Ikarama, a community in Byelsa State, witnesses oil spills regularly. Some people in this community in Okordia clan, Yenagoa Local Government Area derive cash from illegal bunkering and some facilities of the oil giants also need to be changed, reports MIKE ODIEGWU
It is a widely held view that no sane person injures himself. He rather cherishes his body by nourishing it with best of food and entertainment. But Ikarama community in Okordia clan, Yenagoa Local Government Area, Bayelsa State appears to hold a contrary opinion. There are indications that some persons in the community derive pleasure in hurting themselves.
In fact, environmentalists are wondering why the oil-producing community and host to facilities belonging to the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) is always in the news for incidences of oil spill. The environment of Ikarama suffers constant negative impacts of oil which spews from pipelines belonging to Shell. Is it entirely the fault of Shell?
Niger Delta Report investigations into the causes of spills in the community reveal otherwise. It is more of an illegal booming business among folks from within and outside the community than Act of God or equipment failures.
Most people within and outside Ikarama believe that the oil flowing through Shell pipeline is theirs and that they have the rights to break the pipeline with impunity and help themselves with its content.
Investigations revealed that 21 spills have occurred from 2009 till date at the community. 17 of the incidents were caused by sabotage: deliberate cutting of SPDC’s pipelines and manifold by the community folks.
Some community leaders are not happy with the incessant breaking of Shell pipelines and its negative impact on the environment. The Okordia-Zarama cluster Development Board Chairman and Ikarama indigene, Mr. Timi Obonah, spoke with the Niger Delta Report.
He identified Zarama clan communities in the area as New Jerusalem, Epie and Nyambiri and Okordia clan communities as Agbobiri, Akumoni, Ayamabele, Kalaba, Ikarama and Freetown.
He described the incessant oil spills in Ikarama as appalling. After taking sometimes to assess his oil-ravaged environment, he shook his head and said: “Look at how devastating the environment is. Its effects are adverse.”
He confirmed that 90 per cent of spill incidents in the community were handiwork of saboteurs. He said only about two or three incidents were caused by corrosion.
On allegations that surveillance contractors guiding the pipelined were responsible for most of the sabotaged points, he said it was difficult to make such assertion since nobody had been arrested. He, however, observed that some of the contractors owed their workers, adding that such employees could vent their anger on the pipeline.
He said the board had met with surveillance contractors and told them of the need to promptly pay their workers.
He said: “We are looking forward to ensure zero spill incident in the area. Before now we recommended for the change of most of the surveillance contractors because when somebody has been in control of something for many years, when he is too familiar with the system he becomes a familiar spirit.
“We believe there is need for changes. Let it not be that they are seeing the contract as their own dominant right. For that we made series of recommendations so that new breeds will take over.”
To divert the youths’ attention from pipelines, he said the board has kept them busy by constantly organising skills and capital development programmes. He, however, lamented that the Okordia-Zarama communities lacked government presence.
He said the development started in the communities when Shell began to sign and implement their Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU). Through the GMoU, he said Shell has been able to give water, road and electricity to the communities. He added that the oil giant ensured that the communities were connected to the national grid.
“After Oloibiri, we were the first set of people that welcomed the oil giants in our area. In 1964, oil exploration started in this Okordia-Zarama, but I will beat my chest and tell you that there is no development in my area. The government has turned their back on the communities.
“If not for the GMoU, if you go into Okordia-Zarama, there is no government presence in the area. There is no Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) project in the area. But you see NDDC developing communities that don’t have a single drop of oil. When you talk about marginalisation, our people are still being marginalised.
“So when we talk about development, Shell has made it possible today for us to see road, water and electricity connection to the national grid. It is the handiwork of Shell.
“When they started this GMoU process that was when we started developing our infrastructure in Okordia-Zarama. For now, we have gotten about 70 per cent of development of our infrastructure. We are now embarking on human capital development in the area.”
Obonah said the frequent oil spills in the area had impacted negatively on health, environment and the economy of the area. He said the spills accompanied by gaseous substances have caused health hazards in the communities.
His words: “In as much as these spills continue in our creeks and rivers,it will result to more health challenges to our people. Today you discover river blindness and associated disease such as asthma among our people.
“Today, you find out that we don’t have elderly people as we used to have before the advent of oil exploration in our area. We find out today that our roofing sheets within three years are decayed. The ecosystem is almost destroyed. Before you can go into the river and catch many fishes, but today the fishes are not there.
“The oil has driven them away. We also find out that we don’t have green vegetation anymore due to the spills.”
