DORIS EGBA’S STRONGEST memory of her childhood in the village of Otuabagi, in Nigeria’s Bayelsa State, is of her parents’ interminable search for arable land. “When I look back now, out of all my memories, it is the one that stands out — the fact that they were always looking for where they could grow crops just to feed us,” says Egba, who’s now a teacher in the village school.

Otuabagi, a rustic fishing village nestled within the vast network of alluvial lands, mangrove forests, and slow-moving creeks that make up the Niger Delta, is the birthplace of oil production in the country. In 1956, when Shell D’Arcy — as Royal Dutch Shell was then known — struck black gold in the region, the fortunes of Egba’s parents and their fellow villagers, who are predominantly farmers and fisherfolk, took a turn for the worse. Their ancestral land, with its rich soil and plentiful water, became part of what came to be known as the Oloibiri Oilfield. At least 18 of the 21 oil wells that made up the oilfield were sited in Otuabagi, mostly on farmlands, fishing ponds, and streams that had served the villagers for generations.

Over the next two decades, the oilfield would pump over 20 million barrels of crude oil, resulting in massive hydrocarbon pollution that changed Otuabagi forever. By the time Egba was born in 1980, two years after the oilfield had ceased to produce, the once-thriving fish ponds and farms had been transformed into polluted, lifeless waters and barren lands.

“We could not farm anywhere because you would be seeing crude oil on the surface of the water and in the soil,” Egba recalls. “So, my parents had to look for another location to farm.” Unfortunately, amid rising land costs, they could not afford to move, so they remained, eking out a living amidst the rusty carcasses of the oil wells.

Shell never cleaned up the mess it made in Otuabagi. Improperly decommissioned well heads and manifolds (the assemblage of pipes, valves, and other fittings that help direct the flow of pressurized oil from wells) still litter the landscape. “Until today, crude oil still seeps out into our farmlands and waterways from the infrastructures left behind by Shell,” Egba says.

Otuabagi isn’t the only village to suffer such a fate. For decades, Shell and a host of other international and domestic oil companies expanded drilling operations throughout the Niger Delta, displacing local communities and despoiling the natural environment in the process.

Now, in the face of mounting lawsuits over spills and crude theft, as well as a decline in output from the oilfields in the restive region, all of the international oil companies (IOCs) that plundered these lands are attempting to rid themselves of their once-lucrative-but-now-problematic assets in the Delta.

“If a community that is the gateway to oil prosperity in Nigeria can be abandoned like this, then what would be the fate of other host communities?”

Last October, four oil majors — the American-owned ExxonMobil, the Norwegian-owned Equinor, the Italian-owned ENI, and the French-owned TotalEnergies — received approval from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) to sell their respective onshore and shallow-water assets in the Niger Delta. Royal Dutch Shell’s divestment was approved soon after. The sale sent shockwaves through communities that are still seeking redress from the historically largest operator in the Niger Delta for damages to their lands, waters, and public health.

This massive scramble to get out of the Delta marks the end of an era for the region, one characterized by international companies’ domination of onshore oil production, massive environmental damage, and human rights abuses. None of these companies have committed to a responsible exit strategy. Which means they are basically passing the onus of environmental remediation onto the new owners, the Nigerian government, and impacted communities like Otuabagi.

“I am angry about what is happening,” Egba told Earth Island Journal. “Just look at us here in Otuabagi. If a community that is the gateway to oil prosperity in Nigeria can be abandoned like this, then what would be the fate of other host communities?”

THE NIGER DELTA is a vast low-lying wetland on the southern edge of Nigeria, where the Niger River drains into the Gulf of Guinea. One of the most biodiverse wetlands in the world, it is home to more than 6,000 species and has immense ecological and economic importance both for Nigeria and the West African subregion. Its mangrove forests, the largest on the continent, are particularly biodiverse, and act as a nursery for many fish, mollusk, and crustacean species that provide essential sustenance to local communities.

Sixty percent of the Delta’s 30 million residents are subsistence farmers and fisherfolk.

