Quest for oil leaves trail of damage across the globe

[Karmadillo]

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15095438?source=rss&nclick_check=1

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There's no denying that the rust-red plumes of oil and tar balls in the Gulf of Mexico are a potential ecological calamity for American Southern shores. More than half the petroleum consumed in this country, however, is imported from other countries, where damage from exploration and drilling is more common but goes largely unnoticed.

No one's tallied the damage worldwide, but it includes at least 200 square miles of ruined wildlife habitat in Alberta, more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater spilled into the rain forests of Ecuador, and a parade of purple-black oil slicks that skim across Africa's Niger Delta, where more than 2,000 polluted sites are estimated to need cleaning up.

"The Gulf spill can be seen as a picture of what happens in the oil fields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa," Nnimmo Bassey, a human-rights activist and the head of Environmental Rights Action, the Nigeria chapter of Friends of the Earth, said in an e-mail.

"We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the USA," Bassey added. "In Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments."

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"The impacts here have been enormous," said Esperanza Martinez, Ecuador coordinator for the international environmental group Oilwatch. "We calculate 1 million hectares" — 2.5 million acres — "have been deforested."

Four decades of spills and leaks by oil companies there, including some from the United States, have fouled thousands of miles of jungle streams and wetland zones.

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[Karmadillo]

1. Kick. We need to set a not too distant deadline for weaning ourselves off oil.

nt