Crude oil from a blowout has been pouring into creeks in the Niger Delta since Nov. 5, with the well’s owner, Nigerian energy firm Aiteo, unable to contain the spill and specialists called in to help. The blowout, at a non-producing well in the Santa Barbara field in Bayelsa state, has caused extensive pollution of […]
Oil spill damage in the Niger Delta region, April 6, 2010 (Flickr/Sosialistisk Ungdom)
Simon Ayafa has witnessed oil pollution in the Niger Delta region since he was 15. Now, at 35, he feels the region has been made uninhabitable by decades of oil spills. You to go the stream to fetch water and you get oil, said Ayafa, who is a parishioner at St. Paul s Catholic Church in Bodo, a fishing village that has suffered from massive oil spills. You go to the farm and the crops are damaged and cannot produce because of pollution. That is our fate here.
A series of pipeline spills between 2008 and 2009 left the entire area flowing in oil. With support from Amnesty International, the community took legal action against Royal Dutch Shell. The case was settled out of court in 2015 for the equivalent of about $36.6 million, with part going to the community and the rest divided among the community s residents.