EU "helps" Nigeria get rid of its gas

Lots of worrying news are coming from the Niger Delta this week. In international media MEND's "oil war" is getting the headlines. In Nigerian newspapers pundits are divided over the federal government's surprise move to establish a Niger Delta Ministry.

Then BBC reported yesterday that the EU will help Nigeria invest in a Trans Saharan Gas Pipeline. The Financial Times has more detail:

For half a century, western companies have honed the delicate art of lobbying Nigerian leaders for access to one of the richest oil exploration frontiers on the planet. Now a new “great game” is playing out in Abuja, the capital, pitting Russians against Europeans in a race to secure control of Nigeria’s vast reserves of gas.

The European Union, increasingly anxious to reduce its dependence on Russian gas following the conflict in Georgia, has offered Nigeria financial and political backing for a €15bn ($21bn, £12bn) trans-Saharan pipeline to pump its gas directly to Europe.

A week earlier Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, signed a deal with the Nigerian state National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to work towards a joint venture to produce and transport gas.

I am confused and scared. Can someone help connect the dots?

Shell is not coming back to Ogoniland?
In 1993 massive protests against the oil companies forced Shell to withdraw from Ogoniland. Shell has not been able to operate there since.

This has also meant that they have carried out no maintenance of their rusting wells, pipelines and flowstations, and in recent years there has been a series of disastrous oil spills, gas leaks and well blow-out fires in Ogoniland. The wellhead fire in the beginning of the film took place in Ogoniland. People in the community say that the well was leaking gas for many months before it caught fire. They say they repeatedly asked Shell to fix the leak, but the company refused. It burned for three months before consultants flown in from Texas managed to put it out.

In the scene from Shell's 2006 shareholder meeting in the Hague, when Ifie Lott asks the Shell Nigeria MD Basil Omiyi about cleaning up spill sites, he says that the Ogoni people does not allow Shell to come and clean up. Adding insult to injury he added "one would have thought that if they really cared about the environment they would have let us come and clean it up"

We showed this clip to Ogoni elders in Goi. They were furious. Chief Menetomi says "Shell thinks we are like pigs who want to live in a dirty environment. But even pigs, they clean them every morning". He said that while they will never allow Shell to resume production, they have demanded that they clean up their mess and plug the wells. Shell does not deny the responsibility, but claim that the security situation does not allow them to operate in the area. The message from Shell was interpreted as an ultimatum: yes, Shell will clean up, but only if the Ogoni allow them to resume production.

In the meeting in The Hague, one shareholder demanded to know when Shell would get back to pumping their oil in Ogoniland. Apparently this was a recurrent question. Shell answered, as they probably did every year, that real progress was being made and they had good hope that efforts by the government and independent mediators to resolve the conflicts would finally succeed. Oil companies are valued after the size of the reserves they control, and Ogoniland has a lot of oil and gas in Shell's books.

Gazprom to the rescue?
In May and June 2008 the Nigerian president Yar'Adua started saying in interviews that Shell would never come back to Ogoniland. Instead he hinted at the possibility that another company would take over, the Russian oil giant Gazprom. Shell said they had not been informed.

Then came the war in Georgia and a new cold war

Then Gazprom signed a deal with Nigeria involving massive investment in gas gathering infrastructure, including in the trans sahara pipeline required to export the gas to Europe.

Then the army bombed a MEND camp or a village, and MEND declared an "oil war" that has seriously destabilised the situation. The UK minister for Africa visited Abuja to clarify what Gordon Brown meant when he offered to send troups, that they won't send fighting troups, just help with e.g. coordinating air force (!) operations in the delta. Yar'Adua's health is rumoured to be deteriorating and who takes over if he, God forbid, has to resign?

And now, after western oil companies have flared the Nigerian gas for fifty years, the EU too offers to "help" Nigeria take care of the gas and tries to outbid the Russians by promising to invest in the 15 billion euro trans sahara pipeline. If Gazprom builds that pipeline the Russians will in effect have a monopoly on gas exports to Europe.

Nowhere in nigerian or international media do I see any reference to where the Ogoni people stand in all this. Aree they going to let Gazprom in? Do they think Gazprom will respect the Ogoni Bill of Rights?

Russia, it must be said, is the only country in the world that flares more gas than Nigeria.

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