Oil as a Humanitarian Issue encompasses the enormous influence that the oil business has on people’s lives, well-being, and socioeconomic dynamics around the world. It goes beyond the confines of environmental and economic discourse.
In a world where oil is crucial for sustaining economies and businesses, Nigeria is plagued by oil as a humanitarian issue. There is a complex impact of oil extraction on human lives, ranging from its effects on the environment to its influence on social structures and political stability. The new president may find it difficult to address these issues in a way that upholds human rights, supports communities, and promotes global responsibility.
Oil as a humanitarian issue
Oil extraction in Nigeria has resulted in widespread environmental deterioration and health issues in many Nigerian areas, especially in the ecologically vulnerable Niger Delta, where nearly all oil extraction occurs. Nigeria’s economy is largely dependent on its petroleum resources, which, along with corruption within the government as well as increased international demand for Nigerian oil, has resulted in a system in which environmental impacts and human lives are mostly neglected.
Many extraction operations and consequent environmental damage are the responsibility of multinational oil companies with little interest in Nigeria’s development and ecology. Yet, the federal government of Nigeria has not been able to adequately regulate these enterprises. The Niger Delta communities suffer almost all of the environmental costs of oil extraction but receive just a fraction of the economic rewards.
Between 1970 and 2000, there were over 7,000 leak occurrences in the Delta, releasing an estimated 9-13 million barrels of petroleum into the environment, according to government estimates.
According to a report released in the December 2020 edition of the journal Environmental Pollution, leakages have been on the rise, with about 8,000 leaks occurring between 2006 and 2019. This is in opposition to the situation in Europe, where an average of ten oil leaks were recorded per year between 1971 and 2011.
Oil spills, changes in land usage, and gas flaring are the three main environmental effects of oil extraction. In the Niger Delta, oil spills are quite frequent. Cleaning-up efforts are frequently insufficient, leading to the destruction of sensitive ecosystems, fisheries, and cropland. The procedure of extracting oil has resulted in the destruction or degradation of vast areas of mangrove and rainforest ecosystems. Nigeria burns more gas than any other nation in the world per barrel of oil recovered, which increases global warming and poses a major health risk to people who are close to gas flares.
Looking at the problem
A handful of nations on the earth have been hit more by pollution than Nigeria, particularly its oil-rich Delta area. Year after year, spills have wreaked havoc on one of Africa’s most diverse ecosystems, a fragile mosaic of marshes and mangrove swamps.
Divided by resource disputes fueled by oil exploitation, farming, and fishing communities that had long thrived in the area have become significantly poorer and unhealthier. With regular jobs all but gone, the loss of many young people’s livelihoods has aided the rise of a substitute criminal sector of kidnapping, oil theft, and high-seas piracy.
Over the duration of a more than six-decade cooperation, the government and the oil majors have earned trillions of dollars. Nigeria generated at least $80 billion a year amid high production when more than two million barrels per day were produced from the lush Niger Delta.
Those were the days. Not only has oil production declined, but four of the country’s top five energy corporations – Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Eni – have stated their desire to sell off all of their surviving onshore and shallow water oilfield assets. Only TotalEnergies has yet to state its intentions.
The oil companies’ professed rationale for departing is to reduce the environmental impact of petroleum production in order to meet their net-zero commitments. In actuality, they are escaping not just a boom in sabotage and oil theft, as well as an environment profoundly wrecked by oil mining, but also the possibility of litigation initiated by local communities – litigation that is now starting to have an effect which many hope the new president will follow up.
Following this pledge, a new oil spill at a Shell site in Nigeria damaged farmland and a river, disrupting livelihoods in fishing and farming communities in the Niger Delta, which has long suffered from oil sector contamination.
According to the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, or NOSDRA, the spill came from Shell’s Trans-Niger Pipeline, which crosses through communities in the Eleme area of Ogoni land, a region where the London-based enormous energy endured decades of local pushback for its oil research.
As Nigeria’s new president takes office amid complicated issues in the oil business, the need to address the humanitarian aspects of this crucial resource becomes more pressing.
The pursuit of sustainable and inclusive solutions necessitates a proactive approach that integrates environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and economic development, ensuring that community well-being and natural ecosystem preservation remain at the heart of policy decisions and governance.
