Shell exit exposes Niger Delta health crisis

Reporting by Gas Outlook Africa Correspondent Samuel Ajala along with Paul Tullis, Marcello Rossi and Abdulwaheed Sofiullahi.

(Rivers State, Nigeria) — One summer morning in Alode, a small settlement in the Govan area of Rivers State, smack in the middle of the Niger Delta, Peace Ejor set out on her daily check of her fish farm – a modest pond that had grown into a crucial lifeline for her family.

As she drew closer an eerie stillness replaced the familiar hum of village life. The air, typically alive with chatter and activity, felt unnervingly quiet. Then, a sickening sight met her gaze: the water, once a mirror reflecting the sky, was now covered with a dark sheen of oil.

For years, oil pollution from nearby pipelines and wells mostly belonging to the Anglo-Dutch energy behemoth Shell has seeped into every corner of this community’s life, contaminating streams and ponds and leaving businesses struggling to survive.

Peace, a mother of two in her early 50s, said that whenever oil from a leak pollutes the water, it forms a slick on the surface, which the fish inevitably ingest, leading to sickness and death. “The water becomes poison and there’s nothing you can do,” she lamented.

 

 

Ejor’s plight is far from unique. Across Alode, polluted farmlands have left farmers with little to harvest. But for her and the residents of this close-knit community, being surrounded by the oil industry isn’t just an environmental menace — it’s an existential threat to their very survival.

“Our community depends on fishing and farming,” said the woman. “How can we sustain our livelihoods when the water is poisoned, the soil is barren, and every harvest brings more loss than gain?”

Shell subsidiary sell-off

On January 16th, Shell announced it had the approval to sell Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), its Nigerian onshore oil and gas subsidiary, to Renaissance Africa Energy, a consortium of local companies, for a total sum of US$2.4 billion.

Zoë Yujnovich, Shell’s Integrated Gas and Upstream Director, said in a press release that the agreement with Renaissance “marks an important milestone for Shell in Nigeria, aligning with our previously announced intent to exit onshore oil production in the Niger Delta.”

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) initially rejected the sale, citing Renaissance’s lack of qualifications to manage the assets. The sale was blocked again in October due to regulatory issues. But after Shell announced a final investment decision on the Bonga North deep-water project, the Nigerian government green-lit the acquisition.

Shell’s decision to end its 87-year operations in the Niger Delta has sparked significant concern over accountability for decades of environmental damage and the future management of the region’s remaining infrastructure.

 

 

The Niger Delta region has experienced over 7,000 oil spill incidents since the 1950s — which amounts to an average of 240,000 barrels of crude oil spilled annually. Shell is particularly culpable for this pollution. The company has reported spilling over 110,000 barrels since 2011 only.

These spills have contaminated water sources, soil, and air with harmful chemicals — such as benzene and toluene — that can cause respiratory problems.

“When [particulates] block the respiratory tracts, we see health issues like asthma, bronchitis, emphysema. We have drowsiness, and loss of concentration, these are related,” said Vincent Weli, an air pollution expert at the University of Port Harcourt.

Life expectancy in rural Niger Delta communities — where half the population lacks access to clean water and almost 90 percent live below the poverty threshold— has dropped to just over 40 years, down from 60 in the 1970s, according to research led by the local advocacy group We-the-People with the support of the international non-profit Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. At the same time, communities have reported a 60 percent decline in household food security, with persisting oil contamination further compromising access to safe and nutritious food.

Even more worryingly, a German academic study in 2017 found that oil spills occurring within 10 km of a mother’s place of residence doubled neonatal mortality rates and impaired the health of her surviving children. The authors estimated that oil spills in the Niger Delta may have caused the deaths of approximately 16,000 infants in their first month of life in 2012, with 70 percent of them likely to have survived their first year if the oil spills had not occurred.

Failed remediation

Mene Michael Tekuru Porobunu, a community leader in Bodo, Ogoniland, personally experienced this predicament. After her wife suffered multiple miscarriages, he and his family temporarily relocated to Port Harcourt, where she later gave birth to their two daughters.

“There was nothing special about the move,” he said. “Except the proximity to a better environment.”

