Participation In Petroleum Development Towards Sustainable Community Development In The Niger Delta

Continued from last Wednesday June 9, 2010.

The book “Participation in Petroleum Development, Towards Sustainable community Development in the Niger Delta” by Eseme-Alabo Dr. Edward Bristol-Alagbariya is essential for key oil industry experts, administrators, scholars and students who wants to gain further insight on how the Niger Delta can benefit from oil exploration and exploitation. The Tide, beginning from this edition, run excerpts of the book. Enjoy it.

The Federal Government’s contribution to social investments through its JV partners does not relieve the government of its direct and traditional responsibility of providing public utilities in oil-producing areas and other areas of the federation. Besides, as expressed in Chapters 1 and 7, corporate accountability (ie, corporate environmental and social performance) should take place in a transparent and stable regulatory framework. It is the responsibility of government to develop this framework in accordance with the provisions of Article 29 of the Declaration of the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD), i.e. the Johannesburg Declaration on SD, 2002. By emphasising CSR and IA, and thus the inevitable role of government, the author demonstrates how the IA process may improve environmental decision making. This shows that the MNOCs need to improve upon their social and environmental performances, and that GSR is needed to ensure proper regulation of the MNOCs, and to boost well-designed CSR measures in the course of petroleum development. The cries of neglect from the ordinary citizens of Bonny in the course of community consultations (CCs) designed into the IA process of the Shell Nigeria BTIP expressed in Chapter 8, demonstrate the weakness of prevailing CCs in IA petroleum development projects in the Delta region. These cries deserve to be addressed by an improved Social Impact Assessment (SIA) regime, namely strategic social impact assessment (SSIA), designed to achieve environmentally-sound and socially-equitable SCD, given that an underlining factor of the crises in the Delta region is lack of or inadequate SIA in the course of petroleum development in the region. This calls for the practice of strategic SIA through the introduction of SEA in the federation.  

Efforts aimed at sustainable petroleum development in the Delta region need to take on board relevant lessons from other wetlands or deltaic regions. These include those of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, and the Mississippi river, Florida Everglades and the Tennessee Valley Authority in the USA. Applicable lessons from these may help to improve the state of affairs in the Niger Delta and the performance of the newly-established Ministry of the Niger Delta and the NDDC established after the failure of the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) and the Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC). The conservation, rehabilitation and renewal measures required in the Delta region and other coastal areas of Nigeria also suggest the relevance of the World Conservation Union and the Ramsar Convention on wetlands referred to in Chapter 2, and the need to establish nature reservation trusts based on the example of Natural England discussed in Chapter 9. Besides, PI in petroleum and other major natural resources development in Nigeria needs to be improved by the development of citizens’ or PI tool kits or models. Other models that should be introduced into the Nigerian municipal system include impact-benefit agreements (IBAs) or other forms of Good Neighbour Agreements (GNAs) such as the Whitehorse Mining Initiative (WMI) of the Federal Republic of Canada, and the Ahafo Social Responsibility Agreement by which the Newmont gold mining corporation committed, in 2005, to allocate $1 per ounce of gold sold and one per cent of mine net profit to fund SCD projects in Ghana. These forms of GNAs are being increasingly negotiated, entered into and consolidated upon, to protect cultural heritage and to strengthen the bargaining position of indigenous peoples, local communities, and other neglected peoples being adversely affected by extractive industrial operations. Agreements like these are needed in jurisdictions or developing countries like Nigeria where municipal systems have not been able to address the plight of neglected resources-producing communities and integral interest groups within such communities. It would be better to cement Good Neighbour Agreements (GNAs) in Nigeria between the MNOCs and the oil-producing communities rather than the MoUs that are presently causing confusion and misunderstanding among these parties. GNAs are capable of creating a sense of belonging, greater fulfilment and sustainable partnerships enhanced by mutual trust, cooperation and commitment among stakeholders of major natural resources-development projects. GNAs may be drawn up and made subject to the JV agreements of the various MNOCs with the NNPC. As with the WMI, GNAs may be designed to involve wider stakeholder groups, such as communities, labour, and environmental organisations, as well as the industry and government. SD-oriented GNAs are capable of promoting environmental democracy and the socio-economic empowerment of citizens in the development of petroleum and other major natural resources serving as the economic backbone of resource-rich developing countries. Referring to page 14 of Nigeria’s EIA Procedural Guidelines, 1995, GNAs constitute a category of contractual control for mitigating the adverse effects of petroleum development projects on citizens of oil-producing areas. To enhance the smooth introduction of GNAs, existing MoUs between the MNOCs and the oil-producing communities may be temporarily adopted as binding agreements, and eventually replaced by SCD-oriented GNAs.

It cannot be overemphasised how important it is to introduce GNAs in Nigeria to help generate an end to the crises in the Delta region, especially as the Federal Government has initiated the move to grant Ondo and Ogun States, including Delta State, the opportunity to invest equitably in the Olokola (Ok) LNG project. As stated in Chapter 1, this Federal Government’s initiative primarily masterminded in favour of the Yoruba tribal majority of Ondo State and Ogun State makes it more incumbent on the government, led by the elites of the three major ethnic groups, to be fair and just to the Delta ethnic minorities who started agitating to have equity participation in petroleum development operations which have been going on in their communities since 1956. It is against this background of the injustices of the major tribes against the minority tribes, that the book figuratively presents the plight of the ethnic minorities of the oil-rich Delta region as that of the proverbial mother whose abundant breast milk has for over five decades been used to feed other children of the family, while her own children are largely deprived of its nourishment. The Federal Government should therefore grant equity participation investment opportunities in petroleum development operations and introduce other fair, equitable and socially-justifiable benefits to the citizens of the Delta region and those of other oil-producing areas, considering that petroleum is a finite resource which will eventually run out. This is all the more so, as petroleum and other major natural resources development constitute the foundation for further developments (ie, the advancement of resources-rich developing countries and their peoples). The benefits from petroleum resources development also need to be extended to the local governments of the resources-producing areas, as for instance specified in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Petroleum Policy Handbook, 2003, and Sections 49(d), 170(3) and Part IV (Sections 164–179) and Sections 50 and 52 of the PNG Oil and Gas Act, 1998 (as amended in 2002), mentioned in Chapter 7.     

Chapter 1 cites Principle 1 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, 1992, which provides inter alia that ‘man is at the centre of the concerns for sustainable development’. Hence, Nigeria’s petroleum SD strategy should be directed towards the welfare of all of its citizens, especially the poor masses of the country, and humanity at large. As a source of energy supply to consumer-countries, Nigeria’s petroleum requires to be developed in a way that will ensure security of supply, in order to demonstrate Nigeria’s contribution to energy resources sustainability, as demonstrated in Chapter 1.  

To be Continued