Confab recommends stiff resistance against IOCs divestment plans

Participants at a One-Day Multi- Stakeholders Conference on Oil Company Divestments In the Niger Delta have recommended stiff resistance to the hurrying moves by International Oil Companies (IOCs) to move their investments in the oil and gas sector from the on-shore and shallow waters to deep offshore.

The participants agreed that it is criminal and an attempt by the IOCs to evade justice from the over six decades of degradation of the Niger Delta environment arising from oil exploration and production activities in the region.

The participants include representatives of oil-bearing communities, Civil Society Organisations CSOs, the media, and environmental rights activists across the Niger Delta region.

Executive Director, of We The People (WTP), and host of the conference, Ken Henshaw, said his group would sue international oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region for the destruction of the environment and livelihood of the people for the past 64 years of oil exploration and exploitation in the region.

Henshaw said: “After 64 years, the Nigerian crude oil sector is passing through an unprecedented twist in the investment direction of key transnational oil companies. In May 2021, Shell announced that it plans to sell off all its onshore oil assets and go into ‘deep waters, as part of moves it describes as ‘divestment’.

“In April of the following years, Total also announced that it was selling off its onshore and shallow water assets. Earlier in 2019, ExxonMobil made public that it would be putting up for sale its oil and gas field and has since concluded plans to divest to a Nigerian company called Seplat Energy for $1.2 billion.

“In the same year, news emerged that Chevron was equally selling off several of its oilfields located in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. These major fossil companies blame their decision to leave the Niger Delta- an area they have operated in for over 6 decades- on growing acts of resistance by communities.

“According to Total’s CEO, their plans to leave is because “disruption of local communities are sources of great concerns”. For Shell, their CEO claims, they are divesting because investing in the Niger Delta now represents “an exposure that doesn’t fit with our risk appetite anymore,”

“Clearly, the consensus among international oil companies operating in Nigeria’s Niger Delta is to sell off their onshore assets (oil assets on land, shallow waters, and in close proximity to communities) and leave the region. While they publicly claim that their divestment moves are driven by security concerns, the reality is that these companies have never been bothered by security and community resistance.

“Their operations have always been guaranteed by the force of the Nigerian armed forces who characteristically repress communities to protect the interest of these fossil companies”.

Oil companies are not divesting in Nigeria, they are fleeing ecological justice”, he declared, adding; “I think what the oil companies have done to the Niger Delta, the environmental pollution they have caused, the livelihood loss they have caused, the destruction of the environment they have engendered, the well known and well-documented health risks that they oil companies have created, are enough grounds to take them to court.

“We think the oil companies can be found wanting and accountable on the basis of the fact that they have for 64 years of extraction, destroyed the traditional livelihood of the people.

“The oil that has spilled into the land, into the creeks and rivers of the Niger Delta region, has reduced the life expectancy in the Niger Delta region. Life expectancy in Nigeria is 54 years but life expectancy in Niger Delta is between 41 and 45 years.”

Also speaking during the event, national publicity secretary of the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Ken Robinson, said communities in the Niger Delta region are no longer host communities but occupied communities.

Robinson said: “On the issue of divestment, we, the people of Niger Delta need to ask ourselves the question; what do we do? Niger Delta communities are occupied communities and not host communities as it were.

“They have occupied our communities and plundered our resources and they are leaving. With all the mess, the Nigerian government is behaving like a spectator, an unconcerned spectator, watching.

“So, it has become the problem of host communities and the people of the Niger Delta to clean up this mess. What do we do? I think that is the question we need to answer here”.

On his part, Environmental Rights Activist, Celestine Akpobari, lamented that the issue of divestments by oil multinationals from the Niger Delta refreshed the pains he feels about the issues of oil and its implications to the people of the Niger Delta.

He agreed that the divestment moves by the international oil companies is only a smokescreen they are using to escape the increasing indictments against them for their years of environmental degradation of the Niger Delta region.

He suggested using all available tactics, especially, litigations to prevent them from running away from their responsibility to the Niger Delta region environment and her people.

Akpobari said; “Divestment of Shell and others to my understanding is that they are running away from their responsibilities. It is uncalled for. Let us unite and push them to account for their actions.

”For me, I will continue to do cases with Shell until my environment is cleaned. We must say no to the divestment and that means resisting the move”.

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