Oil spills: Niger Delta communities ‘get’ over N836bn in 7 years
In the last seven years, various courts have awarded the sum of N836.318bn (N98.318 billion and over $1.8billion) to oil-producing communities in Niger Delta.
Women group protesting in front of ExxonMobil office
By
Sun Jul 11 2021
In the last seven years, various courts have awarded the sum of N836.318bn (N98.318 billion and over $1.8billion) to oil-producing communities in Niger Delta as compensations for oil spills and land encroachment, an independent data seen by Daily Trust on Sunday indicated.
Some of the court’s decisions are however being challenged at appellate level.
Senate committee says 5% will be approved for host communities
Emmanuel Addeh and Peter Uzoho in Abuja
International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in Nigeria yesterday rallied behind the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) passed by the National Assembly last week, describing it as a watershed in the annals of the oil and gas industry in the country.
The oil majors, including Total, Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron said at the 20th Nigerian Oil and Gas (NOG) Conference and Exhibition in Abuja, that while there had been attempts in the past to push the bill, the latest round of consultations were the most intense.
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In 1959 after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba when he defeated the opposing forces of Fulgencio Batista who had earlier imprisoned him, he decided to make the small country a Communist State. This pitched him against the United States in the then heady days of the Cold War when the US who prided herself as the leader of the free world was determined to stop the growing influence of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Under the Presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, he sponsored some Cuban dissidents with the help of the CIA to topple the government of Castro in the famous Bay of Pigs Invasion which ended up in a fiasco. An embargo was placed on Cuba and its main revenue earner – Sugar greatly suffered.
Oil spillThe thorny issue of oil spillage and the debates around it are as old as when Nigeria began crude oil exploration in the Niger Delta region. But it was the 1970 oil spill in Ogoniland, which led to a £26m fine against Shell in Nigeria that eventually put the country in the eye of the storm globally. Many judgments have since been delivered against oil companies, the Nigerian government and/or their representatives and supervising agencies for the degradation of oil-bearing communities and losses of lives and property.
However, the phenomenon has failed to abate, as the Federal Government, between 1970 and 2000, reported about 7000 spills. Given the country’s weak regulatory oversight, as well as poor data gathering capacity, statistics of data spill is, according to many experts, inaccurate and mainly underreported. Amnesty International had reported that since 2014, Eni alone had about 820 spills in the Niger Delta accounting for about 4.1 million litres. Also, since 20