The company’s green objectives are furthered by Shell’s divestments in Nigeria. Villagers and watchdogs, meanwhile, claim that since the sales, things have gotten worse, as reported by Washington Post.
Oil companies selling their business
Lambert Ogbari expressed confidence that his living circumstances would finally improve when he discovered that the multinational oil company Shell was selling its local business to a Nigerian company. Yet he soon discovered that upkeep on the oil wells encircling his community had decreased.
Then, one night, a loud bang and the smell of gas woke Ogbari up. People hundreds of yards away could hear the roar when crude oil shot out of a well next to his house.
Reducing GHG emissions
Major oil firms are divesting themselves of damaging assets all around the world as the world struggles with climate change. Shell has regularly said in annual reports over the past eight years that divestments in Nigeria and elsewhere have played a significant part in reducing the company’s greenhouse gas emissions. The business indicated in 2021 that it intends to exit Nigeria’s onshore market. The departure of Shell is part of a global energy industry exodus from the Niger Delta, which for a long time made Nigeria the greatest oil producer in Africa.
Interviews with locals, government representatives, and environmental organisations, however, reveal that the divestments made in Nigeria over the past ten years have hurt the communities that Shell and other international companies leave behind as well as the environment they claim to be trying to protect.
Oil disasters
According to environmental campaigners, local companies that bought the Niger Delta assets from foreign companies have been slow to react to oil disasters like the one in Nembe. According to data from flare tracker Capterio and reports by the Environmental Defense Fund and Stakeholder Democracy Network, gas flaring, the burning off of natural gas, a byproduct of oil extraction, has grown drastically in numerous situations after Nigerian businesses took over. The local businesses also tend to make fewer environmental pledges and set fewer reporting rules, which has led to a lack of knowledge on those effects, according to various analyses by these two groups and others.
Before the local corporation closed the leak, oil spewed for more than a month in the Nembe area, where villages rise from the dense mangrove swamps. An oil sheen was still present in the neighbouring water 15 months after the incident was cleaned up, and the mangrove roots were covered in black. Ogbari stated, his voice rising in rage, “Fishermen are still capturing just a tiny fraction of what they previously were, and residents claim they have seen their already precarious health deteriorate.”
“We were excited to see our brothers in control,” Ogbari said, referring to the purchase in 2015 of Shell’s local oil license by the Aiteo Group, a Nigerian company. “We thought they would understand our needs. … But it has gone from bad to worse.”
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Source: Washington Post
