Nembe Oil Spill: How Aiteo’s Negligence Is Impoverishing Host Communities – Niger Delta Leaders

• Stakeholders rubbish Aiteo’s sabotage claims, rice donation, want FG to terminate the contract

The recent Nembe, Bayelsa State oil wellhead blowout and spillage incident has really exposed what host communities in oil-producing areas are made to go through while companies exploring oil smile to the bank. While reports suggest that the spillage was a direct consequence of negligence by Benedict Peters’ Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company (AEEPCO), the indigenous company operating the oil well, Nembe community and its environs are presently an impoverished lot. .

 

For people who are predominantly anglers and whose existence revolves around the marine environment, November 2021 is the month they will not forget in a hurry as they are left to ponder how to pick up the pieces of their lives.

 

This is because their thriving trade has been rudely halted by massive spills from one of the many wells clustered along the maze of creeks in the once enthralling swathe of mangrove but now choked with offensive smell of crude and contaminated air.

 

Large volumes of crude are escaping into the creeks, swamps, farmlands and the Santa Barbara River from a well in the Oil Mining Licence 29 Southwest field in Nembe Local Government Area of Bayelsa State operated by Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company (AEEPCO), owned by billionaire Benedict Peters.

 

The facility, located at Worikuma-kiri, off Opu-Nembe (Bassambiri), has left the people in quandary.

 

The oil well blowout, according to the operator, occurred on November 5, but locals claimed the rupture was noticed four days earlier, precisely on November 1 and has continued unabated.

 

 

 

Fishermen and several communities affected by the spill have continued to express anguish over what they described as cessation of their economic livelihood lamenting that the creeks which are also a source of water for drinking, cooking and washing, have been polluted. The landlord of Worikuma-Kiri, host of the troubled wellhead, Chief, Worikuma Ivory, Pegi-elect, said the crude oil and gas discharge has destroyed his farm and land.

 

Also, the vice president of Opu Nembe Youths, Mr Degi Nimibofa, expressed worry that the spill will have adverse health consequences on the people.

 

An indigene, simply identified as Tonye, said, “We cannot fish and it’s even riskier to embark on the fishing expedition because of the polluted water and charged atmosphere. We are the worst hit since our existence revolves around the water. The stench from the river is horrible.”

 

Nembe Oil Spill: Aiteo’s negligence impoverishing host communities – N’Delta leaders

 

Three weeks after the spill, a team of journalists and environmentalists from Environmental Rights Action (ERA)/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (FoEN) visited the area.

 

A report signed by Alagoa Morris of ERA/FoEN noted that even though recovery of spilt crude oil and related activities were ongoing at the immediate 0ML 29 Well 1 environment, very large volume of crude oil was spreading on the Santa Barbara River and other connecting rivers and creeks.

 

Some community members who spoke to the visiting team on the development said they were starving and urgently needed government’s help.

 

According to the report, “It is public knowledge that there has been no officially determined cause of the raging high pressure oil spill at OML 29 Well 1. Yet, the operator, Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company [AEEPCO] has gone to town with the usual oil industry politics, alleging sabotage when in actual fact it could be a case of equipment failure.”

 

ERA/FoeN added that “unless this sailing Aiteo related OML 29 Well 1 spill is stopped and all impacted sites/environment properly cleaned and remediated in line with internationally recognized standards; the purpose and intent of article 24 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Right would be of no effect; as far as the victims: environment and people whose health and means of livelihood depended on the impacted sites are concerned.”

 

 

 

N’Delta leaders rubbish Aiteo’s sabotage claims, rice donation, wants FG to terminate contract

Meanwhile, some stakeholders in the Niger Delta have rubbished Aiteo’s sabotage claims and therefore called on the federal government to terminate Aiteo’s contract over what they described as negligence and lack of competence to operate the facility.

 

Ajele Tompolo, an Ijaw leader who spoke to journalists in Bayelsa on Saturday lamented the state of the Nembe community over the spillage. He decried Aiteo’s lack of expertise in managing the crisis.

 

In the same vein, the Ijaw National Congress (INC) blasted Aiteo for its poor response to the November 5 spill from its oilfields in Nembe, Bayelsa. The group stated that it was wrong for Aiteo to link the wellhead leak within its oil bloc in the Nembe creeks when a Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) had not been conducted on the incident.

 

INC president, Benjamin Okaba said this while briefing journalists at the national secretariat of the organisation in Yenagoa on the incident, following a visit to the impacted site by its team of environmentalists.

