The UNEP Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland

The UNEP report recommended the creation of a USD 1 billion Environmental Restoration Fund for Ogoniland or Ogoni Restoration Fund (ORF) with capital of USD 1 billion, to be co-funded by the Federal Government, NNPC and the SPDC JV. The Nigerian Federal Executive Council in December 2016 approved a new gazette for HYPREP under the Ministry of Environment that maintains SPDC JV partners will provide 90% of the US$1 billion ORF over a five-year period.   In February 2017, the SPDC JV provided $10 million to help set up the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) office as part of its contribution towards funding its share of the ORF. SPDC JV remains fully committed to continue supporting and contributing its share to the ORF within the appropriate framework and governance structures.

Since 2011, SPDC has taken action on all the UNEP recommendations addressed specifically to it as operator of the SPDC JV and has completed a majority of these recommendations:

• The 15 SPDC JV sites specifically mentioned in the UNEP report have been re-assessed, and where further remediation was required, those sites have been remediated and certified by government regulators.
• SPDC has completed an inventory and physical verification of assets for de-commissioning and continues to work with its joint venture partners and the Federal Government of Nigeria to develop a decommissioning plan for these assets.
• SPDC has completed a comprehensive review of its oil spill response and remediation techniques, and made a number of improvements in line with industry best practices.
• The SPDC JV has delivered the emergency measures identified by the report related to providing safe drinking water to impacted communities in collaboration with Rivers State Government.
• SPDC has trained contractors have been trained on clean up and remediation techniques and assigned specialist supervisors to a number of project sites to ensure effective oversight and compliance
• SPDC continues to carry out regular aerial monitoring of all the joint venture’s facilities in Ogoniland, including the creeks and pipelines, to identify any new incidents or activities (such as theft and sabotage) which may result in environmental damage.
• Public access to information such as Joint Investigation Visit reports and spill incident data has been improved via a spills information web site.

SPDC is committed to cleaning up all spills from its facilities, irrespective of cause. This is equally the case in Ogoniland, despite the fact that SPDC ceased producing oil and gas there in 1993. Years of restricted access to the area created difficulties in identifying and remediating affected sites. Improved access over the last four years has enabled SPDC to make progress on identifying sites in need of remediation and verifying the condition of non-operating facilities and equipment, a crucial step in developing a decommissioning plan.

In 2017, 92 sites were remediated and certified (out of 251 identified for this work), with 32 in Ogoniland. During 2017, 84 new sites requiring remediation were identified, of which eight are in Ogoniland. In total, there are 243 oil spill sites that require remediation.

In 2015, SPDC on behalf of the SPDC JV and the Bodo community signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) granting SPDC access to begin the clean-up of areas affected by two operational spills in 2008. The MOU also provided for the selection of two contractors to conduct the clean-up and to be overseen by an independent project director. The clean-up project suffered a delay in 2016 and most of 2017 due to difficulties accessing the sites. After significant engagement with the communities and other stakeholders, managed by the Bodo Mediation Initiative (BMI), the clean-up and remediation activities at Bodo started in September 2017. The clean-up will consist of four phases: clean-up of free-phase surface oil, remediation of soil, restoration of mangroves, and monitoring. Should activities continue uninterrupted, the process is expected to take around three years. However, for it to be successful, the repeated re-contamination of remediated sites due to crude oil theft and illegal refining must end.

SPDC’s remediation practices are compliant with the Environmental Guidelines and Standards for the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria (EGASPIN), Revised Edition 2002. The EGASPIN criteria are based upon approaches adopted previously by the Dutch Government and supports use of Risk-Based Corrective Action, as provided by the American Society for Testing and Materials. EGASPIN provides for the management and remediation of contaminated land while certification of the satisfactory completion of remediation is performed for all sites by the relevant regulator, based on results of analytical laboratory testing.

SPDC has researched and adopted techniques for cleaning up oil spills that we believe to be the most effective for the soil and climate conditions in the equatorial heat of the Niger Delta. Bioremediation using land farming techniques is a well-practiced technique used in the Niger Delta, and elsewhere, to bioremediate crude oil contamination in soils with the objective of restoring the land to conditions acceptable to human health and the environment. It stimulates the natural microbial processes that break down and use the carbon rich oil contamination as a source of food and energy, ultimately leading to its removal. The key to the process is providing the microbes with the nutrients they need to perform optimally. Bioremediation is an internationally and nationally recognized methodology and widely accepted by the remediation community around the world and often advocated by regulators such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency in the USA and the Environment Agency in the UK. Adoption of this method also has wider positive impacts, for example, in developing local expertise and generating employment. Bio-remediation is not the only technique employed by SPDC and other technologies are utilised where appropriate.

Since 2012, SPDC has worked with the International Union for Conservation of Nature to assess how best to approach the remediation and rehabilitation of oil spill sites within SPDC’s areas of operation in the Niger Delta and to assess the company’s procedures for undertaking such work. An independent scientific advisory panel, the Niger Delta Panel, was set up for this purpose. Based on input from the Panel, SPDC has implemented a Standard for the Management, Investigation & Remediation of Soil & Groundwater Contamination, that came into effect in January 2016. The Standard is a dynamic document which will be further updated with new knowledge deriving from ongoing remediation improvement initiatives. This includes the development of Risk Based Screening Levels (RBSLs) for the Niger Delta, guidance on Management and Adaptive Monitoring of Mangrove Habitats in the Niger Delta, and results from pilot-scale trials of biosurfactants, enzymes and sorbent products which have been tested for their ability to enhance the bioremediation and biodiversity recovery process.

