A report by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) on the contamination of Ogoniland has indicted Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) – concluding that cleaning up the mess could take as long as 30 years. "This report proves Shell has had a terrible impact in Nigeria, but has got away with denying it for decades, falsely claiming they work to best international standards," said Amnesty International Global Issues Director, Audrey Gaughran.
A major new independent scientific assessment, carried out by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), shows that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in the region has penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed.
The assessment has been unprecedented. Over a 14-month period, the UNEP team examined more than 200 locations, surveyed 122 kilometers of pipeline rights of way, reviewed more than 5,000 medical records and engaged over 23,000 people at local community meetings.
Detailed soil and groundwater contamination investigations were conducted at 69 sites, which ranged in size from 1,300 square metres (Barabeedom-K.dere, Gokana local government area (LGA) to 79 hectares (Ajeokpori-Akpajo, Eleme LGA).
Altogether more than 4,000 samples were analyzed, including water taken from 142 groundwater monitoring wells drilled specifically for the study and soil extracted from 780 boreholes.
Key Findings
Some areas, which appear unaffected at the surface, are in reality severely contaminated underground and action to protect human health and reduce the risks to affected communities should occur without delay says UNEP's Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland.
In at least 10 Ogoni communities where drinking water is contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons, public health is seriously threatened, according to the assessment that was releasedUNEP presented its report to the President of Nigeria, The Hon Goodluck Jonathan, in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
Among its other findings are:-
- Control and maintenance of oilfield infrastructure in Ogoniland has been and remains inadequate: the Shell Petroleum Development Company's own procedures have not been applied, creating public health and safety issues.
- The impact of oil on mangrove vegetation has been disastrous. Oil pollution in many intertidal creeks has left mangroves-nurseries for fish and natural pollution filters- denuded of leaves and stems with roots coated in a layer of bitumen-type substance sometimes one centimetre or more thick.
- The five highest concentrations of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons detected in groundwater exceed 1 million micrograms per litre (µg/l) - compared to the Nigerian standard for groundwater of 600 µg/l.
- When an oil spill occurs on land, fires often break out, killing vegetation and creating a crust over the land, making remediation or revegetation difficult. At some sites, a crust of ash and tar has been in place for several decades.
- The surface water throughout the creeks in and surrounding Ogoniland contain hydrocarbons. Floating layers of oil vary from thick black oil to thin sheens.
- Despite community concerns, the results show that fish consumption in Ogoniland, either of those caught locally or purchased from markets, was not posing a health risk.
The report says that fish tend to leave polluted areas in search of cleaner water. However, the fisheries sector is suffering due to the destruction of fish habitat and highly persistent contamination of many creeks. Where entrepreneurs have established fish farms for example their businesses have been ruined by an "ever-present" layer of floating oil.
- The Ogoni community is exposed to hydrocarbons every day through multiple routes. While the impact of individual contaminated land sites tends to be localized, air pollution related to oil industry operations is all pervasive and affecting the quality of life of close to one million people.
- Artisanal refining (a practice whereby crude oil illegally obtained from oil industry operations is refined in primitive stills), is endangering lives and ultimately causing pockets of environmental devastation in Ogoniland and neighbouring areas.
Remote sensing revealed that in Bodo West, in Bonny LGA, an increase in artisanal refining between 2007 and 2011 has been accompanied by a 10% loss of healthy mangrove cover - or over 307,380 square metres.
- Remediation by enhanced natural attenuation (RENA) - a way of boosting the ability of naturally-occuring microbes to breakdown oil and so far the only remediation method observed by UNEP in Ogoniland - has not proven to be effective.
UNEP scientists found an 8 cm layer of refined oil floating on the groundwater which serves the wells. This was reportedly linked to an oil spill which occurred more than six years ago.
While the report provides clear operational recommendations for addressing the widespread oil pollution across Ogoniland, UNEP recommends that the contamination in Nisisioken Ogale warrants emergency action ahead of all other remediation efforts.
The long-awaited study said complete restoration could entail the world's "most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up" and it is estimated to cost $1 billion.
The report said Ogoni communities faced a severe health risk, with some families drinking water with high levels of cancer-causing agents.
In the meantime, President Goodluck Jonathan has called on UN to urgently come to the aid of Nigeria in handling the environmental pollution occasioned by the spills in Ogoniland for the past 50 years.
Minister of Petroleum, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, told THISDAY last night that she was yet to get a copy of the report, and could therefore not make any comments. The Ministry of Environment and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) were yet to get the report last night.
However, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has called for the creation of a $100-billion Environmental Restoration Fund for the Niger Delta.
The UNEP report followed an independent scientific assessment of the area over a 14-month period during which the team examined over 200 places, surveyed 122 kilometres of pipeline Rights of Way, reviewed over 5,000 medical records and engaged more than 23,000 people at local community meetings.
The $10 million investigation by a team of 100 officials, who studied environmental degradation in the oil-rich region at the instance of UNEP, was paid for in part by Shell and was to be published in December 2010.
The team also conducted detailed soil and groundwater contamination investigations at 69 locations, which ranged in size from 1,300 square metres as in Barabeedom-K.dere, Gokana Local Government Area to 79 hectares as in Ajeokpori-Akpajo in Eleme Local Government Area in Rivers State.