He begged the government to direct its attention to the communities insisting that developing the area should not be left entirely to Shell. He regretted that the government only remembers the communities in time of elections.
“The present administration is pragmatic and the Governor is doing well. Let us see if he will still remember us. I believe he will do.”
On how to tackle saboteurs, he added: “Any person involved in pipeline vandalism should be handed over to law enforcement agents for prosecution.
“When these people are arrested there is no support from any quarter as to prosecute them. When there is no support after a while the suspects are granted bail and the case is over. If an individual is jailed for economic sabotage others will desist from the act.”
A statement from Shell by Joseph Ollor-Obari described the Okordia-Ikarama area “as fast becoming a hotbed of pipeline sabotage activities”.
The company said the perpetrators were driven by personal gains. “A total of 21 spills have been recorded in the area between 2009 and now. Of the number, 17 were due to deliberate cutting of SPDC pipelines and manifold. The four spills caused by equipment failure occurred at previously clamped sabotage points, already weakened by repeated cuts”, the statement said.
Despite the many cases of sabotage, Niger Delta Report saw SPDC Oil Spill Response and Remediation team cleaning up the sites of spills that occurred in January 2014 and carrying out remediation of the 2013 spill sites.
It was gathered that the 2013 spill sites could not be remediated because of last year’s flood in the area. It was further learnt that some of the portions of the spill sites where remediation had been completed were polluted by another sabotage spill last November.
Apart from the November spill, the January 27 sabotaged spill is still fresh in the communities. It occurred at the Ikarama Manifold and was captured in Joint Investigation (JIV) Report No 1109543. The sabotage resulted in the spill of about 302 barrels of crude oil onto SPDC Right-of-Way and beyond. Some 0.74 hectare of the environment was impacted by the spill.
But the company has almost recovered all of the spilled oil. Shell observed in the statement that its efforts to professionally clean spill sites were recently misunderstood by an online medium.
The statement said: “Oil recovery activity involves collection of spilled oil in tanks for evacuation by vacuum trucks. The recovered oil is taken to the nearest flow station for processing. That was the process that has been misinterpreted as SPDC resorting to using tankers to transport crude oil because of poor pipeline integrity.
“The pictures accompanying the article were apparently taken during the cleanup stage of the old spill sites. This appears to be a deliberate attempt to present accounts of the cleanup activities of November 2013 as a recent incident. About 98 barrels of the estimated 101 barrels of crude oil spilled in that incident were recovered.
“Sometime last year in September, there was a spill here and the spill was as a result of sabotage. We have to come here to do the recovery and now we are doing the remediation of the site.
“As at last year when the spill occurred we could not complete it because the site was flooded. Part of it still flooded. We had to come here to do the clamping just the road side where the leak point is. We started the recovery just to make sure the impact of this spill does not affect the environment.
“Because of the flood as at that time we were unable to do the actual remediation. If you look at the environment you can see that we did some work. This is the best time we think we can conclude the work we commenced last year.
“The report that was published alleged that we are using the trucks to come and take oil because pipe was broken. What is the basis of trucks at the site? That statement is not true. The tanks are used to evacuate the oil and take them to our respective flow station. So that statement is really baseless.
“The damage done by the spill to the environment is not really much because there was water when the spill occurred. Because of our intervention then we didn’t give it enough time to go into the environment.”
Explaining the recovery process further, Ollor-Obari said: “When we have an incident and it is reported. We have a system in Shell called incident notification and reporting system.
“After that people are quickly sent to the site to see the extent of damage and to do initial containment to make it does not spread to the environment.
“After that, a Joint Investigation Team is constituted,even the community people and all the regulators are involved and security agencies. After that the real recovery will immediately follow.
“After that we will now come in to conduct assessment to ascertain the extent of damage and what it has done to the environment before we now come and do what we are doing now. It depends on the area. If it is flooded we quickly go to the area. We do recovery. Last year we carried out about a month and two weeks to do recovery work .After that we do initial clean-up.”
He observed that unemployment was a major factor fueling attracting youths to the pipeline. He appealed: “We need some help from government. They should employ these youths in the communities.
“A couple of times we have seen a lot of sabotage cases in our cause of work. We ask them (the indigenes), what is going on? They said ‘no employment’. If they can help with employment, that would probably reduce this incident of spills sabotage in the communities. Secondly, each time there is sabotage people are arrested. Let the government prosecute them. Shell is handicapped in prosecuting them.”
