…Say, project has recorded commendable milestone
By: Emmanuel Nlewedum
Co-ordinator of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) Dr. Marvin Dekil has said that the Ogoni clean-up exercise as recommended by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Report has recorded commendable milestones.
Dekil’s position was contained in a special report by HYPREP on the progress of the Ogoni cleanup project titled; ERA’S NO CLEAN-UP, NO JUSTICE REPORT: THE UNPUBLISHED PART which was in reaction to an earlier report on the assessment of the on-going project by Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth (ERA), Nigeria in collaboration with Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth Europe and Milieudefensie.
The Project Co-ordinator who described the report as misleading, unethical and a deliberate effort to obfuscate the truth said, claims by ERA were out of synchronization and do not reflect current realities in the office and on the field where HYPREP is remediating.
He maintained that despite all amount of propaganda against the agency, the project has recorded commendable milestones in its operations.
The report reads, “Misrepresentation and suppression of facts, mischief making and hidden agenda aptly summarize the Thursday 18th June 2020 report launched in Port Harcourt, Nigeria by Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria with the active collaboration of Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth Europe and Milieudefensie as an assessment of the on-going environmental clean-up of Ogoniland under the banner “NO CLEAN-UP, NO JUSTICE.
“While the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) does not claim perfection but sees its operations as work in progress, the project has recorded commendable milestones in its operations. Several claims by the authors of the report are out of synchronization with current realities in the office and on the field where HYPREP is remediating.
“To start with, it is misleading to paint the picture that HYPREP has spent nine years doing nothing in terms of implementing the UNEP report on Ogoniland, when in fact the current Project Coordination Office of HYPREP was set up in March 2017 (that is three years and some months later), within which period it has achieved all that the authors of the report are now labelling no clean-up. The NO CLEAN-UP, NO JUSTICE report is written in English and one wonders whether the semantic contents of the words, no, lack and failure as used freely and ubiquitously in the report have changed or that the authors are not aware of their meanings or deliberately did so for the purpose of calling a dog a bad name in order to hang it, maybe to please their sponsors.
“The authors of the report acknowledged detailed response of HYPREP to their questions in the course of making the report as stated clearly on page 6 paragraphs 4 of the report, “researchers wrote to HYPREP, Shell and the Nigerian government. HYPREP and Shell provided detailed responses” but alas the responses were not published just so they can justify their premeditated conclusions.
While disclosing that the agency has been faced with pockets of challenges that has affected the pace of work, Dekil said “The “researchers” that supplied the information that was used to draw up the sketchy and hasty conclusions reached in the report went to the field and saw genuine challenges inhibiting the pace of work such as: “there has been an increase in artisanal refining and sabotage, causing pollution”,
“By May 2020, most sites had closed down. Some of the sites stopped work due to the COVID-19 lockdown in parts of Rivers State. To date, contractors hired by HYPREP have begun work on 10 of the less complex category B sites. researchers from ERA visited 19 out of the 21 lots in March and April 2020. They observed that there had been some work done at all locations”,
“HYPREP responded to concerns raised by ERA, by stating that it had worked on the planning and tender process between April 2017 and December 2019;
“HYPREP has organized many community-level events about the clean-up and the environmental impact of illegal refining” P25; “researchers also observed in some sites free-phase oil on the ground-water. This makes clean-up more complicated and could delay the remediation of the site”, P18; but decided to run unsavory commentaries on them to suit themselves and their inordinate mission.
The Project Co-ordinator further went on to say, “The authors of the report stated in one breath that limited progress has been recorded on the project and in the next line posited that the project is a failure. It is a pointer to the motive behind the making of the report.
“Notwithstanding the grouse of the authors of the report against some institutions and organizations that the gazette of HYPREP mandates to sit on the Governing Council and Board of Trustees of the Project, all members of Council and the Board are competent individuals whose contributions are invaluable to the success of the project. The Federal Government setup the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in which NNPC and International Oil Companies (IOCs) including Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has a representation on their Board of Governance, because they are financial contributors to the operation of the Commission.
“The wisdom of the Federal Government to ensure that financial contributors are adequately represented on the Board of governance of any Commission, Agency or Project, is to ensure accountability and probity in the use of the funds. This applies to HYREP Governing Council in which NNPC and International Oil Companies (IOCs) including Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) are represented.
“ERA in their unguided bias and mischievous prejudice regard the representation as conflict of interest. This is far from the truth and reality.
