The Guardian UK newspaper reports:

More oil is spilled from the Nigerian delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.

This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."

According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1,000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.

Last month Shell admitted to spilling 14,000 tonnes of oil in 2009. The majority, said the company, was lost through two incidents – one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.


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Contrast the compensation packages for the Americans vis-a-vis Nigerians for the various spills. It's the Nigerian Govt that fails to take the oil companies to task. Their is element of self-infliction in our spills too.

4 Play:

Contrast the compensation packages for the Americans vis-a-vis Nigerians for the various spills. It's the Nigerian Govt that fails to take the oil companies to task. Their is element of self-infliction in our spills too.

The Naija regulators (Government) dont care about the people. In the words of Timaya, Thunder Fire Dem Mama!

My thoughts exactly as I listen to the news coverge on the US spill! The oil spills happening in Nigeria need this kind of attention! Its just so unjust. Those oil companies need to get their butts kicked and be accountable, and get cleaning up their messes in the Delta.

Story story story!

As long as we keep giving chieftaincy titles to our "eminent sons and daughter" who destroy whatever is left of Nigeria by planning, all day and all night, how to loot the treasury without regard for Nigeria's future, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING will change the doomed fate of the suffering people of the Niger-Delta.

The day we as Nigerians stop worshiping and praising the thieves amongst us, and start slapping their ugly faces and fat asses to jail, that is the day I will have hope for Nigeria.