LAGOS, Nigeria - A region of Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta suffers widespread ecological damage as spilled oil seeps into its drinking water, destroys plants and remains in the ground for decades at a time, according to a United Nations report.
The report, released Thursday by the U.N.'s environmental program, said it will take as much as 30 years to clean the oil-stained Ogoniland area within Nigeria's Niger Delta, a region of swamps, mangroves and creeks almost the size of South Carolina. The world body suggested the Nigerian government and the oil industry set up an initial $1 billion trust fund for the cleanup.
However, environmental cleanup remains an afterthought in Africa's most populous nation as oil revenues fund a bloated and corrupt government dependent on production. Cleaning up the more than 600-mile (more than 965-kilometre) region would be a challenge for any government, the U.N. acknowledged.
"The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world's most wide-ranging and long-term oil cleanup exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health," the body said in a statement.
Though production in Ogoniland stopped in 1993, pipelines and flowstations operated by a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC and the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. still run through villages and fields.
Oil spills from those sites, caused by aging pipelines and vandalism, have thoroughly damaged lands, the U.N. found. In one case, the U.N. found a village where drinking water was polluted with benzene 900 times more than the international limit. The U.N. also found one area where an oil spill 40 years ago hadn't been cleaned.
"The Ogoni people live with this pollution every minute of every day, 365 days a year," the report said. "Since average life expectancy in Nigeria is less than 50 years, it is a fair assumption that most members of the current Ogoniland community have lived with chronic oil pollution throughout their lives."
The report also said that children born in Ogoniland are affected by the oil pollution daily, "as the odour of hydrocarbons pervades the air day in, day out."
Some environmentalists say as much as 550 million gallons of oil have poured into the Niger River Delta during 50 years of production -- at a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon Valdez disaster per year. Even today, oil laps up in brackish delta creeks in Ogoniland, creating a black ring around the coastlines.
Shell helped fund the U.N. investigation, leading to criticism by some environmentalists that the report wouldn't take on the oil giant many demonize in the region. The report said damage can be caused by failing oil pipelines, as well as by thieves who tap into the lines to steal crude oil -- a worsening problem in Ogoniland. The report said U.N. officials saw such theft during the day and suggested there could be "collusion" with government officials.
"It was not within (the U.N.'s) scope to identify the cause of the individual spills, nor is it scientifically possible to detect the original cause of spills after an unknown time period," the report said.
It also remains difficult for companies to operate in the delta, as criminal gangs and militants still operate and take foreign workers hostage for ransom. The U.N. report noted that it had trouble accessing some areas of Ogoniland and found evidence that unknown parties had tampered with some of the U.N.'s equipment.
Asked about the proposed trust fund, a Shell spokeswoman declined to comment. The company issued a statement saying it "will study the contents carefully and will comment further once we have done so."
Reuben Abati, a spokesman for President Goodluck Jonathan, did not respond to a request for comment.
Nigeria, an OPEC member, is one of the top crude oil suppliers to the U.S.