Over 4,000 samples were analysed, including water taken from 142 groundwater monitoring wells drilled specifically for the study and soil extracted from 780 boreholes in the area.
At the end of the exercise, which attracted international attention, the UN body noted in the report tagged “UNEP’s Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland” that “some areas, which appear unaffected at the surface, are in reality severely contaminated underground and action to protect human health and reduce the risks to affected communities should occur without delay.”
The report also noted that public health was seriously under threat in at least 10 Ogoni communities where drinking water was contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons.
The UNEP assessment presented to President Jonathan showed pollution in surface water throughout the creeks of Ogoniland and up to eight centimetres in groundwater that feed drinking wells at 41 sites including a serious case in Nisisioken Ogale in Eleme, Rivers State.
Soils were found to have been polluted with hydrocarbons up to a depth of five metres in 49 observed sites, while benzene, a known cancer-causing chemical, was found in drinking water in Nisisioken Ogale community at a level 900 times above World Health Organisation (WHO) acceptable levels.
The report also showed that fishing activities have been destroyed and that wetlands around Ogoniland are highly degraded and facing further degradation.
The report however provided operational recommendations for addressing the oil pollution across the entire Ogoniland and specifically recommended that urgent remedial action should be taken on the contamination in Nisisioken Ogale area.
According to the study, cleaning up the pollution and ensuring a sustainable recovery of Ogoniland could take 25 to 30 years. This work will require the deployment of modern technology to clean up contaminated land and water, improved environmental monitoring and regulation and collaborative action between the government, the Ogoni people and the oil industry, said UNEP.
UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Mr. Achim Steiner, said the report provided the scientific basis on which a long overdue and concerted environmental restoration of Ogoniland could begin.
“The oil industry has been a key sector of the Nigerian economy for over 50 years, but many Nigerians have paid a high price, as this assessment underlines. It is UNEP's hope that the findings can break the decades of deadlock in the region and provide the foundation upon which trust can be built and action undertaken to remedy the multiple health and sustainable development issues facing people in Ogoniland.
In addition, it offers a blueprint for how the oil industry - and public regulatory authorities - might operate more responsibly in Africa and beyond at a time of increasing production and exploration across many parts of the continent,” Steiner said.
“The clean-up of Ogoniland will not only address a tragic legacy but also represents a major ecological restoration enterprise with potentially multiple positive effects ranging from bringing the various stakeholders together in a single concerted cause to achieving lasting improvements for the Ogoni people,” he added.
ERA/FoEN in a statement issued in Lagos yesterday by its Head of Media, Mr. Philip Jakpor, said the Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland, despite its shortcomings, had vindicated the organisation’s worst fears about the state of the environment in Ogoniland and the entire Niger Delta.
Jakpor said the report also showed Shell’s “atrocious breach” of minimum requirements of the Environmental Guidelines and Standards for Petroleum Industries in Nigeria (EGASPIN) and its own standards.
Reacting to the contents of the report, ERA/FoEN Executive Director, Nnimmo Bassey, said the UNEP assessment with documented evidence of widespread pollution in Ogoniland was not at all surprising.
“It has only vindicated our position that Shell, and not the people, is wholly responsible for this environmental assault and has shown with brazen contempt that it will not abide by any internationally accepted standards in the oil industry nor any that it set for itself.
Going by the findings, the Ogoni people who, ironically, are still living with this ecological disaster may never have the right to an environment that can allow them develop as they desire. Not even the paltry sum recommended for remediation can assuage the dislocation that Shell’s activity has wrought on them,” he said.
Bassey said $1 billion initial restoration fund was negligible compared with the mammoth ecological disaster caused by Shell, even as he urged the Nigerian government to immediately compel the company to halt other on-going pollution such as routine gas flares in the Niger Delta and the leaking pipes that continually pollute streams, rivers and farmlands.
He noted that ERA’s demand for $100 billion in remediation funds was hinged on the fact that aside Ogoniland, Shell’s ecological onslaught is replicated in other Niger Delta communities that must also be considered for a comprehensive environmental audit.
Speaking at the Presidential Villa after UNEP submitted the report, President Jonathan said Nigeria had contributed to overall world peace, adding that now that the country had an environmental issue, it was expected for others to rally around her.
“Nigeria has paid her dues to the UN, invested in maintaining peace both human and capital resources and now that there is environmental war, the UN will come to our aid; will assist us to implement the recommendations of this report.
"Nigerian government is going discuss with Shell and other key stakeholders. This report will not be locked up but implemented," Jonathan said.
Speaking further, the president said he would summon all oil companies that had worked in Ogoniland to discuss ways of funding the clean-up exercise which the UNEP report said “could prove to be the world’s most wide ranging and long term oil clean up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, reproductive health”.
Presenting the report, Director, Division for Contamination Implementation, Ibrahim Thiaw, said the implication to health of the people in the area was so grave that an urgent attention should be started to save the people from further negative impact of oil spillages and contamination.
The chairman overseeing the environmental survey of the impacted areas, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, said the report would lay to rest a lot of innuendos over the intention of those who worked with him, while he hoped the government would have the political will to implement the report.
No comments: