Oil Pollution In The Niger Delta

Situated along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea is a region about the size of South Carolina that offers a land full of sweet, light crude oil, known as the Niger Delta (Delta). The Delta sits within the country of Nigeria in West Africa and is in a constant state of crisis, underpinned by a multitude of key issues. Those issues include severe poverty, soil and water contamination, high infant mortality rates, low life expectancy, depletion of natural resources, corruption, and armed militia groups. These issues have one thing in common: oil.

Oil Pollution in Earth’s oceans is a tremendous problem the environment, organisms, and humans are facing today. Pollution from petroleum products are extremely toxic to many marine organisms, including microorganisms that are the support of the aquatic food chain. Oil is a substance that can disperse under and across the surface of water for thousands of meters. Shorelines are left covered with this oil and it can be hard to remove (Friedland). The United States depends enormously on oil. On average, the United States uses 793 million gallons of oil per day, with a cost of $2 billion dollars each day. It is the world’s biggest oil consumer. The combined oil consumption of Japan, Russia, China, and India are far way less than that of the U.S (“The Great Invisible Discussion Guide”). Burning oil produces a big amount of greenhouse gases. It is “the largest single fuel of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S” (“The Great Invisible Discussion Guide”). Having dependence on oil can have significant costs, including an increased risk of oil spills. One of the biggest oil leaks occurred in 2010. It happened in an offshore platform on a BP operation in the Gulf of Mexico (Friedland).

Niger Delta region, placing the Nigerian oil output down to a third of its capacity” (Klare 3).

The demand for oil is ever expanding as the world’s energy needs continue to increase resulting in companies striving to meet the demand for oil production. The huge costs of oil importation are what ultimately push the need to tap into our backyard rather than import oil from countries around the world for significantly higher prices. While oil corporations can be credited with providing people minimized costs of products due to their offshore oil drilling efforts. The fact of the matter is that having a cleaner environment is seen as being more vital than having a cheaper product at the cost of an unhealthier environment. Though, many experts agree that the potential risks of offshore oil drilling are often exaggerated, recent disasters such as the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill have proven

During use, new oil picks up toxic chemicals, carcinogenic hydrocarbons, and heavy metals which harm the environment and public health when used oil is disposed of improperly. One pint of oil can produce a slick covering approximately one acre of water. Used oil in waterways threatens fish, waterfowl, insects and aquatic life. In salt water, oil kills the microscopic plankton and algae that form the base of the marine food web. Very small amounts of oil spilled in the habitat of fish and shellfish can contaminate their flavor. Used oil seeps through landfills and soils to contaminate groundwater supplies. One quart of oil can foul the taste and purity of 250,000 gallons of water. Used oil applied to roads as a dust suppressant causes water

    At some point in our daily activities, we all draw upon a reserve of one or more of earth's natural resources, One of the most crucial of these being crude oil. It and its derivatives are used as primary sources of energy and thus, crude oil it is constantly in high demand. In order to meet this demand in the most economical fashion, oil companies have made offshore drilling into a common practice. However, offshore drilling is devastating to the environment in several ways. As a result of the equipment and methods used to extract the oil, high levels of pollution are released into the ocean, disturbing nearby ecosystems. Secondly, the high level of drilling is consistently

For example, Shell Oil, an MNC (Multi National Corporation), extracted 50% of Nigeria’s yearly crude output, and 14% of its own output from the Niger delta region (The Changing Nature of Third World Exploitation, 1995). Though a large number of the local populace was recruited by Shell to serve as the basic labor force, there has been no change in the deplorable conditions the locals were living in. Over a period of 15 years, due to massive and widespread oil spills, heavy land degradation of the alluvial soil has taken place. The locals, who come from an agriculture based society, have in effect, been deprived of their ancestral way of life, their heritage, all due to the greed driven actions of the partly

that the industry has on Nigeria’s environment. Since the drilling for oil began in Nigeria,

Pollution is a dangerous thing. It can really hurt or even kill animals. Why is there so much pollution and how can we stop it? Why there was so much pollution and is there a way to stop it. We are going to be taking hydrogel and pouring a spoonful of oil into it and seeing how long it takes to contaminate. We think that the used oil we become thickest with the hydrogen. Our three pronged thesis is oil effect, contamination, and pollution solution.

Despite the positive development of oil and gas industry in this last decade, there is something more valuable have been put on the line. The environment needs to pay for every single mistake made by the human. One of the greatest mistakes in humankind history is an oceanic oil spill. It has become a major environmental problem that the world is facing right now. History has shown how this problem could go. From the first major commercial spill of 1967 in the United Kingdom, up to the most recent one, at BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig, that leaked thousands barrel of oil into the Gulf of Mexico since April 2010. Most large-scale oil spills have been disastrous and the marine wildlife is still recovering. Hence, the tension for a better cleanup technology increases.

The environmental impact of an oil spill can last for decades. In 1969, an oil tanker ran aground in Buzzard's Bay Massachusetts, spilling 175,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the marine ecosystem. According to Dr. Judy McDowell and Christopher Reddy, two scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, it took about a decade for the normal inhabitants of the bay to return. What's more troubling, is that even 40 years later, soil samples still reek of diesel fuel (Guarino & Spotts, 2010, p. 2). This kind of damage can have an irreparable effect on the gulf states' economies. If it takes 10

In this paper am going to examine the factors contributing to oil spills, and their effects on marine and terrestrial ecosystems. This addition of phytoplankton leads to depletion of oxygen levels in water, making it hard for survival of animal and plant population in the water.  These oil spills do not only affect the marine system but also the chronic urban contamination and the economic loss. The oil spill has total effect on marine life despite the distance from the oil spill. The closer the oil spill is to the shoreline, the more damage it causes.  The effects are also felt toward the offshore and the coastal environment.

Production of these resources also causes damage to the environment. This can be either through the damage caused by the extraction of the resource or the disposal of them at the end of their life span (Royal Automobile Club, 2013). The drilling and extraction of oil is quite complex and can leave numerous opportunities for error or accidents. Contamination is eminent via the large waste pits, often left unlined and open affecting many of the surrounding water sources. Flames from burning the natural gas found in oil fields also cause significant air pollution. Oil spills, accidents and illegal dumping of oil barrels lead to devastating ecological and health consequences that can

(Excessive water production in Sudanese oil fields the environmental impacts, treatment solutions and some success)

Another definition of sludge - A dense, slushy, liquid-to-semifluid product that accumulates as an end result of an