A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme reveals the extent of environmental devastation in Nigeria’s Niger Delta due to extractive oil and petroleum industries. Although the study was partially funded by Shell, it appears that it has some bite. Perhaps a sign of hope.

Meanwhile, an African king is suing Shell, and Niger Delta villagers are going to the Hague to take on Shell. Perhaps further signs of hope.

Oil-related problems in the Niger Delta are not new. They are old, enduring and stain the future of Nigeria. They have to do with powerful corporate and state interests, corruption, global oil and petroleum demand, and the unrelentingly harsh cruelty of capitalist profiteering at the expense of local people and their environment and livelihoods. Nigeria is a major provider of petroleum to the United States.

The Niger Delta region has been exploited with impunity by outside powers for many years. During the British colonial era, Nigeria provided wealth for the Crown through the export of palm oil (Osha 2006). In the postcolonial era of globalization, a different kind of oil dominates the country’s economy: petroleum. Starting in the 1950s, with the discovery of vast petroleum reserves in Nigeria’s Delta region, several European and American companies have explored for, drilled for and exported crude oil to the extent that Nigeria occupies an important position in the world economy.

Most local people in the delta, however, have gained few economic benefits from the petroleum industry. Instead, most have reaped major losses in their agricultural and fishing livelihoods due to environmental pollution. They are poorer now than they were in the 1960s. In addition to economic suffering, they have lost personal security. Many have become victims of the violence that has increased in the region since the 1990s through state and corporate repression of a local resistance movement.
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