Tuesday October 6, 9:54 pm Eastern Time
Activist urges oil companies to leave Nigeria
By Atiya Hussain
NEW YORK, Oct 6 (Reuters) - A leading Nigerian environmental activist is urging U.S. and other international oil companies to leave his country, warning of the likelihood of increasingly militant action by ethnic protesters.
Oronto Douglas, former attorney for the executed Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and founder of the pan-ethnic CHICOCO movement in the Niger Delta, warns that action like Tuesday's, in which local protesters shut in about 400,000 barrels per day (20 percent) of Nigerian oil production, is set to continue.
''In the case of Nigeria, the multinationals, in collaboration with the military, have waged a very vicious and relentless ecological war on our land, which is affecting our present and has mortgaged our future,'' Douglas said. ''We are basically an agrarian culture,'' he added, explaining that land and water pollution associated with petroleum production had taken a drastic toll on fishing and farming in his country.
''Frustration is growing,'' Douglas said, pointing to the increasingly common attacks on oil companies in the Niger Delta.
This year, there have been a growing number of attacks on infrastructure and on oil company workers, including kidnappings and murders, which have led to an unprecedented number of disruptions.
''We are asking Americans to recall multinationals to their homeland. I am here to mobilize opinion to compel the multinational companies not to ruin our today and tomorrow,'' Douglas said, in an interview with Reuters in New York.
There are some U.S. laws that support the Nigerian protesters, but they are limited to local statutes in California and Massachusetts, banning certain dealings until there is a democratic government in Nigeria.
''What I have done is support the message sent by these cities,'' said Douglas. ''We are turning to the ordinary Americans, to the ordinary Europeans who live in freedom,'' he said, adding that he is planning to tour Europe later this month.
Nigeria's state-owned oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC), has six exploration and production joint ventures with U.S. and European companies, including U.S. oil majors Mobil Corp. (NYSE:MOB - news), Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CHV - news), and Texaco Inc. (NYSE:TX - news) ; Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell Group (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: SHEL.L); France's Elf Aquitaine and Italy's Agip SpA .
Douglas expressed concern about recent moves to open up Nigeria's economy, virtually synonymous with the oil sector, which produces nearly two million barrels per day and accounts for about 90 percent of Nigeria's government and export revenue.
Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar, who became Nigeria's military ruler in June after the sudden death of dictator Sani Abacha, recently announced his intention to liberalize Nigeria's economy. Last week, the head of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC), said that the deregulation would begin with prices of petroleum products within Nigeria, and extend to the country's prized upstream sector. The upstream sector involves exploration for and production of crude oil and natural gas.
Douglas's movement does not advocate violent protest but hopes that the oil companies will evaluate the situation and pull out voluntarily, as happened to a large extent in South Africa under apartheid, and more recently in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
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