The lack of adequate healthcare facilities in his community has aggravated the situation, leaving many residents grappling with severe health issues.

“There are pregnant women who lose their unborn babies… If anyone doubts the impact of this on just drinking water alone, I will say they should just come and taste it,” Porobunu said, attributing these tragedies to the polluted air, water, and food sources.

When asked about the state of healthcare in Bodo, he noted that while there is a general hospital, it is essentially empty and devoid of medical staff or proper facilities.

 

 

Michael Karikpo, a former attorney who works as a programme manager at Natural Justice Nigeria, an environmental and human rights organisation that offers legal support to communities impacted by oil pollution, said Shell has done little to improve these conditions, offering minimal support for local healthcare infrastructure and failing to carry out adequate remediation efforts.

“We had hoped that the Ogoniland clean-up process would set the standard for the cleanup

that will have to take place in the Niger Delta as a whole,” said Karikpo. “But we’ve not seen any impact.”

His words echo a common feeling among locals who believe Shell abandoned them. And as the company offloads its onshore subsidiary, many fear they will be left alone and bear the brunt of decades of environmental damage.

A 2020 report found that nearly a decade after the United Nations Environment Programme documented the devastating impact of the oil industry in Ogoniland — finding hydrocarbon contamination in some water sources 1,000 times above Nigerian drinking water standards — only 11 percent of planned cleanup sites had seen any action.

Dodging historical responsibilities

Iniruo Wills, a lawyer and former environment commissioner for Bayelsa State — in the core of the Niger Delta — does not doubt that the sale of SPDC is a cynical attempt by Shell to dodge its historical responsibilities. “The company knows that proper compensation for the damage caused by its operations in the Niger Delta could cost them tens of billions of dollars,” he told Gas Outlook.

Unlike Shell, Renaissance is based in Nigeria and can only be sued in local courts. However, there are only two federal courts in the entire Niger Delta, both of which are chronically understaffed. Wills explained that cases often drag on for decades, with many litigants passing away before they ever see justice.

“One case took about 28 years to go through the courts, and two of the three [litigants] had died by the time it was resolved,” he explained. “It seems to be improving a bit lately, but I think the feeling is that there’s more possibility of justice and a fair hearing in non-Nigerian courts.”

Over the past decade, Niger Delta communities, with the support of Western legal firms, have filed an increasing number of claims against Shell in courts in the UK and the Netherlands, the countries where the company is headquartered and has its registered office. Some of these cases have led to significant victories, with courts awarding multi-million-dollar compensations to affected communities.

In 2015, after a three-year legal battle, Shell agreed to a £55 million compensation package for thousands of fishermen affected by the 2008 and 2009 oil spills that devastated the Bodo community (Shell initially offered the community only £4,000 in compensation.) Six years later, the company settled for €15 million to compensate the communities of Oruma, Goi, and Ikot Ada Udo, who were impacted by multiple oil spills between 2004 and 2007.

Despite these landmark achievements, Wills said there remains frustration with Shell’s engagement regarding clean-up efforts. Although he acknowledged that the company has been engaged in some activities for about three years in the Bodo community, he said the efforts fall short of international standards.

“Our indications are still that what they’ve done isn’t good enough,” he said.

Wills also raised concerns about whether Renaissance is sufficiently capitalised to deal with spill clean-up or decommissioning in the Niger Delta. He also questioned the true motivation driving the company’s business move.

“Any serious-minded organisation seeking to buy assets like this will do their due diligence, which will show you how much damage is there to be done,” he said. “But because many of the players and actors involved on both sides understand the Nigerian system, that’s the only thing that can give them the confidence to go ahead and buy these assets.”

Wills said another red flag is that Shell is financing the purchase with loans to the buyer. “Maybe some of us are not sophisticated enough to understand some of these things, but I don’t know how I’m selling something to you – and I’m funding you. It’s like hiding behind a finger, you know? So you’re actually paying someone to carry the cart for you.”

(Writing by Paul Tullis, Samuel Ajala, Marcello Rossi and Abdulwaheed Sofiullahi; editing by Sophie Davies)

The reporting for this Long Read was supported by the Journalismfund Europe.