As Gas Fires Burn, Devastated Nigeria Pays Horrific Price to Ensure Profits of Big Oil | Black Agenda Report

As Gas Fires Burn, Devastated Nigeria Pays Horrific Price to Ensure Profits of Big Oil

08 Feb 2012

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Big Oil ranks among the most profitable enterprises on earth. But capitalist corporations don't pay their own costs – these are borne by the people and their environments. Few have paid a higher price than the oil-producing regions of Nigeria, now among the most devastated and toxic wastelands on the planet.

As Gas Fires Burn, Devastated Nigeria Pays Horrific Price to Ensure Profits of Big Oil

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Since its nominal independence from Britain in the 1960s, the West African nation of Nigeria has been the scene of a vast, murderous and ecocidal wave of corporate crime. The leading culprits are the continuing corporate criminal conspiracies of Big Oil, including Shell, Texaco, Mobil, Conoco, BP, Total, and others, aided by a succession of compliant military and civilian governments, armies and police forces. The job of capitalist corporations is to maximize profits by externalizing, or shedding their costs onto other entities, and Big Oil has been massively successful in Nigeria.

With most of Nigeria's oil concentrated in the Niger Delta and offshore, Big Oil has extracted conservatively at least $600 billion, more likely trillions in profits. Big Oil's costs are borne by the people, the lands and the waters of Nigeria's oil producing regions, which they have transformed into an impoverished and toxic wasteland where fishermen can't fish, where farmers can't farm, where the very rain and air are poisonous and the water undrinkable, where hospitals, electricity and schools are mostly unavailable. The oil producing regions are crisscrossed by a network of high-temperature, high-pressure, ill-maintained and chronically leaking pipes which annually spill an amount comparable to what BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster did in the Gulf of Mexico. Nigerians have paid this price every year for more than a generation.

But unlike the Deepwater Horizon disaster, homicide and ecocide committed by Big Oil in West Africa gets little notice in the world's media. A December Shell/BP oil spill that the criminals claim was only 40,000 barrels was virtually ignored outside West Africa. A separate offshore gas fire, which initially killed two workers when a rig exploded, has turned a region of open water into a lake of fire up to 1400 degrees Farenheit that is burning well into its second month. While Chevron oil officials claim it will be another month before efforts to put out the fire are successful, even more nearby communities are finding their water undrinkable, their air unbreathable, and local clinics thronged with environmentally induced diseases and disorders.

The profits of Big Oil in West Africa, which now supplies nearly a fifth of US oil imports, has and continue to poison millions of Africans. It has turned their crops, their waters, their environment and even their children into sacrifices on the altar of corporate profit. And this horrendous price is only to bring the oil out of the ground and onto the world market, not the cost of burning it and adding its carbon to the atmosphere, but costs which are also paid by someone other than Big Oil.

The long term survival of West Africa, and of humanity will only be ensured when we stop paying the homicidal and ecocidal cost of Big Oil. We believe that day is coming. For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com .

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. Contact him at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20120208_bd_big_oil_ravages_nigeria.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Census Undercount Increased in 2020
30 Sep 2022
Kelly Percival is Senior Council with the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. She is co-author of the report Improving the Census. She joins us from New York to discuss the…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Commemorating Gabriel's Rebellion at the African Burial Ground in Richmond, Virginia
30 Sep 2022
Ana Edwards is Chair of the Virginia Defenders Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project in Richmond, Virginia. She joins us to discuss the 20th annual Gabriel Gathering scheduled for October 10…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Qualified Immunity for Police and the Death of Andrew Joseph III
30 Sep 2022
Dr. Melina Abdullah is Co-Founder and Director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots. She joins us from Los Angeles to discuss the 2014 death of Andrew Joseph III and the issue of qualified immunity for…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Biden Lies at the United Nations
28 Sep 2022
U.S. presidents routinely violate international law and the United Nations Charter. Yet every year they appear before that body and proclaim American innocence.
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
On the International Day of Peace September 21st, The U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination Reaffirmed Its’ Commitment to the Weapon of War
28 Sep 2022
"End Racism: Build Peace" was the theme of the 2022 International Day of Peace. That noble sentiment can't be realized when powerful white supremacist structures are committed to practicing hegemony.