Nigeria’s president visited the site of a fire caused by an accident at Chevron’s offshore Funiwa oil facility and urged the company to give more aid to the communities affected.
The fire has been raging since a gas explosion in the middle of January that left two oil workers missing, feared dead. Chevron has begun the process of drilling a relief well to put it out.
Although the company says there was no oil spill, locals complain that huge numbers of fish are washing up on the shores in Koluama, in the oil-producing Bayelsa state, damaging the livelihoods of communities dependent on fishing for survival.
“President (Goodluck) Jonathan enjoined Chevron to provide more relief materials … to the people,” the statement said.
“He urged oil companies operating in the country to undertake the training of personnel, especially residents of communities within their operational base, as part of its compensation and corporate responsibility to the people.”
Chevron officials were not immediately available for comment. They have said in the past that they are mobilising all resources necessary to put the fire out.
Jonathan arrived in Koluama, in the labyrinthine creeks and swamps of the Niger Delta, and was greeted by youths chanting war songs and waving the traditional flag of his Ijaw ethnic group, a Reuters cameraman saw.
“The communities affected will have some relief, some compensation,” he said in an adddress.
A placard on a wall not too far from where he spoke read: “Koluama people are neglected by Chevron and (the) Federal Government”.
Jonathan, who is from Bayelsa, won praise for helping engineer an amnesty for militants that soothed the conflict in the Niger Delta when he was vice president in 2009, but his presidency has seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis.
He faces a growing insurgency in the north and last month also had to deal with protests over fuel prices in some parts of the country. Several major oil spills have blighted the oil-rich Niger Delta since December.
The presidency statement “asked that the companies learn to respect their environment in order to ensure the preservation of the nation’s ecological system”.
Environmental campaigners routinely accuse oil companies of not following best practice in Nigeria, where accidents and oil spills are far more common than in most other nations.