The area also contains vast oil and gas reserves — including 37.50 billion barrels in proven crude oil reserves — which are the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy. Nigeria is the largest crude oil producer in Africa, and the eighth largest exporter in the world.

The discovery of crude oil in the Niger Delta in 1956 opened the gateway for Nigeria’s transformation from a pre-colonial agriculture-based economy into a petrostate. But while 70 years of oil exploration have brought huge wealth for Big Oil and a privileged Nigerian elite, oil-bearing communities in the Delta have been left largely in poverty. Several communities in the Niger Delta, including some forcibly evicted by the government, have lost their land entirely to oil development. Others continue to lack basic amenities like public schools, hospitals, electricity, and passable roads.

“Nowhere is the failure of governance and the devastating effects of corporate exploitation more evident than in the Delta.”

“Local people in the Delta are acutely aware of how much wealth oil can produce,” the United Nations Development Programme wrote in a 2006 report. “But for most people, progress and hope, much less prosperity, remain out of reach.”

These same communities bear the cost of crude oil spills from the thousands of kilometers of pipelines that crisscross the land, and gas flaring from wellheads, all of which have transformed the Niger Delta into one of the post polluted places on Earth. Between 1976 and 2001, there were more than 6,817 documented spills from the thousands of oil facilities that are scattered across the landscape. There have been thousands of additional spills since. All told, an estimated 13 million barrels of crude oil have been spilled in the Delta.

The spills have contaminated the region’s surface water, groundwater, air, and soil with hydrocarbons, including known carcinogens like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzo(a)pyrene. In a 2011 report, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found groundwater on land held by the Ogoni ethnic group in Rivers State, one of the nine states constituting the Niger Delta, was contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels over 900 times above those deemed safe by the World Health Organization. A 2023 report commissioned by neighboring Bayelsa State described pollution in the region as an “environmental genocide,” noting that studies connected oil spills to 16,000 neonatal deaths annually in Nigeria, and a life expectancy of 41 years in the Delta compared with the national average of 61 years.

The contamination also harms the fishing and farming occupations of locals. Every year, farmers in the region complain of declining crop yields due to historic and ongoing oil spills. One single incident, the 2005 Ogale oil spill from an onshore field operated by Shell Nigeria Production and Exploration Company, destroyed the livelihoods of an estimated 15,000 residents in the Ogale and Bille communities.

Despite widespread evidence of damage, oil companies regularly deny responsibility for the spills, often blaming sabotage and pipeline vandalism instead. But industry watchdogs say that, while these factors do play a role, the companies deliberately overstate the case in order to evade responsibility for a majority of the spills caused by aging, poorly-maintained infrastructure. A recent study of pipelines in six states of the Niger Delta found that leaks, often caused by corrosion, constituted 86.8 percent of failures resulting in product loss.

“Nowhere is the failure of governance and the devastating effects of corporate exploitation more evident than in the Niger Delta,” Akinbode Oluwafemi, executive director of the human rights organization Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), told Earth Island Journal.

In an attempt to remedy this, and in response to the UNEP 2011 report on pollution of Ogoniland, considered one of the most impacted parts of the Delta, the Nigerian government launched a $1-billion cleanup and restoration program to be mostly paid for by oil firms. The cleanup, which began in 2017, is expected to take between 25 and 30 years. However, ongoing oil spills in the area have outpaced the cleanup, casting doubt on the prospect of full remediation of Ogoniland.

Apart from Ogoniland, there’s little happening in terms of cleanup in other polluted communities across the sprawling 70,000-sq-km delta. That includes Bayelsa State where Egba lives. Two years ago, a state commission estimated it would take at least $12 billion to clean up and restore Bayelsa. Community members and watchdog groups, therefore, have reason to worry that the Western oil majors’ asset transfers — primarily to complex networks of domestic investors that are hard to keep track of — will worsen the situation.

