Rivers Community, Shell Bicker Over Neglect …Flow Station Shut

The people of Belema/Offoin-Ama in Kula kingdom in Akuku-Toru Local Government Area of Rivers State, in the early hours of last Friday, took over the Belema Flow Station in protest over what they described as gross neglect and marginalization by the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC).
The protesters, numbering hundreds, overran the facility, and demanded that SPDC close shop and leave the facility without further delay.
According to the protesters, SPDC has been operating the Belema Flow Station for over 37 years without any visible development projects in the host community.
The people regretted that the community has no potable drinking water, good road, health facility, and were marginalized from scholarship and employment opportunities.
But in a reaction, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria insisted that its commitment to the welfare of host communities in the Niger Delta remains unshaken, even as it decried the illegal occupation of Belema Flow Station and Gas Plant, last Friday, by some persons.
A statement signed by Shell Spokesperson, Bamidele Odugbesan, and made available to The Tide, indicated that, “SPDC has informed the authorities of the illegal occupation and is working towards resuming safe operations”.
Debunking allegations of neglect of communities in Kula kingdom and Belema in Rivers State, SPDC said it had implemented a Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) in the area that led to a wide variety of social investment projects, including university scholarship awards.
It explained that, the Rivers State Government initiated a mediation process for the resolution of the disagreements in the community, which had resulted in the creation of the Kula Project Implementation and Monitoring Committee (PIMC) in 2012.
According to the statement, “The PIMC served as an interim platform for the delivery of social investment initiatives and programmes worth N263 million in the Soku-San Berth Project. These projects are separate from the GMoU projects initiated by communities using funds provided by the SPDC JV.”
Shell explained that, “A GMoU was eventually signed in 2014 for the Kula Cluster but has not been implemented because of continuing intra-community disagreements. As at 2015, there were a total of 11 court cases involving different groups with SPDC as a co-defendant in all of them.
“Sadly, these legal suits and disputes have rendered it impossible to implement more planned development projects in the affected communities,” the statement quoted SPDC’s General Manager, External Relations, Igo Weli, while commenting on the allegations of neglect.
“Notwithstanding that SPDC has divested its equity in OML 24, which covers most of the communities in Kula and Belema, the SPDC JV has continued to implement agreed Social Investment programmes such as scholarship and entrepreneurship schemes for the communities there”, he added.
It emphasized that despite the challenging environment, the SPDC JV set aside more than N600 million for a five-year period beginning 2014, for development initiatives at Kula and the satellite communities of Belema, Offoin-Ama and Boro.
“SPDC JV has also invested over N352 million in improvement of school infrastructure, sanitation and health outreach programmes, construction of walkway for the community and electricity supply in Kula Kingdom in the past 10 years”, it stressed.
“The host communities of OML 25, including Belema and Offion-Ama have continued to benefit from contract awards, employment of unskilled labour and our social investment programmes, including yearly award of regular and special scholarships to eligible candidates from the area. With the divestment of its interest in OML 24, SPDC relinquished operatorship of the facilities in that field,” the statement stated.
The Tide learnt that SPDC’s social investment activities focus on community and enterprise development, education, health, access-to-energy, road safety and since 2016.
The Tide investigations show that collectively, Nigeria has the second largest concentration of social investment spending in the Shell Group.
Further investigations reveal that the SPDC JV partners have contributed $29billion to the economic growth of Nigeria in the four years between 2012 and 2016.
The Tide can authoritatively report that SPDC JV is currently supporting the various GMoU Cluster Development Boards and mentoring NGOs to deploy a total of N7billion for development projects of host communities’ choice in the Niger Delta under the GMoU programme.

Susan Serekara-Nwikhana