The Toxic Legacy of 60 Years of Abundant Oil

[marmar]

The Toxic Legacy of 60 Years of Abundant Oil
It’s one of the most polluted spots on Earth, and prospects of a turnaround only get worse as Covid-19 guts a global industry.

By Dulue Mbachu
Photographs and video by George Osodi

July 1, 2020, 12:00 AM


(Bloomberg) Bank supervisor Johnson Banigo avoids wearing light-colored shirts to his job because they’re ruined by the dark soot that falls from the heavens.

Banigo, 34, lives and works in Port Harcourt, the center of Nigeria’s petroleum industry where the evening sky literally glows with gas flares. Half a century of oil spills has left a 27,000 square-mile region of swamps, creeks and mangrove forests in southeastern Nigeria one of the most polluted places on earth. Life expectancy is just 41 years.

“Sometimes I worry about the cumulative effect living in this city has on one’s health,” he said. “It’s not only the pollution, one has to worry about the heavy traffic, the high cost of living and then serious insecurity. Robberies and gunfights are frequent as various armed groups spill over into the city from the surrounding creeks.”

Oil’s importance is fading fast, but the desperate situation in Port Harcourt is unlikely to improve any time soon for one simple reason: money. In the past decade, crude has gone from providing about 80% of all Nigerian state revenue to about 50% last year. This year, with the global economy hit by the coronavirus adding to existing trends as the world shifts away from fossil fuels, the government projects an 80% decline in oil income.

That creates a bitter reality for residents at the center of Africa’s biggest petroleum industry: they’ll have little help cleaning up pollution that’s deprived entire communities in the Niger River delta of their fishing and farming livelihoods. ............(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-niger-delta-oil-pollution/?srnd=premium

[Thekaspervote]

1. Sad! Mother Earth would be so much better off without humans

[DanieRains]

2. Petroleum Death

In every way.

They had an electric car that worked fine in the 20's.