“Multiple investors are entering and exiting the sector … with no information provided to nearby communities or civil society. It is often unclear who the owners and operators are that communities have to deal with, and in some instances, Shell remains a shadowy presence behind the scenes,” the Dutch nonprofit, Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, or SOMO, wrote in a 2024 report analyzing Shell’s divestment moves. “The money behind several of the new ventures appears to be precarious, with massive risks in terms of the ability of companies to pay for the upkeep and proper decommissioning of wells and other infrastructure.” (SOMO said much of its analysis applies to other US and European oil majors as well.)

For instance, between 2010 and 2021, Shell sold its interest in 12 oil mining leases in the Delta to 10 domestic oil companies, each of which is owned by business consortiums comprising anything from three to five or more companies. In March of this year, the Anglo-Dutch firm divested all of its oil assets in the Delta, keeping only a 25.6 percent stake in a joint gas venture, Nigeria LNG Limited, when it finalized the sale of its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, to Renaissance Africa Energy Company (RAEC). RAEC is a consortium of five energy companies — the international group Petrolin, and four Nigerian-owned businesses that industry watchdogs say have neither adequate funding nor requisite experience in the energy sector.

Given the inexperience of the buyers, some point to the possibility that the sales are a front. “We think it is either Shell has [loaned] them money to take over its own asset or somebody somewhere, possibly some corrupt politicians, gave them the money,” says Isaac Botti, a program director with the civil society group Social Action.

The 2015 sale, by Shell and its joint-venture partners TotalEnergies and Eni, of Oil Mining Lease 29 to Nigerian firm Aiteo Eastern E&P offers a glimpse into what can happen when less experienced domestic companies take over high-risk assets. At the time of the sale, nearby community members said the oil infrastructure in the lease was poorly maintained and unsafe.

Six years after the purchase, an oil blowout occurred at one of the well platforms included in the sale, leading to a crude oil leak that took the company a month to cap. More than 4,320,000 gallons of crude oil were released before the leak was contained by an American blowout-control company that had to be called in to plug the well. An investigation by a local newspaper, Premium Times, found that a series of missteps by Aiteo, and a lack of capacity or planning to address spills, worsened the impact, subjecting villagers, aquatic ecosystems, and the broader environment to avoidable damage from what has been described as the biggest oil-spill disaster in the history of Nigeria’s petroleum industry.

IN EXPLAINING ITS divestments, Shell has referenced security challenges involved with managing onshore investments, and the desire to “simplify its presence” in Nigeria to focus on deepwater oil and integrated gas projects in the country. It has also suggested that the divestments are part of its strategy to reach “net zero” emissions, a rationale that, SOMO points out, doesn’t align with its recent investments in other fossil fuel assets in the country.

Activists and community members point to oil companies’ mounting liability for environmental damage as a significant factor. They note that there has been an increase in community-led lawsuits against international companies operating in Nigeria in recent years. Shell, in particular, has been the target of litigation, some of which has been successful, including a £55-million settlement between Shell and the Bodo community in 2014, and a 2021 Dutch court order requiring Shell to pay $111 million to the Ejama-Ebubu community of Ogoniland.

“The divestment is a scam,” Phillip Godfrey, an activist who heads the Bayelsa State office of the Youth and Environmental Advocacy Centre, told Earth Island Journal. “The [international oil corporations] are thinking ahead. They know a time is coming when they will no longer be able to avoid paying for the crimes they have committed. This is why they want to run away … They are pulling out from onshore to offshore where the communities will not be able to see all the shenanigans they are doing, including pollution.”

Shell did not respond to a request for comment on these allegations.

THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE around divestment is complicated. The country’s 1969 Petroleum Act doesn’t say much on the issue, though it required divestment deals to have the consent of the Minister of Petroleum Resources, a position held by the President. That act is now superseded by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) of 2021, which addresses divestment in more detail, but doesn’t apply to older leases. Under the PIA, buying companies are to be vetted by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) before an application by the divesting company is approved by the minister. The NUPRC is required to consider the buyers’ technical and financial capacity, including their ability to fulfill well-decommissioning and abandonment obligations.

