– As YEAC demands proper funding of NOSDRA
Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre, YEAC Nigeria, has lamented that industry regulators of oil spills and gas flaring were too weak, ill prepared and underfunded to checkmate and sanction erring oil multinationals.
This is as the Chairman, Governing Board of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, Shehu Chindo Yamusa, recently charged oil multinationals to strictly comply with extant laws, regulations and guidelines on environmental management in the petroleum industry.
Yamusa who is also the Emir of Keffi, urged oil multinationals to adopt technologies and equipment for prompt detection and response to oil spills in their operational base, and to also work towards preventing spill incidents.
Reacting on the charge by the NOSDRA Board Chairman, YEAC urged industry regulators including the judiciary reassess themselves and find out why Nigerian laws were not being respected by oil multinationals, as obtainable in other parts of the world including the Gulf of Mexico in the United States during the 2010 oil spill.
Executive Director of YEAC-Nigeria, Mr Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, said NOSDRA was not only poorly funded, but acks logistics equipment, laboratories and necessary independence to properly monitor and regulate the activities of multinationals and compel them to comply with extant laws, and international best practices.
Fyneface said the problem of Nigeria was not laws, regulations and guidelines on environmental management in the petroleum industry but ability of the institutions which he described as “weak” to ensure that both the IOCs and indigenous companies comply with the extant laws.
He said, “Multinational oil companies’ double standards when it comes to compliance with extant laws, regulations and guidelines in environmental management in the country’s petroleum industry is due to weak monitoring, regulatory and punitive institutions in the country.
“NOSDRA is poorly funded, lacks logistics equipment, well-equipped and standard laboratories and necessary independence to properly monitor and regulate the activities of multinational oil companies to comply with extant laws, regulations and guidelines on environmental management and practices in the oil and gas industry.
“For NOSDRA to respond to an oil spill incident through joint investigation visits (JIV), the polluting oil companies are involved in the provision of logistics before such visits to the creeks are made possible and you should wonder the type of JIV report that would come out of a process funded by the multinational oil company on whose facility the oil spill incident occurred.
“In most of the cases, such logistical support incidents always ended up compelling the NOSDRA team to dance to the tune of the IOCs, blaming the spills on third party interference to enable them dodge both the payment of compensation and cleanup.”
The environmentalist further explained that oil operators were not taking adequate measures to prevent oil spill incidents in the Niger Delta because it was easier for them to pollute and go scot-free in Nigeria, a situation which was impossible in other parts of the world.
“For the country to be able hold oil multinationals to strictly comply with extant laws, regulations and guidelines on environmental management in the petroleum industry, NOSDRA and the Federal Ministry of Environment must sit up in their regulatory and response functions.
“The government must properly fund NOSDRA and related Ministries, Departments and Agencies while the judiciary must ensure the diligent prosecution of cases, violations and non-compliance to extant laws, regulations and guidelines by both multinationals and indigenous companies in the oil and gas sector, including an end to gas flaring by commercializing the soot generating and poisonous gas being flared since the 1950s till date.”
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