Despair on the Delta

ERIEMU, Nigeria -- The swamp and palm trees surrounding Well 19 are still black, seven months after thousands of barrels of crude oil spilled into the jungle and caught fire, fouling the water and scorching the tropical forest. Nearby, a stream of natural gas hisses from a pipe that has recently been sabotaged.

Not far away is an immense natural gas flare that shoots a flame 300 feet into the sky, noticeably raising the temperature at the nearby village of Oshie by several degrees.

The scenes are repeated all around the Niger River Delta, a fragile wetland of about 42,000 square miles that produces 2 million barrels of crude oil a day and that is worked by five multinational firms. It is home to about 7 million Nigerians. Abandoned by the government, hostile to the oil companies and ecologically ravaged, the delta is in a dismal state that sometimes seems impossible to remedy, one perpetuated by a seemingly endless cycle of distrust and violence.

By any measure, the delta is an environmental basket case.

Whether caused by carelessness, human error or sabotage, oil spills have dumped at least 2.5 million barrels of oil -- equal to 10 Exxon Valdez disasters -- into the delta from 1986 to 1996, according to a recent unclassified study commissioned by the CIA. Oil companies acknowledge that at least 100,000 barrels were spilled in 1997 and 1998.

And every day, 8 million cubic feet of natural gas are burned off in flares that light the skies across the delta, not only driving off game, hurting the fishing and poisoning the agriculture, but contributing to global warming.

The CIA study found that while oil extraction has "generated immense profits, the delta's inhabitants have suffered increasing poverty and a general decline in the quality of their lives due, in part, to the environmental impact of oil extraction. Corruption and bureaucratic incompetence have led to an almost total absence of schools, good drinking water, electricity or medical care."

Around Eriemu, ethnic Ijaw communities blame the oil companies for the August spill and months-long delay in cleaning up. The villagers, who said cleanup efforts did not begin until last month, want economic compensation for the ruined lands and water, as well as more oil-company investment in health, education and water systems.

"We will not be able to use this land for the next 25 or 30 years at best," said Peter Akpagra, at Eriemu village. "There is no way all that oil can be cleaned up -- Shell can't do it -- so our farming has stopped."

Such disputes have often spilled over into violence, with young people in the communities taking oil workers hostage, occupying pumping stations or sabotaging pipelines, and oil companies relying on the often brutal and corrupt Nigerian military and police to maintain order, sometimes even paying military and police salaries in the region.

Ijaw leaders have taken strong public stands against such violence. But they said the jarring sight of foreign oil camps with running water, electricity and health care beside the villages with none of those amenities has led to more and more radical actions by disaffected youths.

"The oil companies must and should be subordinate to the people," said Oranto Douglas, deputy director of Environmental Rights Action, a Nigerian advocacy group. "Right now they are lords and masters."

The Shell Petroleum Development Corp., Shell's Nigerian branch that runs the site and is by far the largest oil producer in the delta, says the problem at this wellhead is not so simple.

Executives said there can be no compensation because the well was sabotaged and the cap ripped off, something community leaders reluctantly acknowledged. Compensation, they said, would lead to more sabotage.

And, said Shell executives, the community blocked cleanup efforts in an effort to force the company to pay, leaving the oil to soak into the water and land.

Shell also argues that, while it funds some regional development, it is up to the government, not the company, to provide basic services.

Hubert Nwokolo, Shell's general manager of development, said that the company has radically altered its approach and raised its community development spending from about $10 million in 1996 to $55 million last year in 150 communities.

But Shell officials argue that, while they have an obligation to the communities, so does the government, which is largely absent. They said they were trying to get the government to use its own oil revenue to establish services in this region.

"If it did, the pressure would be much less on the oil companies," Nwokolo said. "We build schools, put in water systems and electricity. But we also pay our taxes. It is really the state's job to take care of its people."

Douglas and other activists say that while there is some truth to that argument, the oil companies have often functioned as virtual arms of the government. In doing so, they have developed close relations with the brutal and corrupt military regimes that ruled Nigeria until 22 months ago.

Shell has been forced to shut down its oil production in the eastern Ogoni region since 1995, for example, when ethnic Ogoni leaders and youths carried out a campaign of violence against the company after the execution of Ogoni leader and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The executions were carried out by the military government under dictator Sani Abacha, and the Ogonis alleged that Shell did not use its influence with the government to try to free Saro-Wiwa.

"The Niger Delta is not a law-and-order question," Douglas said. "It is primarily and almost purely political and a question of survival. The communities want to protect their air, water and forest."

There are some small signs that the situation could be improving. Violent incidents such as kidnapping and sabotage dropped sharply last year. Activists such as Douglas and Moffia Akobo, a former oil minister who now heads the Southern Minority Movement here, who were driven underground during the years of military rule, now operate openly.

The democratic government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who took office in May 1999, has slowly begun fulfilling its constitutional obligation to give 13 percent of the country's oil revenue back to the six Niger Delta states to use for development. Under the military, 1 percent was allocated, but even that didn't make it.

The first oil money was disbursed to the states in January, and government officials, activists and oil company executives say it has given the local and state governments an incentive to keep the oil flowing.

In addition, the government has formed the Niger Delta Development Corp., which is supposed to use a new 3 percent tax on oil companies to fund regional development. Since its establishment four months ago in Port Harcourt, the largest city in the delta, the corporation still has no working telephones and very limited office space. But as Akobo and other community leaders are quick to point out, almost every Nigerian government has set up some version of a development corporation here and most of the money has simply disappeared into the pockets of officials.