Nigeria Content Online

The recent British
Petroleum (BP) oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico unconsciously
drew global attention to the damning situation in Nigeria’s Niger Delta
region.

For barely 67
days, between April 20 and July 15, 2010, that the Macondo deepwater
horizon drilling rig blowout lasted, the United States government,
through a National Response Team (NRT), mobilized its resources to
ensure that the spill was not only curtailed, but also its impact to
the environment contained.

Indigenes of the
Niger Delta, who have lived with a similar situation for over half a
century since oil was first discovered in the region, could only watch
in envy. Routine spillages into the environment by oil companies
operating in the region are poorly cleaned, nor impacted areas
remediated.

The average daily
flow from the spills may not usually be as heavy in a singular incident
as that of the BP incident, but environmentalists say drops from more
than 10,000 oil spill incidents reported in almost 3,000 sites, apart
from several other unreported occurrences since 1956, would have formed
a flood of concern.

Chairman, Friends
of the Earth International (FoEI), Nnimmo Bassey, puts the figure more
succinctly: “There are more than 300 spills incidents, major and minor,
every year.”

Conservatively, that translates to about 15,000 incidents in the last five decades.

Though the exact
volume of oil poured into the environment for the period remains
debatable, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) records show
that more than 7,000 spills occurred in the facilities of the various
operators between 1970 and 2000.

The National Oil
Spill Detection & Response Agency (NOSDRA) describes the scale of
pollution in the region as mind-boggling, saying that between 1976 and
1996 alone, more than 2.4 million barrels of crude oil contaminated the
environment.

Minister of
Environment, John Odey, disclosed last week in Abuja that between
January 2006 and last June, another 3,203 oil spills were recorded in
the region.

“The devastation
of oil pollution in the Niger Delta region over the last 50 years is
horrendous, yet the oil companies have always gone away with a slap on
the wrist,” Godfrey Enyinanya, an environmental rights activists, told
NEXT in Abuja last week at the sidelines of a workshop on oil spill
management.

Mr Enyinanyam said
if the Niger Delta region was to be accorded half the kind of attention
the incident in the Gulf of Mexico received, there is no way the region
would continue to experience the level of restiveness that appears to
have unsettled the peace of the region.

“Most of the oil
companies have drilled and spilled oil over the years without bothering
to clean up and remediate the environment. Nigeria is reputed to be
flaring the highest volume of natural gas annually. Yet, adequate
reparations and compensations have not been paid to the people whose
lands have remained devastated. Government is ill-prepared to initiate
legal actions to compel the companies to do what is right,” he said.

At the workshop,
organized by NOSDRA in collaboration with the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) to review regulations and guidelines on
oil spills in the country, participants identified the reasons the
Niger Delta is today one of the most polluted places in the world.

Apart from corrupt
government officials, who regularly connive with oil companies to
exploit loopholes in existing laws, participants traced the problem of
inadequate environmental protection in the country to duplication and
contradictions in existing codes and regulations.

Regional Manager,
Environment, Shell Exploration & Production Africa, Charles Okoro,
who presented the views of multinationals, said there are several laws
in existence which tend to promote conflict in monitoring and
regulating issues on environmental in the country, because various
agencies of government assume similar responsibilities or functions.

Mr Okoro, who
called for the harmonization of these laws for efficiency and
effectiveness, said some of these regulations come under the purview of
the Federal Ministry of Environment and DPR, while others come under
the Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).

These include the
National Guidelines for Environmental Pollution Control in Nigeria;
National Guidelines for Environmental Audit; National Guidelines for
Environmental Management; Effluent Limitation and Pollution Abatement
for Facilities Generating Waste and National Environmental Protection
Management of Solid and Hazardous Waste.

“There should be
consistency in laws regulating operations in our environment,” he said.
“The greatest challenge operators face in the country is the
multiplicity of regulations and regulators. We need to harmonize and
align these existing laws, and have a focus of what we have to do as
well as have a common goal as a country.”

But one other
point that became apparent in the course of discussions was the
vulnerability of NOSDRA, the government agency statutorily mandated to
spearhead oil spill management issues in the country, but whose
functions have often been subsumed under the authority of the DPR.

Though NOSDRA,
under the draft National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCP), has the
mandate to respond to all tiers of spills, the debate was whether the
agency possesses the requisite capacity to handle such a responsibility
effectively, without resorting to the support of the companies it is
supposed to monitor and regulate.

Willing officials, weak agency

If NOSDRA is faced
with the kind of situation in the Gulf of Mexico, does it have the
capacity to mobilise and deploy hi-tech resources to curtail and
contain the situation without turning to the oil companies for
assistance?

Acting Director
General of NOSDRA, Uche Okwechime, could not provide answers to these
posers in her response to NEXT’s online inquiries at the weekend.
Rather, she pointed out that “a lot has been achieved by NOSDRA to
safeguard the Nigerian environment from the menace of oil spillages”.

Mrs. Okwechime
said NOSDRA has initiated measures to better its capacity to function,
including the review of the NOSDRA Establishment Act; review of NOSDRA
regulations and guidelines, setting up of a committee to fashion-out
modalities to create awareness on environmental impact associated with
oil facilities’ vandalism, oil theft and operation of illegal
refineries.

“The Agency’s
field officers are available at all times to ensure compliance with the
agency’s mandate on clean-up as stated in Part III of NOSDRA Act,
Section 6 (3) as well as the international principle of Polluter- Pays-
principle. The Agency also carries out the following activities to
ensure better management of oil spills by oil companies: Regular oil
spill response equipment audit; drills/exercises; regular facility
inspections; and periodic meetings with health safety and environment
(HSE) managers of oil companies,” she said.

She listed some
major oil spills incidents the agency handled in the last five years to
include the 2,500 barrels spill at the Brass River Manifold to Brass
oil terminal and the 10,000 barrels Tebidaba/Brass pipeline incidents
by Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) in 2006; the 3,500 barrels Diobu
creek field spill by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and the
7,809 barrels spill at OML 58/Obagi-Rumuekpe by Total Nigeria Limited.

Others include: the two incidents recorded by ExxonMobil, involving
a total of 3,963 barrels spilled at Qua Iboe Terminal last year.