A Deepwater Horizon Spill, Every Year

Five thousand feet beneath the surface, oil continues to gush into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 22. Recent estimates suggest that as many as 29 million gallons of oil may have spilled as of May 28, approximately three times the amount that entered Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in March 1989. White House adviser Carol Browner on Sunday said the spill was "probably the worst environmental disaster we've ever faced in this country," and warned that it may continue until BP completes drilling two relief wells in August.

But as our own Jessica Marshall reports, immense as it is, the Deepwater Horizon spill isn't even the biggest ever in the Gulf of Mexico - at least, not yet. (Although there are some who think even the most pessimistic official figures are gross underestimates). And writing in yesterday's edition of The Guardian, that newspaper's environmental correspondent John Vidal compared the attention, controversy and clean-up efforts in the Gulf to the ongoing pollution in Nigeria's Niger Delta. 

According to Vidal, with 606 fields, the Niger delta is the source of 40 percent of all the crude the United States imports. It is also, he says, "the world capital of oil pollution."

He writes:

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP. This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "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."

Determining the exact amount of oil spilled each year in the delta is not possible, Vidal says, because "the [oil] companies and government keep that secret." However, a 2006 report from the World Wildlife Fund, World Conservation Union, representatives of the Nigerian government, and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, estimated that 1.5 million tonnes of oil -- 50 times the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez -- had been spilled into the delta over the previous five decades. Vidal claims that "more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico."

Last year, Amnesty International published a report on the oil industry in the Niger delta, arguing that it posed a major human rights violation:

Under Nigerian law, local communities have no legal rights to oil and gas reserves in their territory. The Federal Government allocates permits, licenses and leases to survey, prospect for and extract oil to the oil companies, who are then automatically granted access to the land covered by their permit, lease or license.

The fact that the people of the Niger Delta have not benefited from oil wealth is only part of the story. Widespread and unchecked human rights violations related to the oil industry have pushed many people deeper into poverty and deprivation, fueled conflict and led to a pervasive sense of powerlessness and frustration. The multi-dimensional crisis is driven by the actions of the security forces and militant groups, extensive pollution of land and water, corruption, corporate failures and bad practice and serious government neglect.

Vidal writes that the local people of the delta "can scarcely believe" the contrast between the inaction that they perceive on the part of officials and oil companies where they live, and the ongoing media and political attention being paid to the spill in the Gulf:

"We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US," said Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International. "But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments ... This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper."

Map: CIA World Factbook