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Akabogu added: “Local content in the oil industry is supposed to be a long term thing; it is supposed to be implemented in a gradual manner because the enabling environment is not there. The ideal thing would have been to retain the IOCs by addressing the issues that necessitated their divestment.” He said the IOCs were merely shifting their risks to the local operators who would now deal with issues of oil bunkering and theft.

To renowned environmental expert and coordinator of Oil Watch International, Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, the development is hardly surprising. According to him, divestment is a business strategy by the IOCs to cut losses and maximize profits. “You will notice that they are divesting mostly from onshore and swamp fields that intersect with communities that they have massively polluted and abused. Their aged facilities in those locations will certainly bring on more resource ownership and social conflicts. So, if local companies are happy to step in and take the flak that means ‘good’ business for the IOCs,” he observed

Bassey also said that on the other hand, the IOCs mostly divested to the extent of their equity holdings in such fields and production also activities. “They still own the pipelines and related facilities. What that means is that they are renovating their image, collecting rents from their facilities and generally smiling to the bank while the local companies will eventually take the beating for the pollutions, conflicts and other social disruptions. We see the divestment as a business strategy that benefits the IOCs and leaves the oil field communities and the environment at risk,” he told The Nation.

At a parliamentary hearing in the Netherlands last week, Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, Nigerian and British activists, Dutch MPs and others accused the company of breaches of safety, human rights abuses, destroying lives and the environment, hiding information, gas flaring and blaming locals for oil pollution in Nigeria.

Shell Holland's president, Peter de Wit, denied all the charges and insisted that the company applied "global standards" to its operations around the world. He argued that Shell had provided thousands of well-paid jobs, brought know-how, education and technology and had launched numerous community projects in the west African nation.

The UN Environment Programme, using money from Shell, has spent four years investigating and assessing thousands of oil spills in Ogoniland, the small oil-rich region of the Niger Delta where the company was active until forced out over pollution by Ogoni leaders including Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was hanged by the Nigerian military regime in 1995.The UN report will not say who caused the spills but will confirm that large areas of land remain polluted, drinking water wells are still highly toxic and many of the fishing creeks are unproductive.

The desire to capture more oil reserves is driving exploration and development of oil and gas fields in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Puntland, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, the Comoros, Seychelles and the coast of Durban in South Africa.

The National oil spill detection and response agency (NOSDRA), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have identified over 2,000 spill sites that need to be remediated. Some of these spills happened over 40 years ago. The Ebubu spill that occurred in 1970, has not been cleaned up and Shell, the company implicated in the disaster, is vigorously appealing a judgement of a federal high court which ordered it to pay US$40 million compensation as at 2001.[3]

Even though Ikiogha is the government bureaucrat in charge of penalising Shell for the spill and signing off on the cleanup, he is also the contractor hired by Shell to do the cleanup… His cleanup operation consists of four shirtless men scooping oil from the surface of the polluted river with Frisbees… he claims that most of the oil had earlier been removed with absorbent foam and blankets.’[5]

Without diminishing the severity of the Gulf spill, several observers have pointed out the asymmetrical political reactions to oil disasters in the US and in other parts of the world.[6] Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International, explains the sense of frustration: ‘We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US, but in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments…This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper.’[7]

Presumably, companies are not only put off by the prospect of increased red tape in the US, but also attracted – as they have been for decades – by the limited capacity of African States to regulate extractive activities. To attract foreign investment, most countries in sub-Saharan Africa also enter into generous production-sharing agreements that allow foreign oil companies to turn a relatively small upfront investment in exploration into billions in downstream profits.[11]

Even after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the company has moved full-steam ahead with plans to sell off US$30 billion in onshore and shallow-water production assets in order to aggressively pursue deepwater drilling in West Africa, Angola, Egypt and, yes, Louisiana.[17]

Chevron, the second largest U.S. oil major, said it did not receive requests to evacuate the KS Endeavour rig and that staff on board had the right to call a halt to work if they believed conditions were unsafe.

The accounts convey rising panic from some of those on the platform, who fearing a blowout, checked each morning the volume of smoke billowing from the drilling borehole. "Chevron knew for over a week that the well was unstable yet they refused to evacuate us," said one of the rig workers who gave his account to the RMT union.

"Our employees and contractor are fully empowered to exercise stop work authority (SWA) when they sense an unsafe work environment," Chevron said, explaining that an SWA gives anyone aboard a rig the power to order a stop to operations in the event safety guidelines are breached.

Kosmos Energy’s activity in a conservation area is not unique. A new report issued by the WWF, the Center for the Environment and Development and RELUFA (Reseau de lutte contre la faim au Cameroun), Emerging Trends in Land-use Conflicts in Cameroon, reveals that “a total of at least 33 oil and mining permits have been granted inside of 16 different protected areas in Cameroon.”

Campo Ma’an, one of the National Parks created as a mitigation measure when the Chad-Cameroon pipeline was constructed has about 2/3 of its surface licensed to mining operations. (See my documentary, Oil: A Pipeline to Prosperity? for more information on Campo Ma’an.) 

A FEDERAL High Court, yesterday, awarded N15.4billion as special and punitive damages against Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, SPDC, in favour of Ejama-Ebubu community in Tai Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State for an oil spill that occurred in 1970.

Justice Buba in his judgment said: “This is a 2001 matter that has a chequered history. The plaintiffs by their paragraph 32 of the amended statement of claims, jointly and severally claimed against the defendants, special damages of N1.772billion, allowing for interest for delayed payment for five years from 1996 at a modest mean Central Bank of Nigeria deregulated rate for that volume at 25 per cent per annum, totaling N5.4billion.

Minister of Petroleum Resources Diezani Alinson-Madueke who also addressed the forum, said that by enacting the law and establishing a formidable Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), which would help to implement the provision of NOGICD Act, the Federal Government had taken the lead with the provision of the enabling environment and would continue making the improvements required.She said that with the new drive, there would be “transformation of ownership profile of marine assets supporting industry activities from a current ratio of 20 Nigerian-owned vessels: 280 Foreign-owned vessels to a more equitable ratio of 180 Nigerian:120 (Foreign).”She noted that the Nigerian content would not only integrate indigenes and businesses residing in the oil producing areas into the mainstream of industry economic activity, but it would also capture of over 70 per cent of banking services, insurance risk placements, and Legal services supporting industry activities and transactions.

Ever since BP’s disastrous oil spill, there have been no new drilling permits in the Gulf. Well, that’s changed and the first company to get a permit…drum roll please… Chevron. Never mind that they have destroyed the Ecuadorian Amazon. Never mind that they have been sued by indigenous tribes for the death and disease they have caused. Never mind that they refuse to take responsibility for their actions. They now get to try the same thing in the Gulf. Because the environment and livelihood of the region haven’t already taken enough of a hit.

Foreign investors say Nigeria ranks among the most litigious and bureaucratic business environments in the world.