that the leak in the pipeline was due to rust.” This story was also reported on the websites of various Dutch media, including NRC and de Volkskrant, Joop.nl and Nu.nl.
Vroege Vogels posted the first page of the ‘internal handwritten report’ with the news item. That was the front page of the report by the Joint Implementation Team (JIT) that investigated the spill. However, this report is available on the Shell Nigeria website, which means that the report in the possession of Vroege Vogels was not confidential. The programme’s claim had therefore been inflated.
Shell also exaggerates various issues. It says that it will clean up all cases of pollution, regardless of the cause. That sounds quite generous, but oil companies are required by Nigerian law to clean up all oil pollution when they leave the area. And this is exactly what Shell has not done in many cases. In other cases, the company’s clean-up activities have not met its own standards or international ones. Shell’s image will be tarnished more by this negligence if the damage was not caused by sabotage.
But image is not the only thing that plays a role. There is money – lots of money – at stake. Indeed, while oil companies must always clean up spills, they are not required to pay any compensation to the affected people if the damage is caused by sabotage, theft or vandalism. However, the companies do have to pay in the event of inadequate pipeline maintenance, poor management, human error, etc. The compensation paid can run into the millions of euros. Environmental and human rights organisations and residents/resident groups in the Niger Delta therefore have a significant interest in minimising incidents involving sabotage, while the opposite is true for the oil companies.
Their own fault
There is some logic to the thought that oil companies shouldn’t have to pay compensation in the case of sabotage or theft. Certainly, saboteurs and thieves should not be rewarded or encouraged. However, the people or organisations responsible for the sabotage are not necessarily the same as those affected. So, who are these saboteurs?
Much of the sabotage is professional, and performed with equipment from the oil industry, says Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a 1999 report. According to HRW, the damage is usually the work of contractors who are subsequently hired to repair the leak and clean up the pollution. And this sometimes occurs with the tacit approval of the oil company. In an interview with HRW, an anonymous former government advisor said, “It’s often the chiefs (the traditional leaders, ed.) who are responsible. An oil company arranges it with the chiefs (in other words, it pays them) by giving them a contract to clean up the oil.” Since that time, the theft of oil has become even more professional.
Articles in scientific magazines also undermine the obvious frame: ‘It may well be sabotage and theft, because the people are poor and want to force the oil company to pay them compensation’. Most researchers emphasise that sabotage and illegal oil plundering are the work of organised groups with economic motives. And local communities are protesting the situation, because they have to deal with the consequences. In 2008, a staff member of the former Nigerian president Obasanja told the BBC that the value of illegal oil plundering represented (at that time) 60 million dollars a day. “They’d kill you, me, anyone, in order to protect it.”
Armed gangs
That’s probably not an exaggeration. The Niger Delta is home to 140 different ethnic groups in nine states, with considerable tension between them. These tensions have been exacerbated by the huge oil riches, the unequal distribution of the profits and the burdens, high youth unemployment and the weak authority of the central government. Together, all of these elements form an ideal breeding ground for armed groups that combine ideology with criminal activities. And these groups are often protected by the police.
One of the largest and best organised armed groups is MEND, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. There is proof that this group is involved in the illegal oil trade. According to the American Judith Burdin Asuni from the Academic Associates PeaceWorks, this oil finds its way to markets all over the world, including the Rotterdam spot market.
The question concerning the roots of sabotage is therefore an interesting one, but also leads to an even more essential query: whether affected communities have the right to compensation if sabotage is the cause. The correct legal course of action would be to find the perpetrators, try them in court, recoup the losses from them and then use these funds to compensate the rest of the community. But that doesn’t happen. Shell is taking cover behind the fort of sabotage and the Nigerian law. And it’s understandable that the Nigerians won’t tolerate that.
Translation by Tina Sergi
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