Don’t Let Shell, ExxonMobil, Eni-Agip, Chevron & Total Go Without Cleaning the Niger Delta

See our report, 'Dirty Exit'

International oil companies Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Eni-Agip and Total Energies have identified buyers to take over their onshore oil operations in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. These companies are walking away after nearly 7 decades of reckless oil extraction that has generated hundreds of billions of dollars for their shareholders, but has left the indigenous people of the Niger Delta poor, poisoned and devastated. In this period, these companies have flared gas non-stop. Gas flaring is not a necessary outcome of oil extraction. Oil drilling can be done without routinely flaring gas. But from the start, these companies decided that it was cheaper and more convenient for them to flare gas, even when several reputable studies have established that methane, carbon dioxide and other chemicals from flared gas poison people with cancer, respiratory illnesses, birth defects, diseases on the skin, etc. When it rains, the poisonous chemicals from flared gas return to further pollute the soil and rivers, reducing farm fertility and killing fishes. 

There are over 178 active gas flare points all over the Niger Delta, emitting millions of tonnes of CO2 yearly. In 2022 alone, these companies released over 12 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. 

The movement of hydrocarbon products from various points of extraction to terminals from where they are transported to Europe, USA and elsewhere has meant that over 7,000 kilometres of pipes are buried beneath the lands, swamps and rivers of the Niger Delta, sometimes right through people’s farms and ponds. Some of these pipes have been buried in the same place for more than 40 years. With alarming regularity and chiefly on account of age and corrosion, these pipes rupture, releasing crude oil that destroys crops, poison rivers, pollutes streams and displaces whole communities. It gets worse: sometimes the ruptured pipes blow out in huge fires that burn for days, incinerating communities and their livelihoods. An average of 240,000 barrels of crude oil are spilled in the Niger Delta each year. This is over 14 million litres of crude oil or the equivalent of 429 fully loaded oil tankers.

In 70 years, these oil companies have turned the Niger Delta into one of the most polluted places on earth, and its people, among the poorest and most poisoned. 

Without any assessment of the ecological, health, and livelihood impacts of their extraction, these companies are leaving the Niger Delta and their mess behind. Who cleans up nearly 70 years’ worth of oil spills and gas flaring? Who fixes the health of the indigenous people? Who restores their likelihood? 

We cannot let these companies simply abandon the communities they have occupied for decades. They return to their home countries with hundreds of billions of dollars in profit, and leave the Niger Delta with the worst ecological disaster known to man.

Please help us sign this petition and demand that the Nigerian government halts all divestment moves of international oil companies pending an assessment of the health, ecological, and livelihood impacts of hydrocarbon extraction in the Niger Delta.

The people of the Niger Delta deserve to live in a clean and healthy environment. 

Help the Niger Delta get justice!

Sign this petition to call on the President of Nigeria and the National Assembly to halt all oil company divestments until an assessment of the ecological, health, and economic harms of crude oil and gas pollution is established, remediated, and compensated for.