Global Policy Forum

By Danielle Knight

Washington - Despite spin by multinational oil companies to revamp their negative image in Nigeria, a new report released here this week accuses big oil of working closely with an abusive military and destroying the environment, livelihoods and public health in the oil-rich Delta region. As reports of new oil spills and violence between the military and civilians continue to pour out of Africa's most populous nation, Oil for Nothing ," by San Francisco-based Global Exchange and Essential Action, a Washington-based advocacy group, says multinational oil companies should be held accountable in the Niger Delta.

The report - written as the result of a visit in September 1999 by a delegation of nine US human rights and environmental activists - was released this week amid protests in front of a major Chevron refinery in California, which is being accused of releasing dangerous pollutants. "Oil for Nothing" will be circulated to members of Congress next week. While "Oil for Nothing" examines the impacts of Royal Dutch Shell, Mobil, Elf and Agip, it focuses on the connection it sees between Chevron's operations and military repression.

"Far from being a positive force, these oil companies act as a destabilizing force, pitting one community against another, and acting as a catalyst - together with the military with whom they work closely - to some of the violence racking the region today," says the report.

Oil is the single most important sector in the country's economy, providing over 90 percent of its total exports. In the Niger Delta, youths continue to attack Western oil installations, demanding that oil companies and the government supply them with schools, better roads and political representation. Over the last 40 years, billions of dollars in profits have been earned each year through oil. And although the government is a 55-60 percent shareholder in oil operations and earns billions in royalties each year, local infrastructure and the environment are in "shambles," says the report.

"Everywhere we visited, we witnessed the destruction of the local environment, and the oppression of communities affected by what can accurately be described as an outlaw oil industry," it says. High unemployment, failing crops, declining wild fisheries, polluted waters, dying forests and vanishing wildlife are "draining the very lifeblood of the region," says the delegation's report.

According to interviews with villagers, leaky and corroded pipelines are inspected by oil workers but not repaired, and the companies often blame the damage on sabotage, whether warranted or not. In October 1998, a pipeline leak caused an explosion that killed 700 people.

"Even the rainwater is acidic and poisoned," says Oil for Nothing. The report urges consumers to boycott Shell and Chevron until the companies clean up all spills "according to international standards", pay communities the demanded compensations for environmental damage, and update and modernize equipment. It says companies need to "renounce any efforts to control communities, and any relationship with the military and policy in this regard."

"Oil for Nothing" calls on companies to provide sanitary water systems and electricity in communities where oil operations are carried out. Nigeria is extremely diverse and has approximately 300 different ethnic groups, each with its own language, culture, customs and traditional forms of government. "Oil for Nothing" charges that oil corporations and the government and military benefit from, and in some cases exploit, ethnic differences in the Delta.

In August 1999, for example, the Elf Oil Company, of France, reportedly paid 40 youths 2,000 dollars each to aggressively break up a protest by 5,000 women who had shut down the neighboring Elf facility for one day. The delegation also interviewed individuals who said the US- based Chevron was involved in an armed attack on May 25, 1998 of protestors who had allegedly occupied a Chevron oil platform to protest the company's refusal to meet with community leaders.

Two protestors were shot dead and several others were seriously injured in the attack, allegedly carried out by helicopters housed at a Chevron facility in the Delta. Chevron security officials were on board the helicopters at the time of the attack, according to the report. In an interview appearing in the report, Bola Oyimbo, one of the leaders of the platform protest, was later arrested by Nigerian authorities and said he was tortured. While in custody, he says he was told by a soldier involved in the attack that Chevron paid for the assault. "When they brought us to the naval base, the Chevron representative handed them their money and actually there was a row between them...(because) that was not the amount they had agreed on," Oyimbo recalls.

In May 1999, several of the injured protestors and the families of one of the deceased filed a lawsuit against Chevron in US Federal Court in San Francisco, where the corporation is based. According to the report, the US lawyers handling the case, who were in Nigeria at the time of the delegation's visit, said Chevron has also aided an attack last January "that left churches, homes, wells, and fishing equipment burned."

The lawsuit claims that this military attack, launched in response to protests against alleged environmental destruction, occurred at the request of Chevron personnel and utilised Chevron helicopters, boats and personnel. "We cannot tolerate these kinds of egregious, unconscionable human rights abuses by US corporations operating abroad," says Walter Turner, president of Global Exchange's Board of Directors, who was part of the delegation.

He says Chevron must immediately cease any cooperation with the Nigerian military and that the company should commit itself to real community development and environmental clean-up in the Niger Delta. "Unless that happens, communities living near Chevron facilities - whether in Richmond, California or in Africa - have no reason to trust the company's word," says Turner.

Upon being advised that Chevron had been involved in human rights abuses in Nigeria, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, called for a Congressional investigation last year into the claims, but never received a response from the House International Relations Committee. Chevron maintains that company helicopters and boats were not used to attack communities or protesters. Chevron spokesman Fred Gorell has explained that the company operates a joint venture partnership with the Nigerian government, which holds a 60 percent majority interest.

"As the majority partner, the government has the right to and does on occasion make use of the joint venture's leased equipment for purposes they deem necessary," said a written response by Chevron. "Oil for Nothing" is not the first such scathing criticism on the impact of oil companies in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. Last February, Human Rights Watch released a 202-page report called "The Price of Oil," which charged oil corporations with complicity in human rights abuses by the military because they had failed to make an "adequate effort" to stop them.

In describing how Nigerian security forces had beaten, detained, and even killed people protesting against oil corporations, Human Rights Watch said the companies failed to publicly condemn these abuses when they had the opportunity. Corporations began receiving strong international criticism for their operations in Nigeria in 1995 when rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Ogoni ethnic minority were executed by the state for their campaign against pollution caused by Shell.

The company argued it made a last minute plea for clemency, but critics say Shell did too little too late and its oil royalties helped prop up a brutal regime. The remains of Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni activists, previously held by the state, are to be identified and exhumed on Jan 30, at the Wiwa family's request and with Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo's permission. The deceased will then be given an official burial on April 24 in Ogoni, Nigeria.

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