Big Oil's Exodus from the Niger Delta

Nearly a century after plundering the Niger Delta for the black gold, fossil fuel giants have finalized plans to ditch their onshore oil fields and move drilling far into the Gulf of Guinea, where a massive haul remains untapped. This divestment, which received the nod from Nigeria’s regulatory bodies last year, would see Shell, Norwegian-owned Equinor, Italian ENI, the French-owned TotalEnergies and the US multinational ExxonMobil withdraw from the region, offloading their ageing high-emission oil wells to local payers in a massive asset sale.

Big Oil’s exit from the Delta, from which it has extracted billions of profit since crude oil was discovered there in the 1950s, has sparked protests from civic groups and villagers who have borne the negative consequences of oil exploration. On 19 December last year, protesters holding banners with slogans like ‘No Compensation, No Divestment’ converged in several towns across the Niger Delta to demand a halt to the sale. Central to their anger is the concern that the process is taking place without a commitment from Big Oil to provide compensation for decades of environmental degradation and loss of livelihood in the region.

Devastating oil spills and gas flaring – the burning of gases released from the ground during drilling – has transformed the Niger Delta from a mangrove rainforest thriving with lush flora and fauna to one of the most polluted places on earth. An average of 240,000 million litres of crude oil are spilled in the Niger Delta every year, with more than 7,000 spills occurring between 1970 and the year 2000. These leaks have contaminated drinking water, poisoned agricultural land and fisheries, and harmed the health of local residents. Meanwhile gas flaring has also contributed to poor health in the creeks, where life expectancy is just 41 – a decade lower than the national average. Two years ago, a state-appointed commission of inquiry estimated it would cost at least $12 billion to clean up the polluted region. It is this sort of liability that Big Oil, rather than pay up, has chosen to run from.

But in their haste, villagers rightly fear the corporations may be endangering them even more by offloading volatile wells to local firms with no known prior technical experience. Four years ago, the Nembe oil well, formerly operated by Shell but acquired in 2015 by a local firm, Aiteo, was involved in Nigeria’s biggest ever oil spill. Activists are concerned that regulatory agencies are not doing enough to prevent a repeat of this sort of disaster. This is hardly surprising given the Nigerian government’s greasy deals with Big Oil, and systemic failures to clean up the Delta.

This explains the paradox of the Niger Delta itself. Despite being home to Nigeria’s vast oil and gas reserves, it remains squalid and underdeveloped. The region continues to lack adequate state schools and decent hospitals, while many young people are out of work because the farmland and rivers their communities once relied on now lay suffused under layers of toxic hydrocarbons.

— Obiora Ikoku in Lagos, Nigeria