UPDATED: Burning fire in Ondo community destroys everything, wreaks livelihoods but Abuja looks away

Awoye, an Ondo coastal community approximately 145 kilometres from Akure, is at the brink of disappearing. The threat is coming from an abandoned offshore Oil Well known as Ororo-1, which has been burning for three-and-half years nonstop.

 

Those with the powers to do something about it in Akure or Abuja, appeared unconcerned, even as the inferno has been wasting away lands, sacking residents from their abodes, leaving fisher folks, the primary occupation of the people, with nothing to live on.

 

According to satellite image, the Awoye fire started on May 15, 2020 at the Ororo-1 Well, located off the Awoye coast, in shallow water Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95. For this three and half years, the Nigerian government has moved on as if nothing is wrong despite the problem being an existential threat to people of Awoye and overall climate change.

 

“We no longer see fish to catch in the last three years of the fire,” says an Awoye fisher folk, Temilorun Ajimisogbe during an engagement on Monday with the media and civil society in Lagos.

 

A mother, Taiwo Ilabiri, also an Awoye indigene said their economy now revolves around picking periwinkles to sell since the fishes are no more.

 

Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF),  Dr Nnimmo Bassey, speaking on Monday during the engagement, said the Nigerian government is committing a crime against humanity by allowing the fire to burn unchecked.

 

He said: “The fire happened on 15th May 2020 from what we see on record. The oil well was first drilled by Chevron in 1986, and they plugged it with a steel plug because from what we read, the pressure from the Well was very high and difficult to handle, so they plugged it, secured it and left it.

 

“More than 30 years later, that well was given to Guaranty Petroleum and Owena Oil and Gas Limited. Owena Oil and Gas Limited is a company set up by the Ondo State government. They were given the Oil Well that had been plugged 30 years earlier.

 

“Within the time they were expected to fully develop that Well, they didn’t. So, the Department of Petroleum Resources cancelled the allocation. Their ownership was nullified. In fact, the Owena Oil and Gas Limited did challenge the federal government for nullifying their ownership of that Oil Well without being consulted.

 

“But while that back and forth was going on, these companies who probably were not able to complete the development of the well on time, continue and the pressure was so high that it broke through two blowout preventors. One, within the well, and one between the well and the skin of the well. That is, between the pipes and the wall of the well. So, both failed, and the meaning is that the blowout protectors were of insufficient capacities to handle the pressure in that oil well.

 

“Now, that accident happened. Government officials said it could be stopped within six weeks if they had the right contractors to stop it. But three and half years down the road, the fire is still burning,” the environmentalist said.

 

 

Bassey said since the government nullified the allocation of the Well to Guaranty Petroleum and Owena Oil and Gas Limited, it meant the ownership of the Well reverted to the federal government. “So, the federal government owned that fire and they have a duty to stop it. It is a crime against humanity, a crime mother earth and it is not anything that should be condoned,” he said.

 

 

Bassey said neither the Ondo State Government nor the Federal Government is saying anything about it or doing anything about it.

 

“Whereas the people are suffering and are just barely surviving. If you listen to the community people they will tell you how they have lost their lands, lost their houses.

 

“That fire is not just an eye sore in the ocean, it’s not just killing the fishes and killing the aquatic ecosystem, It is also magnifying the problem of global warming, because millions of tons of greenhouse gasses are been released from that inferno into the atmosphere. And so the more climate change is promoted by incidence like that, the more you are having higher ocean temperatures, you are having higher salinity of the ocean, you have sea level rise and more coastal erosion,” he said.