Nigeria's oil pollution stark example of resource curse: Amnesty

Yahoo News 30 Jun 09;

ABUJA (AFP) – The pollution caused by half a century of oil extraction in Nigeria is one of the world's most disturbing examples of the curse of natural resources, a global rights lobby group said Tuesday.

Amnesty International said environmental pollution in Nigeria's southern oil region, the Niger Delta, had deprived tens of millions of people of their basic rights to safe food, clean water and good health.

In a damning report released Tuesday, Amnesty described the situation in the Niger Delta, home to 31 million people, as a "human rights tragedy" which had fuelled anger and conflict.

"People living in the Niger Delta have to drink, cook with, and wash in polluted water; they eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins -- if they are lucky enough to still be able to find fish," said the report.

Farmland in the region, one of the most important wetlands on earth, is being destroyed by oil spills.

"After oil spills the air they breathe reeks of oil, gas and other pollutants; they complain of breathing problems... but their concerns are not taken seriously," the report added.

Amnesty blames both the government and multi-national oil giants for the rights abuses in the south of Africa's most populous country.

"Their poverty, and its contrast with the wealth generated by oil, has become one of the world's starkest and most disturbing examples of the resource curse," the report said.

"The destruction of livelihoods, the lack of accountability of both the government and the oil companies, and the failure of the government to invest in development in the area, all feed the frustration which has increasingly found expression in conflict -- often violent conflict," Amnesty said.

The most active of the militant groups has been the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), responsible for many of the oil installation attacks over the past three years.

The regional militants and bandit gangs that rove the creeks of the Niger Delta have brought current crude production down to 1.8 million barrels a day compared with 2.6 million at the start of 2006.

Oil spills, waste dumping and gas flaring are endemic in the region, where at least 60 percent of the population relies on the natural environment for their livelihood.

"The Nigerian government is failing in its obligation to respect and protect the rights of people in the Niger Delta," said Amnesty's head of business and human rights, Audrey Gaughran.

"Some oil companies... have taken advantage of this government failure, and have shown a shocking disregard for the human impact of their activities," she added.

Royal-Dutch giant Shell, the largest operator in Nigeria, blamed much of the oil spillage on sabotage, dismissing Amnesty's report for not constructively helping to improve the situation.

Amnesty "forget(s) that about 85 percent of the pollution from our operations comes from attacks and sabotage", said Shell spokesman Olav Ljosne adding that 133 Shell workers had been kidnapped in the delta since 2006.

He added the report "does not address the fundamental issues -- poverty, crime, corruption and militancy."

Amnesty, however, said a recently set-up national oil spill detection and response agency (NOSDRA) "appears to have a more robust approach" to the problem.

Gaughran said the Nigerian crisis is an example "of the lack of accountability of a government to its people, and of multinational companies? almost total lack of accountability when it comes to the impact of their operations on human rights".

Nigeria, the world's eight largest exporter of crude, relies on oil for more than 90 percent of its export revenue. In a bid to end the delta conflict, President Umaru Yar'Adua last week offered unconditional amnesty to the militants.

But Gaughran slammed the amnesty offer saying it was treating symptoms and not the root causes.

"I don't think the amnesty will work and our concern is that it legitimises or allows impunity for the human rights violations that have been committed," she told reporters in Abuja.

Protests -- armed and peaceful-- "are frequently met with excessive use of force ...including extrajudicial executions", said Amnesty.

Lax regulation fuels Niger Delta unrest: Amnesty
Randy Fabi, Reuters 30 Jun 09;

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria has failed to regulate its oil industry adequately, fuelling anger in the Niger Delta by leaving communities exposed to the effects of oil spills, gas flaring and waste dumping, Amnesty International said.

Weak government oversight and a lax attitude among foreign oil firms during half a century of oil extraction has brought wealth to a few but left many villagers mired in poverty, the rights group said in a report published on Tuesday.

"People living in the Niger Delta have to drink, cook with and wash in polluted water. They eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins," said the report's co-author, Audrey Gaughran.

"The land they farm on is being destroyed. After oil spills the air they breathe smells of oil, gas and other pollutants. People complain of breathing problems and skin lesions, yet neither the government nor oil companies monitor the human impacts of oil pollution."

An upsurge in attacks by militants in the delta, one of the world's largest wetlands and home to Africa's biggest oil industry, is eating into Nigeria's revenues and pushing world energy prices higher.

Amnesty said the majority of the evidence it gathered in its 140-page report related to the operations of Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch Shell.

It accused Shell's SPDC joint venture, which operates onshore in the Niger Delta, of harming human rights by failing to mitigate pollution and environmental damage adequately.

Shell said Amnesty had come to the oil hub of Port Harcourt to confront it with questions but made "no attempt at open dialogue to understand the complexities and pressures that define the relationships SPDC has with various stakeholders."

"They forget that 85 percent of the pollution from our operations comes from attacks and sabotage that also put our staff's lives and human rights at risk," Shell's Africa communications director Olav Ljosne told Reuters.

IMPOVERISHED VILLAGERS

The crisis in the Niger Delta is often portrayed as a simple conflict between Western oil firms and impoverished villagers.

But it involves a web of vested interests of corrupt politicians, mafia-like networks of thugs, and a trade in industrial quantities of stolen oil worth millions of dollars a day.

Shell's Ljosne said that between 2006 and 2008 armed gangs had kidnapped 133 SPDC employees and contractors and five people working for the joint venture had been killed.

"This is the reality of the Niger Delta, and it's a reality that is not reflected adequately in this report," Ljosne said.

"We share Amnesty's concerns for the people of the delta and we would welcome the opportunity to work constructively with them on solutions, as we do with others," he said.

Amnesty acknowledged that communities sometimes contributed to the problems, vandalizing infrastructure to win clean-up contracts or demanding payment for access to spill sites.

It made little mention of government corruption. Former state governors stand accused of looting hundreds of millions of dollars from the billions the region receives each year as its share of federal oil revenues, money meant for development.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Robert Woodward)