President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua calls for international help on Niger Delta to solve the military crisis in the region.
Nigerian Economist Chudi Chukwuani retorts on VOA:
“The reaction here is that we are at a lost. The call is a clear failure on the part of the government to properly secure our national asset, to protect our sovereignty and our territorial waters. All of us know that the origin of the so-called Niger Delta militancy started from political thuggery.”
Listen in full:
“The Federal Government has said that it is ready to shut in oil wells and lose revenue if that was what would be required to achieve the 2008 gas flares out deadline”, in a statement credited to a senior official of the Department of Petroleum Resources, and reported by the Punch Newspaper.
“The time has come for us to decide whether we are a nation or not. And if we are, we need to take some painful decisions. We should be able to leave these resources for our children unborn if we cannot utilise them today.”
Finally, it appears the government is coming to its senses.
I’m all for this. Just in April, I called for all onshore gas-flaring wells to be shut down until the nation is ready to do what is right.
There will be a loss of revenue, no doubt, and the oil producing companies are quick to point this out: A shut down will “cut Nigeria ’s production by about 870,000 barrels of oil per day, amounting to a revenue loss of $12bn at the price of $40 per barrel.”
But this isn’t too dear a price to pay for doing what’s right. Nigeria shouldn’t put its people in harm’s way and endanger the environment, just for a couple of million of dollars! Simple.
The oil companies have proposed a 2012-deadline for zero flare. In 1993, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) started pursuing the gas flares out policy without success.
Finally someone got the memo that the only option to solving nagging problems is simply to bite the bullet and face the problem head-long.
Shut down the darn wells I say!
On the web: Punch: Gas flares out deadline: FG set to shut oil wells
On Grandiose Parlor: Gas flaring, Niger-delta crisis
Nigeria crude oil production may decline by as much as 30% as the oil sector suffered two devastating blows on the Bonga and Escravos oilfields. The attacks occurred within the last seven days.
Royal Dutch Shell operates the floating Bonga offshore facility that produces about 200,000 barrels per day. Chevron produces 120,000 barrels per day from the Escravos oilfield. The output from the two oil fields is about 20-30% of Nigeria’s total crude oil production, which was about two milion barrels per day before the attacks.
The attack on the Bonga facility, located some 65 miles from land, marks a new era of Niger Delta militancy: It is the first offshore location attacked.
The attacks fields precedes the government plans for the Niger-Delta summit, an exercise designed to find lasting solution to a crisis that has become tougher and more complicated.
Whatever plans president Yar’Adua has for the Niger-Delta, now is the time to fast-track such and ensure it works. The days for mouthing empty policy statements are over, likewise is the era of scoring quick ceasefires and cash settlements.
President Yar’Adua has his job cut out for him, and his administration will now be judged on one yardstick: His ability to not only contain the insurgency, but build an environment in the Niger-Delta that makes militant violence unnecessary and unprofitable.
Yar’Adua and advisers must be focused on one end point: A fail-proof workable solution that addresses the root causes of the problems in the Niger Delta once and for all. This is the only solution.
Natural gas is a by-product of the oil drilling, and Nigeria flares the largest quantity in the world. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) told the House Committee on Petroleum that meeting the government’s target to end gas flaring by 2009 is unrealistic without proper funding.
Even Shell said it would cost about $6 billion USD to end flaring at the 1,000+ wells its owns in Nigeria.
There are no easy options to stopping gas flaring, this has been made clear enough. What would have been the best approach is to use the gas domestically to power electricity plants. Even this comes with a several billion dollar price tag.
May be it’s time to just shut all onshore oil wells until Nigeria is ready to deal with the issue. After all, the people whose lives are being made miserable should matter most than some petrol$$$ or special interest groups…right?
Video below speaks to the issue gas flaring:
If the insurgency in the Nigeria oil rich Niger-delta is allowed to continue unresolved, it will cumulate into a catastrophic event of epic proportions with dire consequences on the socioeconomic and political stability of the nation. This is not a dooms-day prophesy, or a forecast that requires some complicated regression analysis; it’s simple common-sense.
What bothers me most is the nonchalant attitude of those most affected by the event: the state governments and their legislatures (members of the House of Assemblies). It is apparent the feds have given up on the issue, or have simply ran out of workable solutions that could quell the violence, short of heeding the demands of the militia: granting the region more control of the black gold being sucked out of their lands, and the release of their leaders and colleagues locked-up in various jails.
While I do not subscribe to the tactics of the militia in the Niger-delta, I can relate to their circumstances given the devastation oil exploration has brought on their environment, and the relative and disproportionate underdevelopment of the region. However, I wish these militia could see how misguided their actions are.
In Nigeria, gaining access to national data (of relevance) on the Internet can be likened to squeezing water out of a rock. When I received the (unofficial) figures for the states as estimated by the 2006 census, I did one of the things I had wanted to do in a long while: cross-tab the monthly allocation each state receives from the federal government with their population. Since I couldn’t get a more recent figure from the Budget Office of the federal ministry of finance, I used the only available data I could find online- the 2004 May federal allocation to the 36 state governments. My jaw dropped on seeing the figures for Bayelsa state.
*Allocation-per-citizen comparison: Nassarawa state in northern Nigeria=609.22; Delta state another oil-producing state=1,562.35.
Though Bayelsa is sparsely populated, it is one of the states in the oil-rich Niger-Delta - an impoverished region enveloped by years of endemic sectarian violence and decades of environmental degradation. With its natural resources - Bayelsa has a sizable portion of the oil and gas that bankrolls the Nigerian government - and based on the data presented above, it is mind boggling why the state remains so underdeveloped and its people impoverished. It can be argued that because of its very difficult terrain (riverine, swampy, marshland with mangrove vegetation), the cost of infrastructure development in Bayelsa is several times that of a “dry-land” state.
This is a valid argument; however, with population of 1.7 million people, developing Bayelsa shouldn’t be a Herculean task - if the leaders know what they are doing. And this hasn’t been the case; with the likes of D.S.P Alamieyeseigha - the former governor, who’s now on trial for corruption - the fortune of the state has been grossly mismanaged.
Opinion leaders from the Niger-Delta strongly believe that the federal allocation to the region and all other oil-producing states should be increased from the current 13% - a call I’d supported until when I ran the numbers and saw the data on Bayelsa. It is a tough sell why this should be, and I can relate to why this call has not been answered. After all, if Bayelsa (and other oil producing states) can’t manage its purse at the present size, there is no guarantee that it would do so with a fatter allocation.
If indeed the state census figure is accurate, instead of the various activist groups in the Niger-Delta clamoring for a bigger bite from the federal account, they should look inwards, and ensure that the decent portions they are receiving at the moment are well-managed. The emphasis shouldn’t be on how much, but how well-spent these monies are. Of course, more money is good, but it’s not always a sliver bullet.
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