Aiteo’s Baptism of Fire
Iwas bewildered last Thursday when Sharon Ikeazor, the Minister of State for Environment, declared that the Nembe oil spill, caused by a blowout from a wellhead, also called a Christmas tree, at the Santa Barbara Southwest oilfield more than three weeks earlier, had been brought under control. At the time she made the statement on the spill, one of the worst in recent memory, video footage provided by our ARISE News correspondent in Bayelsa State, Ovieteme George, on that same evening, showed that hydrocarbons, comprising methane and crude oil, were still spewing from the wellhead into the Santa Barbara river at an alarming intensity.
Having watched the video twice that evening, I immediately came to the conclusion that either Ms Ikeazor and her ministry were grossly incompetent for not independently verifying the status on the oil spill before making the pronouncement, or Ms Ikeazor and the environment ministry had been recruited to help put a spin on a major environmental disaster in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
You see, since residents of the Bassambiri fishing village in Nembe Local Government Area of Bayelsa State raised the alarm on the oil spill in their community on November 1st, there has been a massive push by Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company,
operator of the oil acreage (OML 29) where the Santa Barbara oilfield is located, to downplay, cover up and underestimate the volume of crude oil that is being spilled into the fragile ecosystem in Nembe. Aiteo’s cohorts in the cover up include its joint venture partner – the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited – the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), the Nigerian Upstream Regulatory Commission and the environment ministry.
Not only has Aiteo deployed considerable resources to provide alternative facts on the devastating spill in Nembe, the local oil operator has conveniently blamed the failed Christmas tree on vandals or oil thieves in the Niger Delta. The irony is that Aiteo jumped to this conclusion before accessing and inspecting the site of the oil spill. This had been rendered impossible due to the high-pressure outflow rate from the Christmas tree and was corroborated by the Director General of NOSDRA, Idris Musa, who confirmed that officials from his agency and Aiteo, for more than three weeks, were unable to ascertain the cause of the blowout, nor estimate the volume of oil discharged into the environment.
At best, Aiteo and NNPC, which both displayed a shocking absence of an effective blowout contingency plan to guide them on capping and killing the gushing wellhead, were limited to deploying booms and barges in the Santa Barbara River to mop up the spilled crude. But even that was insufficient to contain the flow and damage to the environment as the spilled oil had already spread very far and by last week had made its way to the coastal community of Odiama on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
After flailing blindly for three weeks and patronisingly distributing some bags of rice and cans of vegetable oil to residents in Bassambiri and its environs, Aiteo eventually contracted the services of Boots & Coots, the oil well control subsidiary of Halliburton, to assist it cap and kill the failed wellhead. On Friday, its officials who spoke to me confirmed that a team comprising Aiteo Well Operations and Boots & Coots had been moved to the site to secure and cap the well. When I asked that the Arise News Bayelsa crew be allowed to accompany the management of Aiteo led by its CEO, Victor Okoronkwo, who was to arrive at the site on Saturday morning, after initially agreeing to the request, they had a change of heart saying that arrangements will be made to invite the Arise News crew “hopefully” today. If that wasn’t incontrovertible proof that the gushing wellhead had not been capped as of this weekend, what better evidence did one need at this point?
Realistically, however, anyone with some