Dirty legacy

Contaminated drinking water, rotting mangroves and dead fish are par for the course in the Niger Delta.

This is because oil industry has polluted the African region for over 50 years. One of the worst affected areas is Ogoniland, which is located in southeast Nigeria and is roughly the size of the city of Berlin.

Pipelines and rusting oil wells, most of which belong to the Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell, cover region.

Although Shell halted production in the Ogoniland region in 1993 due to protests, pollution continues to seep through the company's aging infrastructure, menacing the local population and its ecosystem.

For nearly two years, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been investigating the damage caused in the area by the oil industry and has come out with a damning report.

UNEP says its assessment is one of the most complex studies that it has undertaken to date, covering contamination of soil, surface water and ground water.

According to its findings, cleanup operations could take up to 30 years and may end up amounting to the biggest oil spill remediation effort in history.

"The report underlines and confirms a wide suite of health and livelihood challenges facing the people of Ogoniland," said Ibrahim Thiaw of UNEP.

"Even though the oil industry is no longer active in Ogoniland, oil spills continue to occur with unacceptable frequency."

Black poison

For its report, which was funded by Shell, the UNEP team investigated some 122 kilometers of oil pipelines, and collected over 4,000 earth, water and air samples.

The results reveal that cleanup efforts in many places have so far been superficial .

The findings confirm many complaints raised by activist organizations over the years, yet they also contain some surprises, according to Audrey Gaughran from the human rights group Amnesty International.

"This report has confirmed through scientific study that people of the Niger Delta and the Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta have been drinking polluted water," Gaughran said. "And it's not just pollution in the rivers and the creeks, but pollution in the ground water."

Hydrocarbon contamination was found in the drinking water taken from wells in 10 communities in the Ogoniland region.

In one, benzene – a known carcinogen – was found in concentrations over 900 times the guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

The UNEP report blames these problems on Shell and the Nigerian government. Shell wound up its oil drilling in Ogoniland 20 years ago, but remains a stakeholder in the company that is tasked with maintaining the region's aging pipelines.

The company also remains a target for activists like Nnimmo Bassey, the Nigerian chair of Friends of the Earth who was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2010.

"The report shows that the oil company has not kept to their own minimum standards," Bassey said.

"They've neither kept to minimum standards of the Nigerian state and have performed below international acceptable standards."

Who will take responsibility?

UNEP recommends that the oil industry and the government contribute a capital injection of $1 billion (US) to an environmental restoration fund for Ogoniland.

But In a statement to Deutsche Welle, Shell denied that it was the main reason for ongoing pollution in the region and maintained that it took responsibility for its mistakes.

"We clean up all spills from our facilities, whatever the cause, and restore the land to its original state," the statement said.

"The majority of oil spills in Nigeria are caused by sabotage, theft and illegal refining. We urge the Nigerian authorities to do all they can to curb such activity, and we will continue working with our partners in Nigeria, including the government, to solve these problems and on the next steps to help clean up Ogoniland."

When such a cleanup might commence depends largely upon the Nigerian government. Yet President Goodluck Jonathan, himself from Nigeria's Niger Delta region, has yet to present concrete plans.

"The Nigerian government is going to discuss with Shell and other oil companies that have operated in the area, and other relevant agencies of government, to see how we can handle this report," President Jonathan said.

"Let me assure you that we are not just going to put this report in our drawers and lock it up - we are going to action it," he added.

For those communities living with the threat of daily contamination of their water supply, action is long overdue.

Author: Julia Hahn / ls
Witkop: Nathan Witkop