High on the list of priorities for Nigerian President-elect Bola Tinubu is how to revive Nigeria’s troubled oil industry – the source of so much of the country’s wealth, but also a curse that has poisoned the environment, triggered violent unrest, and is now the subject of several lawsuits.
Few countries on the face of the planet have suffered more from pollution than Nigeria, and in particular its oil-rich Delta region. Spillages – year after year – have devastated one of Africa’s most diverse ecosystems, a fragile patchwork of wetlands and mangrove swamps.
Divided by resource disputes stoked by oil extraction, farming and fishing communities that long prospered in the region have become far poorer and far sicker. And with these traditional occupations all but gone, the loss of livelihoods for a mass of young people has helped spur the growth of an alternative illicit industry of kidnapping, oil theft, and high-seas piracy.
Trillions of dollars have been earned by the government and the oil majors over the course of a more than six-decade partnership. During the years of peak production, when more than two million barrels a day were being pumped from the lush Niger Delta, Nigeria earned at least $80 billion annually.
Those days have passed. Not only has oil production slumped, but four of the top five energy companies operating in the country – Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Eni – have indicated their intention to sell off all their remaining onshore and shallow water fields assets. Only TotalEnergies has yet to make clear its plans.
“We may be changing the continent of our portfolio but this is because we intend to focus future investment in Nigeria on deep water exploration and production,” Shell Nigeria’s chair, Osagie Okunbor, said in the statement on the company’s website.
The oil majors ostensible reason for leaving is the need to curtail the environmental impact of petroleum production toward their net-zero obligations.
In reality, however, they’re not only escaping a surge in sabotage, oil theft, and an environment deeply scarred by oil mining, but also the threat of litigation launched by local communities – litigation that is finally beginning to have an impact.