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Bassey noted, for instance, that although the PIB is a good first step, the document as packaged, is not as strong as it ought to be. According to him, the PIB does not have stringent pro-people and pro-environment provisions, as the country, despite the PIB, will still be having illegal routine gas flaring. He blamed the delay in passing the bill on what he described as ‘toxic politics’ and pressure from the IOCs who have openly said they would not accept laws that curb their excessive profits as well as wrong perception by some legislators that provision of funds for communities mean more money to the oil-bearing states.

Nnimmo argued that although, the PIB makes the offer of money to oil-bearing communities on one hand, it takes it away on the other. “The PIB criminalises communities when it says that if oil facilities are tampered with then the communities, local government areas, and states would pay. Communities are not the policemen of oil facilities. The PIB speaks the old language of subsisting laws that free IOCs of responsibility where facilities are interfered with by third parties. That has made the claim of sabotage the favourite refrain of the oil companies even before incidents are investigated. The PIB fell into the same anti-people trap,” he explained.

Bassey insisted that what Nigeria needs to do right now is to “massively increase oil revenues by halting oil theft. We are not talking about poor villagers scooping crude oil in buckets and jerry cans. Those also need to be stopped. We are talking about the industrial-scale oil theft going on in the oil sector. The official figure bandied by the Ministry of Finance as well as the National Assembly is that 400,000 barrels of crude oil are stolen everyday,” he said As for local operators, Bassey and other experts and stakeholders said the ability of local operators to hold their own would depend, to a very large extent, on better collaboration, better host community management, proper valuation and raising smart financing. They also require huge investment in knowledge, research and development (R&D).

Mutiu Sunmonu, Managing Director of SPDC, said the divestment of his company’s assets was a deliberate measure to encourage indigenous participation in the upstream oil and gas industry. His words: “We want to create a new set of indigenous players in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry within the next 10 to 20 years from now, while the IOCs concentrate on more difficult issues and also allow us focus on material oil and gas fields.” The divestments are seen by some industry watchers as representing the single largest opportunity for Nigerian operators with the requisite expertise and capital to emerge as major upstream players.

Critics also point to Ghana’s long history of extractive activities and primary commodity exports: Ghana produces gold, bauxite, manganese, diamonds, timber and cocoa, none of which have generated appreciable benefits for the majority of Ghanaians.

Ghana has chosen to accept so-called ‘stabilisation clauses’ in its contracts with companies that lock in current laws and regulations. If the country should decide to strengthen its regulatory framework, companies with existing contracts could claim that the new laws do not apply to them, or require the government to provide financial compensation for the cost of compliance.[13] As foreign companies reap handsome rewards, and Ghana gains uncertain benefits (much of the content of these contracts remains secret), coastal communities are sure to pay the highest cost. At a recent Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) workshop held in the coastal town of Takoradi, representatives of six districts located closest to the oil find responded angrily to refusals to commit part of the petroleum royalties to an environmental mitigation or compensation fund, as is legally required in the mining sector.[24] No such provision has thus far been established for the oil and gas industry.

corporate interests are often recast as national security concerns. It was President Jimmy Carter who cemented the connection in his 1980 State of the Union address by stating that any foreign attempt to gain control of Middle Eastern oil would be regarded as ‘an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.’ The policy, now known as the Carter Doctrine, set a dangerous precedent of using military might to secure ‘strategically important’ resources throughout the world.

In another case, the European Commission on Oil in Sudan (ECOS) has accused oil companies of complicity in crimes against humanity in a Southern oil field known as Block 5A. ECOS charges companies with pressuring armed groups to ‘clear the ground’, leading to a wave of repression in which 12,000 people were killed and another 20,000 displaced.

Farming accounts for as much as 32 per cent of total emissions, a significant portion of which are created by industrial agriculture through the use of petroleum-based fertilisers, pesticides and forest clearing.[38] The issue of ‘food miles’ – the distance our food travels from farm to table[39] – has been well documented, while new data shows that the production phase accounts for as much as 83 per cent of the average US household’s carbon footprint for food.[40] Changing the way we produce food, therefore, constitutes a necessary step towards reducing oil dependence, its enormous carbon footprint and its human toll.

Food sovereignty, the political project put forward by the international peasant movement Via Campesina, offers a promising road map.

Industrial agriculture may be more ‘efficient’ in terms of labour (output per worker), but its productivity is achieved through massive applications of fossil fuel-based inputs such as tractor fuel and agrochemicals. Small organic farms, however, are generally more efficient in terms of land (output per acre), since they grow a variety of plants and animals, taking full advantage of each ecological niche.

But Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action and chair of Friends of the Earth International said the company had not changed and were still not doing enough to help local people in the Niger Delta. "Internationally they polish their image. The claims they make in the international areas, do not stand scrutiny on the ground."

We perceive a matrix of high-powered players in the oil theft industry. This is far beyond pointing fingers at petty thieves who steal crude oil in buckets only to ferry them in crude barges to ships lurking off the coast.