In 2017, SPDC launched new initiatives, such as a Niger Delta biodiversity strategy and a toolkit which provides guidance on restoring mangroves that will help to strengthen its remediation and rehabilitation efforts.

SPDC is working with the relevant stakeholders to implement the 2011 UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) report on Ogoniland. Over the last six years, SPDC has taken action on all the UNEP recommendations addressed specifically to it as operator of the SPDC JV and has completed a majority of these recommendations. However, comprehensive implementation of UNEP’s wider recommendations will require coordinated action by all the relevant stakeholders: federal, state and local government, the oil and gas industry and communities. Regulators and civil society also have an important role to play.

In early 2017, the Ministry of Environment and the HYPREP Governing Council appointed Dr. Marvin Barinen Dekil as Project Coordinator for the implementation exercise and in February 2017, the SPDC JV provided $10 million to help set up the HYPREP office. In the same month, a ground-breaking ceremony took place for an Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Centre (ICSMC). The SPDC JV will work closely with the Project Coordinator and the ICSMC, which we believe will help create employment opportunities in Ogoniland and facilitate the acquisition of skills in the treatment of contaminated soils. HYPREP has also embarked on intensive sensitisation campaigns with key Ogoni stakeholders including illegal crude oil refiners and conducted medical outreach programmes in four local government areas.

SPDC remains fully committed to providing its share of the ORF as stipulated in the HYPREP gazette and the agreed governance framework. We encourage all relevant stakeholders to also remain committed to contributing their share to the ORF. SPDC continues to look forward to working collaboratively with HYPREP and other government and non-government stakeholders to ensure the clean-up process established by the Federal Government of Nigeria succeeds. To this end, during 2017 SPDC JV was involved in technical meetings with UN organisations and HYPREP aimed at providing an overall strategy for the implementation of the UNEP Report. SPDC also participated in sessions providing support to HYPREP in developing work plans and associated budgets.

In late 2017, the HYPREP Governing Council gave consent to fund short term items by HYPREP worth about $33 million, such as emergency water supply, scoping of contaminated sites and alternative livelihood programmes. By the end of 2017, HYPREP had completed nine technology trials in selected UNEP recorded sites and one at Korokoro well-3 was particularly successful. During the assessment and remediation trial at this well, it was deemed necessary to remove free phase oil at levels deeper than 3 metres.

SPDC continues to undertake initiatives to prevent and minimise spills caused by theft and sabotage of its facilities in the Niger Delta. In 2017, we sustained on-ground surveillance efforts on SPDC JV’s areas of operations, including its pipeline network, to prevent incidences of third party interference and ensure that spills are detected and responded to as quickly as possible. We continue to sustain our regime of daily over-flights of the pipeline network areas to identify any new spill incidents or activities. We have also installed state-of-the-art high definition cameras to a specialised helicopter that greatly improves the surveillance of our assets and have implemented anti-theft protection mechanisms on key infrastructure. 

Crude oil theft and illegal refining continue to be a challenge in Ogoniland with visible evidence of repeated re-contamination of remediated sites. The SPDC JV is therefore pursuing a range of initiatives to prevent and minimise the impact of theft and sabotage in Ogoniland, including community-based pipeline surveillance, awareness campaigns and alternative livelihood programmes. In 2014, the SPDC JV signed a series of agreements with communities in Ogoniland –– using the Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) model. Under these GMoUs, the SPDC JV provides funding to support unarmed community patrols which report incursions and suspicious activity directly to the government security forces.

SPDC has reached nearly 184 communities in Ogoniland since it embarked on an engagement campaign in 2014 to raise awareness on the environmental devastation from pipeline vandalism and illegal crude oil refining in response to the recommendations of the UNEP Report on Ogoniland. The programme involves open-air meetings and publicity campaigns on electronic media and was a clarion call to those involved in crude oil theft in Ogoniland and other parts of the Niger Delta to stop destroying their land and heritage through pipeline vandalism. In 2016, SPDC collaborated with local community leaders, traditional rulers and state governments in the Niger Delta to raise awareness among youths of the environmental and health risks of interfering with pipelines. During the course of the year, engagements centered on the theme of “danger for all and benefit for a few” that crude oil theft represents, took place in Ogoniland with more than 40 communities in four local government areas – Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme. In 2017, the campaign focused on 34 communities located along the Trans-Niger Pipeline corridor in Eleme (Alesa and Eteo), Tai (Kegbara-Kira) and Gokana (Kpor and Biara) Local Government Areas.

Shell’s flagship youth entrepreneurship programme, Shell LiveWIRE, was extended to Ogoniland in 2014, with the aim of raising living standards and reducing crude oil theft through the promotion of alternative livelihoods. The programme equips young people with the skills to start their own businesses and create employment. It also provides access to essential business knowledge and customized support they need to transform their enterprising ideas into viable and sustainable businesses.

The pioneer set of 105 beneficiaries graduated in February 2015, and more than 70 per cent of them are now successful business owners and employers of labour. As was the case in 2015, 60 Ogoni youths were trained in entrepreneurship skills in 2016. Fifty of the trainees who succeeded in the final assessment received start-up funds for their business ideas. In 2017, eighty Ogoni youths took part in the training after which each pitched their business idea to an expert panel of judges. The 60 top performing participants were chosen to receive start-up funding totaling more than $65,000 to turn their business ideas into reality.

An Agricultural Youth Entrepreneurial Programme was also initiated in 2015 to increase youth participation in farming, the primary occupation in Ogoniland with associated economic growth.

SPDC has not produced oil and gas in Ogoniland since 1993 and has no plans to resume production. Since 2012 the SPDC JV’s assets in Ogoniland have been operated by the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), the production and exploration arm of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).