Plans to resume oil drilling in Ogoni fuels outrage

The purported plans by RoboMichael Nigeria Ltd, a company granted license to OML 11 after Shell abandoned the field in 1993, following sustained agitations by the community, to resume drilling is fueling popular outrage once again.

People from the Ogoni community were seen with placards picketing the office of the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) in Port Harcourt in pictures posted on social media demanding the withdrawal of the license granted RoboMichael Ltd.

Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has unpleasant relationship with the company and the protesters discontent stemmed from alleged involvement of SPDC with the RoboMichael.

“We are demanding the withdrawal of license granted RoboMicheal, a company with alleged Shell shareholding, we do not want any trace of Shell in Ogoniland,” one protester said.

The fury this time is mostly due to the inability of the Federal Government to commence the planned Ogoni clean-up exercise nearly two years after it was agreed before the rush to commence drilling operations and the suspected involvement of Shell with RoboMicheal who was awarded the license to the Ogoni fields.

“Why do Nigeria government take the people they lead for granted because they are peaceful? Since the clean-up of Ogoni was flag up Yemi Osinbajo, nothing has been done but $1 billion has just been approved for a defeated boko Haram,” said a twitter user.

Another said, “In my opinion, crude oil exploration and lifting should be suspended until an environmental impact assessment has being carried out in the whole Niger Delta. Only then, can we know the true cost of crude oil exploration in Nigeria.”

In October, the Yusuf Matashi, the managing director of Nigerian Petroleum Development Corporation (NPDC) had written to Shell Nigeria informing that RoboMichael has expressed their interest in obtaining licensing rights of OML 11 (Ogoni fields) to fully explore the possibility of bringing the block to immediate production, calling for partnerships to fully explore the fields.

SPDC has 98 oil wells in about seven oilfields in the area. It also has five flowstations in Bodo West, Bomu, Yorla, Korokoro and Ebubu and daily output from the area, according to Shell statistics, was at 28, 000 barrels per day before the shut-in in 1993 after the killing of Ken Saro Wiwa and others.

The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), has said that restarting oil production in Ogoniland at a time the Ogoni people and indeed the entire global community are expecting the federal government to move with some deliberate speed in the implementation of the monumental remediation and restoration of the already over-polluted Ogoni environment is provocative and an assault on the collective interest of our people.

Ogoni occupies 404 square kilometers of a gently sloping, fertile floodplain of the River Niger in Rivers State. The Ogoni nation comprises five kingdoms (Nyo Khana, Ken Khana, Gokana, Tai, Eleme) and are found in three local government areas – Khana, Gokhana and Tai/Eleme,

OML 11 is one of the largest onshore blocks in Nigeria. It was initially owned as an unincorporated joint venture (JV) between Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) with a 55% shareholding of the JV, Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) 30%, ENPL (a subsidiary of Total) 10% and Agip a subsidiary of ENI with a 5% shareholding.

Until 1993 when oil production ceased at a peak of 28,000bpd, the fields had yielded 634 million barrels of oil worth $5.2 billion according to SPDC figures and $30 billion by community accounts says Juno Fitzpatrick, a member of environmental rights NGO, Stakeholder Democracy Network, in the Niger Delta, Nigeria in a blogpost.

“Despite repeated and prolonged attempts to reconcile the host community with the operator, no oil or gas has been delivered from those oil wells since 1993. Shell has reluctantly conceded that it will not be able to rebuild relations with the community heightened by the execution of Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995,” said Fitzpatrick.

Cash-strapped Federal Government is keen to return the fields to ramp up production due to the potential impact on revenues. While no seismic survey has been performed for over 30 years in the fields, it is believed that the area contains as much as 1 billion barrels of crude and as much as 11 trillion cubic feet of associated and non-associated gas.