When the gas rig arrived off the coast of Saint-Louis, residents of this seaside Senegalese town found reason to hope. Fishing has long been the community’s lifeblood, but the industry was struggling with climate change and COVID-19. Officials promised the drilling would soon bring thousands of jobs and diversification of the economy.
Instead, residents say, the rig has brought only a wave of problems, unemployment and more poverty. And it’s forced some women to turn to prostitution to support their families, they told The Associated Press in interviews.
To make way for the drilling of some 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (425 billion cubic meters) discovered off the coasts of Senegal and neighboring Mauritania in West Africa in 2015, access to fertile fishing waters was cut off, with the creation of an exclusion zone that prevents fishermen from working in the area.
At first, the restricted areas were small, but they expanded to 1.6 square kilometers (0.62 square miles), roughly the size of 300 football fields, with construction of the platform that looms about 6 miles (10 kilometers) offshore.
Soon the work was overtaking the diattara, a word in the local Wolof language for the fertile fishing ground that lies on the ocean floor beneath the platform. With 90% of the town’s 250,000 people relying on fishing for income, the catch — and paychecks — were shrinking. Boxes of fish turned into small buckets, then nothing at all.
Saint-Louis, Senegal’s historic center for fishing, has faced many troubles over the past decade. Sea erosion from climate change washed away homes, forcing moves. Thousands of foreign industrial trawlers, many of them illegal, snapped up vast amounts of fish, and local men in small wooden boats couldn’t compete. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down market sales of the tiny hauls they could manage.
The rig was the final straw for Saint-Louis, pushing it to the brink of economic disaster, according to locals, officials and advocates. The benefits promised from the initial discovery of energy off the coast haven’t materialized. Production for the liquified natural gas deal — planned by a partnership among global gas and oil giants BP and Kosmos Energy and Senegal and Mauritania’s state-owned oil companies — has yet to begin.
Traditionally, many women make a living processing fish, while the men catch it; sons, husbands and fathers spend weeks at sea. But with the restrictions, families couldn’t feed their children or pay rent. They begged for leftovers from neighbors. Some were evicted.
Senegalese officials and the gas companies say people should be patient, as jobs and benefits from the gas deal will materialize. But locals say they’ve been stripped of their livelihoods and provided with no alternatives. That’s driven some women to prostitution, an industry that’s been legal in Senegal for five decades but still brings shame for those who break cultural and religious norms.
As early as 2018, Saint-Louis residents say, they were warned they would lose access to some of their favored fishing waters. Installation of the breakwater, the area where the platform sits, began by 2020.
Seasoned fishermen who’ve weathered past storms and changes to the industry say the gas deal poses problems on a different scale, largely thanks to the exclusion zone. Smaller boats aren’t equipped to venture past it, creating overcrowding in other fishing areas and depleting stocks for fishermen.
“Going to the diattara now is like going to hell,” said Aminou Kane, vice president for the Association of Fishermen Anglers of Saint-Louis.
Since the area became inaccessible, fishermen are quitting, risking their lives migrating to Europe, or fishing illegally in neighboring Mauritania where they face arrest, he said.