NIGER DELTA BLUES

JUNE 7th, 2010

Whilst the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is deservedly grabbing all the headlines, it is also worth bearing in mind the people of Nigeria for whom catastrophic oil spills have become routine. The Niger delta is home to the finest quality oil in the world. That quality is not matched by the network of rusty pipes, terminals, pumps and oil platforms which spill more oil into the Niger delta each year, then the Deepwater oil spill had leaked in a month.

On 1st May this year an ExxonMobil pipeline spilled over a million gallons of oil into the Niger Delta before the pipe was fixed. Local people demonstrating against the company were reportedly attacked by security guards. The situation residents find themselves in was summed up by community leader Williams Mkpa who said “Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable.”

Source: Guardian

This entry was posted on Monday, JUNE 7th, 2010 at 11:40 am and is filed under ENVIRONMENT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.