petergabriel.com

Oilspill info is easy to find but I really like some of the comments people post on this one link. If you notice the inuendo implied by some of the names you too will chuckle a bit. The oilspill is a serious matter though. The Pelicans are everywhere on the news pics. 85 pelicans saved thus far http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/06/gulf-oil-spill-effort-to-contain-spill-stalls.html

http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2010/06/03/les-marees-noires-oubliees-du-delta-du-niger Oil spills in the Niger Delta forgotten For fifty years and in total silence, crude oil spills in continuous streams and pollutes the area. In comparison, the disaster of the Gulf of Mexico appears surmédiatisée. The Guardian 06/03/2010 | John Vidal | We reached the edge of the oil spill near the village of Otuegwe , After a long walk in the fields of cassava. Before us stretched the swamps. We felt the oil well before you see it. A garage and stench of decaying vegetation filled the air. The more we advanced, the more the smell became unbearable. A little later, we swam in pools of Nigerian light crude, the best in the world. Among the hundreds of oil forty years old and corroded by rust that have invaded the Niger Delta, there is one that spilled crude oil for months. Forests and farmland were then covered with a layer of shiny oily liquid. The drinking water wells were polluted. "We lost everything: nets, huts, fishing traps ." remembers Promise, the village chief Otuegwe, who acted as our guide. "Here we fished and worked the land. � We have warned Shell in the early days of flight, but the company did nothing for months. " In fact, the amount of oil escaping annually terminals, pipelines, pumping stations and oil platforms far exceeds anything that is currently flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, site of a major ecological disaster caused by the explosion of the oil rig Deepwater Horizon BP in April . "The oil companies want us dead" This disaster was covered extensively by media around the world. By cons, there is little information on the damage done to the Niger Delta. Yet the destruction of the region gives a more accurate idea of the price to pay for the drilling of oil wells. On 1 May in the state of Akwa Ibom, an oil group ExxonMobil broke, throwing four million gallons of crude in the delta during seven days before the hole is plugged. The people have demonstrated against the oil company, but according to them, they were attacked by the guards. Local leaders are now demanding a billion dollars [820 million] of compensation for diseases contracted and the loss of their livelihoods. Few people expect to succeed. Meanwhile, the sea continues to deposit thick slabs of oil along the coast. In the days that followed the oil slick in the state of Akwa Ibom , the rebels attacked the Trans Niger pipeline Shell located nearby, causing leakage of thousands of barrels of crude. A few days later, a large oil slick floating on the lake Adibawa in Bayelsa State, and another in Ogoniland. "Oil companies do not attach any importance to our lives," laments Williams Mkpa, the village head to Ibeno. "They want our death. In two years we have had ten oil spills and fishermen can not feed their families! This is intolerable! "With 606 oil fields, the Niger Delta produces 40% of total U.S. imports of crude. It is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, of which half have no access to drinking water, fell to just 40 years for two generations. Local people cursed the oil that pollutes the land and find it incredible efforts by BP and the U.S. authorities to close the gap in the Gulf of Mexico and protect coastal Louisiana against the pollution. "If the same mishap had occurred in Nigeria, neither the government nor the oil would not be much concerned, "says writer Ben Ikari. This happens constantly in the delta!The oil companies do not take no account of most of the time. Legislators do not care and the population must live daily with the pollution. The situation is worse than it was thirty years ago. When I see the evil that is given to the United States, I feel an immense sadness at the fact that there are two weights, two measures. "" We see with what energy is trying to fight the tide Black in the United States, " commented Nnimo Bassey, head of Nigeria's environmental organization Friends of the Earth International . "But in Nigeria, oil companies evade the problem and destroy the livelihoods of people and the environment. The spill in the Gulf of Mexico is like a metaphor for what happens every day in the oilfields in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. For fifty years it lasts! Nigerians are totally dependent on the natural environment for drinking water, agriculture and fisheries. � They are amazed to see Bush give a speech a day, because they do not hear a word from their government. " It is impossible to measure the amount of oil spilled in the Niger Delta every year, as oil and Government shall ensure not to disclose the information. However, if one believes two major independent investigations conducted over the past four years, as it pours into the sea each year in the marshes and on land that has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico so far . According to a 2006 report by the World Wide Fund ( WWF ) UK, International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, to 1.5 million tonnes of crude oil - or fifty times the oil spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska - were discharged into the delta during the past half century. In 2009, Amnesty International has calculated that these losses amounted to the equivalent of at least 9 million barrels. The organization accuses the giants of violating human rights. The Nigerian authorities officially identified more than 7,000 oil spills between 1970 and 2000, and 2000 major sites of pollution, the most affected for several decades.Thousands of other, smaller, still waiting for a hypothetical clean. More than a thousand lawsuits have been filed against Shell alone. "There are over 300 oil spills every year" The Anglo-Dutch giant, which has partnered with the Nigerian Delta, says that 98% of the case in question are due to vandalism, theft or sabotage by militants, and only a small part is caused by a deterioration of infrastructure. "We have found 132 cases of pollution last year, against 175 on average. The safety valves have been vandalized. In a pipeline, there were 300 illegal taps. We found five explosive devices on another. Communities will sometimes not allow us access to places for cleaning because they can earn more with compensation, "said a spokesman for the group. The extent of pollution is beyond comprehension and there is great anger. "There is more than 300 oil spills of all sizes each year," indignant Nnimo Bassey. "In Nigeria, the state and the oil came to consider an extraordinarily high level of pollution as the standard. Clearly, BP block any progressive legislation, both the United States than in Nigeria. Here, the oil companies consider themselves above the law and represent a clear danger to the planet.� We must bring these cases before the International Court of Justice. "

For the comments above http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/nigerias-agony-dwarfs-gulf-oil-spill/

Here I thought oil spills were a rare occurence. Thanks for the links.