Akwa Ibom Youths Barricade Exxon Oil Terminal

July 7th, 2014

Oper­a­tions of Exxon Mobil, a multi­na­tion­al firm has been shut down by protest­ing youths from the host com­mu­ni­ties in Ibeno, Akwa Ibom State, Nige­ria fol­low­ing what they described as recur­rent oil spills and strings of unful­filled promis­es made to the com­mu­ni­ties.

LEADERSHIP gath­ered that the angry youths who bar­ri­cad­ed the main entrances to ExxonMobil’s Quo Iboe Ter­mi­nal (QIT) said they will nev­er leave the area until the com­pa­ny com­mences prop­er reme­di­a­tion on the envi­ron­ment and ful­fil promis­es it made after past oil spills.

The Sec­re­tary of Youth Pres­i­dents Forum and Pres­i­dent of Iwuokpom com­mu­ni­ty youth where Exxon­Mo­bil jet­ty is locat­ed, Mr. David Okon not­ed that the protest was sparked off fol­low­ing the most recent spill which occurred on Thurs­day when thun­der struck the QIT tank farm and one of the crude oil-laden tanks went up in flames.

Accord­ing to, Okon sev­er­al hun­dred bar­rels of crude spilled over Mkpanak com­mu­ni­ty and into 26 oth­er com­mu­ni­ties in the area, span­ning over 35 kilo­me­ters.

He said, “Our griev­ance is that since last year, there was an oil spill at the QIT that flowed from Inu­aeyet Ikot vil­lage to Okposo, about 35 kilo­me­ters along the coast­line towards Mbo local gov­ern­ment area. Since then, Mobil has refused to clean up our envi­ron­ment. They issued and acknowl­edge­ment let­ter to indi­cate that their tank bust­ed.

“Mobil knows the impact of oil spill and the dam­age it has done to aquat­ic life and the water table and the entire envi­ron­ment. When a major spill occurred last Decem­ber, they promised to pro­vide relief mate­ri­als to our peo­ple and also pay com­pen­sa­tion. Up till now, they have not done any­thing in that regard. Last week, two of the tanks got burnt and crude flowed into our com­mu­ni­ties.”

Okon lament­ed that, while a walk along the shore­line would show dead fish­es scat­tered all over the area, it was becom­ing so dif­fi­cult a task for the peo­ple to fish.

“Peo­ple are hun­gry and angry and that is why we have come here to draw the atten­tion of the world to what Exxon Mobil has been doing to our com­mu­ni­ties”, he added.

Cor­rob­o­rat­ing Okon’s posi­tion on the mat­ter, a com­mu­ni­ty leader in Iben­no, Chief Williams Mkpa who admit­ted that the peo­ple of the area have scores to set­tle with Exxon­Mo­bil over cas­es of oil spillage lament­ed that the eco­nom­ic main­stay of peo­ple of the area has been great­ly affect­ed by the spill.

He said, “When sim­i­lar inci­dents hap­pen, the com­mu­ni­ty usu­al­ly agi­tates for cleanup and ade­quate com­pen­sa­tion.

But in its usu­al way, Exxon­Mo­bil has refused to respond to those requests because they don’t have the inter­est of the peo­ple at heart. In the past 44 years of their oper­a­tions, the com­pa­ny only com­pen­sat­ed us in 1998 when they declared 55 bar­rel spill and paid N350 mil­lion to our com­mu­ni­ties”.

He not­ed that because they were aware of the effects of gas flar­ing to the imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment, staff of Exxon­Mo­bil do not live in Ibeno com­mu­ni­ties, as the oil firm chose to locate its hous­ing estate in Eket, about 20 kilo­me­ters away.

Mkpa said the inter­ven­tion of the state Gov­er­nor, Godswill Akpabio did not yield any pos­i­tive result in the mat­ter, as the com­pa­ny has delib­er­ate­ly refused to respect the agree­ment bro­kered by the gov­ern­ment since 2012.

Mkpa fur­ther chid­ed those opposed to resource con­trol, say­ing that if Ibeno peo­ple had a say in how Exxon­Mo­bil is being oper­at­ed, some of the dam­ag­ing impacts of their oper­a­tions could have been mit­i­gat­ed.

He, there­fore, appealed to the Nation­al Con­fer­ence and the Nation­al Assem­bly to take urgent steps to ensure that oil pro­duc­ing areas in the coun­try were giv­en a stake in oil explo­ration and pro­duc­tion.

Mr. Mkpa also lament­ed that over 95 per­cent of staff in Exxon­Mo­bil are from oth­er parts of the coun­try and chal­lenged the com­pa­ny to pub­lish the list of its top man­age­ment staff toshow how many peo­ple from the host com­mu­ni­ties it has engaged.

On its part, Exxon­Mo­bil explained that Mobil Pro­duc­ing Nige­ria unlimt­ed, oper­a­tor of the NNPC/MPN joint ven­ture said it has acti­vat­ed our emer­gency response sys­tems and con­tained the release, with all rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers noti­fied.

The company’s spokesper­son, Akaninyene Esiere in an email stat­ed: “MPN remains com­mit­ted to envi­ron­men­tal­ly safe oper­a­tions. Sub­ject to a detailed site inspec­tion, our cur­rent esti­mate is that approx­i­mate­ly 12 bar­rels of oil was released dur­ing the inci­dent. All rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers have been noti­fied.

“We are work­ing with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to gain access to the impact­ed area and con­tin­ue to work to ensure the impact­ed area is reme­di­at­ed. Off­shore pro­duc­tion and load­ing oper­a­tions are con­tin­u­ing.”