CUT AND RUN
The two largest transnational oil companies operating in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, Shell and ExxonMobil, are packing up and leaving.
Both companies have announced separate plans to sell off their assets as soon as they find buyers, and to leave the Niger Delta, where they have extracted crude oil and gas for over half a century. For communities living in the region, the news is cause for bewilderment and uncertainty – the fear that after the devastating impacts of oil extraction they have suffered, their quest for ecological justice may never be realized.
Counting the costs
The Niger Delta region consists of nine states in Nigeria, bordered to the south by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east by Cameroon. It occupies 112,000 square kilometres, roughly 12 per cent of Nigeria. Over 40 ethnic groups and nationalities speaking hundreds of languages and dialects are indigenous to the region.
Crude oil has been extracted in commercial quantities from the Niger Delta since 1956, expanding from a few viable oil wells to over 900 active wells today. Together with thousands of other oil facilities these have turned the Delta into one massive oil and gas field, producing up to 2.5 million barrels of crude oil every day.1
The oil
