BP Spill x 50 Years = Life in the Niger Delta

Darren Foster is a producer for Vanguard.

If the BP oil spill happened in Nigeria would it still make a sound? Apparently, not. But some kidnappings might.

The New York Times did a great story from the Niger Delta, where on average an Exxon Valdez disaster happens every year… for the last 50 years. In 1989, the Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil into the waters off Alaska. The latest estimates of the BP disaster say that up to 2.5 million gallons a day may be pouring in the Gulf of Mexico. That’d make it the worst in US history, but rather pedestrian for the Niger Delta.

Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.…

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

In 2007, I traveled with Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller to the Niger Delta in Nigeria to look into a growing insurgency there. We visited at the height of a kidnapping for ransom campaign, where rebels were regularly attacking oil facilities and taking foreign workers hostage. The rash of violence managed to capture some international attention, but we wanted to know what was behind the unrest in one of the US’s most important energy suppliers.

For many of the delta’s residents, the violence was 50 years in the making, ever since oil was first discovered in the country.

The two big takeaways from my trip were:

1. Despite becoming one of the world’s leading oil producers, Nigeria has very little to show for it. The Niger Delta, for example, is responsible for 80 percent of the entire country’s total revenue, but it remains one of the poorest regions. Most of its inhabitants live on less than $1 a day.
2. For many communities in the delta, the failed promises of development are nothing compared to the environmental damage oil has caused.

Since it was first pumped in Nigeria, more than 1.5 million tons of oil has spilled in the delta, that’s more than 500 million gallons or about 50 Exxon Valdez disasters. One a year since oil was first pumped in 1961.

Activists in the delta have for years been trying to attract international attention to this environmental devastation and to make oil companies accountable, but to no avail.

The sight of oil company executives being brought before Congress for a tongue-lashing—or, better yet, setting up a $20 billion fund to pay damage claims—must seem as foreign to Nigerians as a bunch of masked rebels attacking oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico would be to Americans. But all things are not equal.

Watch Vanguard's "Rebels in the Pipeline" after the jump.