Indeed, the NUPRC initially rejected Shell’s sale to Renaissance, noting that Renaissance wasn’t qualified to responsibly handle the assets. However, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu went ahead and approved it last year, prompting protest by activists, which briefly paused the deal.

Some organizers point to the close connection between international oil companies and Nigerian officials, particularly President Tinubu, who has held positions with both domestic and international oil companies, to explain the approval. “The president has an entrenched interest in the oil and gas sector, and this explains why, despite our resistance, the divestment succeeded,” Botti, of civic group Social Action, said.

Defending the government decision, Heineken Lokpobiri, a junior minister of petroleum, said in a recent interview that “divestment is a global practice. If you want to attract investments, you must also allow people to divest when they want to.”

“Any divestment must be with the concurrence or knowledge of host communities.”

Local communities and advocates are pushing back, calling on the Nigerian government to hold international companies responsible for damage before they exit the region. That includes King Bubaraye Dakolo, Agada IV of Ekpetiama Kingdom in Bayelsa State. The kingdom has joined a lawsuit by several civil society groups against the Nigerian government and Shell, demanding a halt to the divestment pending full environmental remediation and reparations to impacted communities.

“Shockingly, the people of Ekpetiama woke up one day to hear the rumor that Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, with the parent company, have divested and sold their oil assets … to a hitherto unknown entity in the oil industry, Renaissance African Energy Ltd., and this was done surreptitiously without recourse to the host communities,” says Chuks Oguru, the lawyer who is representing the plaintiffs in the case.

“Any divestment must be with the concurrence or knowledge of host communities,” he added. “Secondly, there must be a plan to safely decommission and abandon obsolete infrastructures. Thirdly, there must be remediation of environment and payment of compensation to the people.”

International law would tend to support their claims.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct both require consultation with stakeholders, remedy for impacted communities, and environmental due diligence when it comes to oil asset sales.

In March, after Shell’s sale was finalized, 195 representatives of local and international civil society organizations signed an open letter to Shell demanding that it embark on a full cleanup of the Niger Delta and provide transparency around how the process will occur. “The history of the energy transition is being written now,” they write. “Shell’s exit from the Niger Delta will, in this history, stand as perhaps the emblematic example of the global oil industry’s irresponsible divestment strategy, passing toxic assets and liabilities to others.”

GROWING UP UNDER the shadows of deteriorating wellheads and manifolds, Egba knows well the lasting toll oil extraction has had not only on the Otuabagi landscape, but also the health of her generation. She recalls how, when she was a child, the elders in her village believed the crude that was left in the wellheads after Shell’s departure was a healing liquid brought by God. When children were sick, they would rub it on their skin.

It was not until Egba went into secondary school and studied subjects like biology and chemistry that she began to realize the danger she was in. “When I reached a particular age, I saw that even the crops that grow in those oil-polluted areas … may be dangerous to our health,” she said. “I feel bad and frustrated, but it is like you are just angry, but you don’t have power either to say or do anything.”

Egba, who is now 45, hasn’t been able to conceive yet. Although she can’t know for sure that her infertility is connected to oil extraction, she suspects as much.

Her suspicions are well founded. A recent study into the reproductive health impacts of oil extraction in the Otuabagi community by the nonprofit Kebetcache Women Development & Resource Centre found high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in blood samples taken from 80 participating women, some of which were 12,000 times higher than limits established by the World Health Organization. PAHs are known to negatively impact reproductive health, and some are also known carcinogens. The report stressed that, nearly five decades after oil production stopped in Otuabagi, women continue to bear the scar of pollution.

It is these types of life-changing impacts for which advocates are demanding redress before international oil companies pack up and go.

“Compensation must go beyond token gestures and reflect the full extent of the harm inflicted on these people and their ecosystems,” says CAPPA executive director Oluwafemi. “The opportunity to hold those who have profited immensely from the region’s resources accountable must not be squandered.”