He said ERA and its partners who are the authors of the report opted for historic images and earlier pictures of the set up remediation sites as evidence to tell their one-sided story instead of using recent and up to date pictures of the state of remediation work in Ogoniland.
“Such act is not only unethical, but a deliberate effort to obfuscate the truth and that runs contrary to the rules of making a scientific report which the, NO CLEAN-UP, NO JUSTICE report claims to be.
“Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria did not bother to consult HYPREP while going to remediation sites to get their data and therefore were not able to get detailed information on what they saw in the field. This made their report incomplete and defective rather than one that is constructive and valuable as it ought to be for the implementation of the project and better inform the public on the progress and challenges of the project.
“ERA would have succeeded in putting up a balanced, constructive and progressive report that its rich content would have been sought after for the implementation of similar projects outside Ogoniland; and lest we forget, it would be too early to pass such a harsh and hasty judgment on a project that is estimated to take between twenty-five and thirty years to implement, while we are only in year three and not nine as ERA erroneously reported except its aim is to kill it in infancy, but it would not succeed.
“ERA reported that UNEP had identified 67 sites, covering a surface area of 943 hectares, as in need of clean-up, but HYPREP has covered only 106 hectares representing only 11% of the total assessed area of 943 hectares. What ERA do not understand is that the 943 hectares assessed by UNEP in 2009/2010 do not translate to the area impacted by hydrocarbon pollution but represents the size of area covered by UNEP investigation. The actual area contaminated and scoped for remediation is determined by delineation process within the assessed area. The delineation exercise is an ongoing process by HYPREP. Therefore, the 11% coverage of area undergoing remediation is not correct account of the actual hydrocarbon contaminated area or remediation.
“ERA report stated that ERA researchers observed serious flaws in the construction of the bio-cells at some sites, which are likely to negatively impact on the remediation. In addition, many drainage tanks seem to be too small. Some bio-cells contained too much soil, which can also impact the remediation process. In addition, in some sites, heavily and lightly contaminated soils appeared to be mixed before treatment in the bio- cells. Researchers also observed in some sites free-phase oil on the groundwater. This makes clean-up more complicated and could delay the remediation of the site.
“HYPREP has issued guidelines to all contractors on how to construct and operate an engineered biocell including a leachate sump. The size of the leachate sump depends on the size of the biocell and the operation efficiency. The leachate sump provides a close-circuit process for managing hydrocarbon leachate from the biocell by allowing re-circulation of leachates for biodegradation. ERA visited some of the sites (lot 11, Lot 20, Lot 14, Lot 16) in which construction of biocell and leachate sump was in progress and quickly concluded that work was poorly done. ERA once again failed to be objective by not reporting on the situation of both completed and ongoing sites; hence no picture of a completed site was shown. The picture of Lot 10, is storm water in an excavated fenced pit, undergoing remediation. ERA failed to show the fence in their picture because of their negative disposition.
“Though the category B sites are considered simple sites, it was envisaged that contaminated groundwater either from storm wash-off of the overlying contaminated soil or infiltration of unrecovered spilled oil will be encountered at some sites. Provision for recovery and disposal of such oil or waste hydrocarbon was made in the contract.
“ERA visited Lot 9 at Mogho and painted a negative report. However, this is a site in which remediation work has not started because of ongoing illegal refining and sand mining at the site. HYPREP is engaging the traditional council and relevant authorities to resolve this issue.
On funds released to HYPREP for the project, Dr. Dekil said, “It is important to clear all misunderstandings between funds released to the Federal Ministry of Environment, approved budget and funds released to HYPREP for the clean-up project. A take-off grant of $10m was released to the Federal Ministry of Environment in 2017, the Governing Council in 2018 approved a budget of $130m (N41b) and N10.2b was released by the Board of Trustees (BoT) in the first quarter of 2019. As at today, the total amount released by BoT is $30.8m.
“The clean-up of Ogoniland is a flagship project that has never been carried out anywhere and there is no existing template to adopt; rather the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) is inventing the wheel and making history,” he said
He reiterated the commitment of the President Muhammadu Buhari, led administration to the overall clean-up of the Niger Delta and other parts of the country where there is oil spill, beginning with Ogoniland for as recommended in the UNEP report on the environmental assessment of Ogoniland.
“The commitment of the President is absolute and unwavering, and he will go down in history as the first Nigerian President to have undertaken a comprehensive and scientific remediation of oil spill in the country”.