 

At the press conference, Okaba was flanked by the secretary of the body, Ebipamowei Wodu, financial secretary, Kennedy Odiowei, publicity secretary, Ezonebi Oyakemeagbeha and second vice president, Nengi James, who headed the team that visited the site.

 

Aiteo, in a statement issued by its spokesperson, Matthew Ndiana reiterated that sabotage was suspected to be the cause of the leak.

 

But Okaba faulted Aiteo’s position on sabotage, saying it could jeopardise the outcome of the JIV yet to be carried out as crude is still leaking from the facility.

 

“First and foremost, we want to express our dismay over the position of Aiteo that the oil spill was caused by sabotage. The INC considers this position as prejudicial and pre-emptive, and it is unacceptable,” he added.

“Since the leak occurred, Aiteo has been complaining that it does not have the capacity to mobilise personnel to clamp the leaking point on the facility. So, the question is: without the JIV, how did they come up to ascertain that it is caused by sabotage?”

 

The INC leader called on NOSDRA to live up to its obligations and not bend the rules on the incident.

 

“The place is still leaking; it is of a peculiar nature because it is not from the pipeline. It is coming from the flow under, to the extent that it is difficult for any living being to even access the spot of damage. It requires high technology,” he said.

 

On the donation of four truckloads of food items, medical supplies and N5 million cash to the impacted communities, Okaba observed that the package was meagre considering the number of impacted residents in the 41 communities.

 

“They sent only 200 bags of rice. This is inhumanity taken too far. Two hundred bags of rice are what a company that has destroyed people’s livelihoods is talking about. They are not even ashamed of themselves,” Okaba revealed.

 

“They should be ashamed of themselves to even attribute the incident to sabotage. We are too smart for that kind of dirty politics.”

 

The operator of the OML 29 asset acquired following the 2015 divestment by Shell said it had enlisted foreign experts to help cap the leaking well and hoped to stop the leak in a couple of days.

 

OML 29 includes the 97-kilometre Nembe Creek Trunk Line, which conveys crude produced from onshore swamp wells to the Bonny Export Terminal operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company.

 

Bayelsa governor fires back at Arewa youths

Bayelsa State governor, Senator Douye Diri has fired back at the Arewa Youth Consultative Movement (AYCM), which criticised his comments by comparing the oil spill on Oil Mining License (OML) 29 Well One at Santa Barbara, South field in Nembe, Bayelsa State to the April 2010 Deepwater horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Diri in his remarks at the All Ijaw Summit with the theme: “The Nigerian State and the Ijaw Question,” held on Saturday at the Ijaw House, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, took a swipe at the Arewa youths, noting that they are ignorant of happenings in the Niger Delta region.

 

According to him, he must not be a petroleum engineer before he would stand up to defend the territory and the people of Bayelsa State.

 

“For me they (Arewa) youths are not only opposing me, but opposing Bayelsa and the Ijaw nation. I have never played politics with the health of our people. I have never played politics with the development of our people. If Arewa youths think what I said is to over-politicise the situation in Nembe, then I want to believe that Nigeria and, indeed, Arewa youths are the most ignorant people of what is happening in the Niger Delta.

 

“Merely presupposing that the governor is not a petroleum engineer, I don’t need to be a petroleum engineer to defend my people. If they have forgotten that our own president of the country is also not a petroleum engineer and he is the president of Nigeria. That I am only a political scientist; yes, I accept that I am a political scientist, and an educationist. And I have been elected to defend the territory and the people of Bayelsa State.”

 

Speaking on other issues, Diri said that he was concerned about the continued exploitation of oil in Ijaw land and the dangers faced by the people.

 

“One of the issues I am deeply concerned about is the delinquent exploitation and mining of oil and the grave harm being done to our communities, livelihoods, and innocent lives being needlessly sacrificed on the altar of gold,” he said.

 

He, therefore, called on Ijaw leaders to stand in solidarity with the people, “who are in imminent danger of extinction” to impose stringent ethical responsibility on oil exploration companies.

 

The president of the Ijaw National Congress (INC), Prof Benjamin Okaba said that the Ijaw people are at crossroads over their maltreatment in Nigeria and need to chart a common direction.

 

Foremost Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Kaigbodo Clark, chairman, Board of Trustees of INC, while noting that he would not stop talking until Ijaw people get justice. challenged elected Ijaw members in the National Assembly to rise up and put issues affecting the Ijaw people on the front burner.