Toting babies and stirring cooking pots, village women have been occupying a Shell Oil installation in a peaceful demonstration for jobs and other benefits amid surging ethnic violence in Nigeria's restive oil delta.
At least 20 people have been killed in the Niger Delta since mid-July in attacks allegedly linked to tribal competition for oil revenues.
PHOTO: AP
Meanwhile, about 80 local women have set up house in Shell's Amukpe pipeline station, after a peaceful takeover in early July.
The female occupiers, village women aged 25 to 60, were demanding the company's Nigerian subsidiary keep its promises of jobs and other benefits for villages in the swampy, forested Niger Delta, a region the size of Scotland.
The women captured the station by driving out workers and changing the locks, protest leaders said.
Their action came in response to the company's moves to build a chain-link fence around the station -- preventing the women from drying the vital local staple, manioc, in the heat of gas flared as an unwanted byproduct of oil.
Shell officials said the company had fenced off the site to protect villagers from being hurt by the burning gas.
"The only benefit of this fire that Shell burns day and night over our village is gone now. We are demanding our due," said Bessie Orhorhe, a 45-year-old protest leader.
Women wearing brightly colored wraparound skirts napped on the concrete floor of the station as others built cooking fires and toddlers played near pumping equipment outside.
"Our children and our husbands ... have never been employed by the company. We want to know: Why they should continue operating here?" Orhorhe asked, of Shell.
A spokesman for Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said the firm had asked the army and police to refrain from using force against the women. Talks were under way to end the impasse, he said.
The women's protest has forced the company to shut the pumping station, which normally accounts for production of 40,000 barrels of crude a day.
Altogether, a wave of protests, kidnappings and ethnic violence since March have led Shell and ChevronTexaco to cut production by a total of 300,000 barrels of crude a day -- one-eighth of Nigeria's total production of 2.2 million barrels daily.
Nigeria is Africa's largest oil exporter and the fifth-biggest source of US oil imports.
Women have taken over oil installations before over the past year, but Niger Delta residents charge oil companies are slow to keep the promises they make in negotiations to end the takeovers.
Ethnic tensions, meanwhile, are running high in nearby towns and villages defended by troops in sandbagged emplacements after rival Ijaw and Itsekiris tribal fighters launched retaliatory raids. The raids have left scores of houses in blackened, smoking ruins and killed more than 20 people.
Villagers said the tribal battles were motivated by competition over oil profits. Activists have long accused the Nigerian government and multinationals of diverting most of the money away from the Delta -- where most of Nigeria's oil is pumped -- and leaving the ethnic militants to fight over the remainder.
Despite its mineral riches, the Delta is one of Nigeria's most impoverished regions with few roads, schools, clinics or other services.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was