Photos from “Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta

The lure of oil is its cheapness. What we mean is that oil is a cheap source of energy. It is cheap partly because oil’s costs of extraction—in the Niger Delta and much of the tropical world—are not reflected in the price at the pump, and what Calvino called the “puny power of paper money,” .

One consequence of the unfettered and wreckless exploration and exploitation of oil in the delta is that the poor people continue to subsidize the costs of crude oil through the losses they suffer in environmental services, quality of life, and extreme environmental degradation. In turn, opportunistic groups— oil bunkerers, gangs, militants—find space to extract (and extort) financial gains from the system.

Rather than getting better, the crisis in the Niger Delta appears to be getting more intractable. Meetings, programs, projects, and commissions multiply—yet the many-headed hydra that is mass poverty in the Delta simply grows more appendages. The path of crude oil development is strewn with skeletons and soaked in human blood across the world.

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Nigeria
Niger Delta
Oil
Shell + Nigeria

The bribery allegations against Halliburton’s actions in Nigeria during the Sani Abacha dicatorship have been widened to cover the past 20 years and will include investigating Halliburton’s (and presumably Dick Cheney’s - see video Cheney exposed) relationship with Shell and possibly other oil multinationals operating in Nigeria.

Criminal investigations of former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), for alleged bribery in the construction of Nigeria’s $10 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant on Bonny Island, have been widened to cover the past 20 years of Halliburton’s operations in Nigeria. Investigators will also probe accusations of embezzlement by senior executives, and Halliburton’s relations with other multinationals, including Royal Dutch Shell.

Halliburton recently dismissed two of its most senior executives, Robert Stanley and William Chaudin, on suspicion of embezzling $5 million from a Nigerian energy project.

The initial claim, which started the investigation some six years ago, was that Halliburton and others working on a gas export project conspired to win a $5 billion construction contract in 1995 by establishing a $180 million slush-fund to bribe Nigerian officials, and to reward Western contractors between 1994 and 2002, which includes the period when US Vice-President Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s chairman and CEO (1995-2000). Such payments are illegal under a 1997 convention barring bribery of foreign public officials in commercial negotiations, adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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Nigeria
Niger Delta
Halliburton

Sweet crude for shell, bitter oil for people

Part 2

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Niger Delta
Oil
Enviornment

Sandy Cioffi, director of the documentary “Sweet Crude” interviewed on Democracy Now!

In this small region of Nigeria known as the “south-south,” something huge is happening. The adverse effects of oil exploration have been unfolding in the Niger Delta for the past 50 years. Now, the people have had enough. From environmental activism to peaceful protest to stakeholder dialogs, nothing has worked. A new brand of militancy has emerged in a different kind of attempt to call attention to the desperate poverty and injustice.

Here, citizens of an oil-rich nation struggle to eat in a land that can no longer support them. The Delta’s water and soil have been fouled by the same oil production that accounts for more than 80 percent of the country’s revenue. Traditional fishing and farming livelihoods are all but gone. Potable drinking water is rare. So is electricity. With pitifully few clinics and schools, curable conditions go untreated and illiteracy is high. Families are broken up, as men die young or take off for the cities to find jobs.

The advent of militancy has brought both hope and fear to the region. People live with the constant threat of war, yet many feel that armed resistance is the only avenue left to make their voices heard……...Continued.

Links: Interactive map of Nigeria / Niger Delta

Slideshow

Tags:
Nigeria
Niger Delta
Oil
Shell + Chevron

In 2005, the High Court declared gas flaring illegal yet both the Nigerian government and oil multinationals have ignored the court ruling. Last year the Nigerian government once again promised to stop all gas flaring on the 1st January this year - a promise that goes back nearly 40 years. Companies defying the order were to be shut down. Once again the government has shown complete disregard and insensitivity to the communities in the Niger Delta and given into pressure from Shell, Chevron, Elf etc. The date has now been set for the end of the year but no one really believes that the government will once again bow to the oil multinationals.

Inemo [Ndelta] has put together this short video “Fire in the Delta” which shows the environmental damage [gas flares both on the ground and those that burn up in the sky; old leaking pipes across farmlands and homes; oil filled creeks and ponds; oil fires which burn the land and people; across the region. [Also check out some of his Ijaw dub samples for example this one dedicated to Ijaw activist and legend Adaka Boro]

Civil society groups have responded by demanding the government enact legislation to once and for all end gas flaring rather than continue to make promises that are always broken.
Last week the 13 civil society organisations (Social Action, Environmental Rights Action (ERA), Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Benin River Forum, Niger Delta Women for Justice (NDWJ),
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