Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Dr. William Ehwarieme
generation has come under serious threat since the emergence of oil,
first drilled in 1956 from Oloibiri, a small community then in Eastern
Region but in present day Bayelsa State. The full impact of oil, its
attendant oil economy and politics on occupational change are what
we direct our focus in the next section.
Oil, the State, Politics and New Forms Of Survival.
Of all the factors that have affected the economic life of the Niger
Delta, none has had a more profound impact nor produced as much
contradictory effects on the physical environment, society and polity
as oil. Since 1937, when the Anglo-Dutch oil Company Shell D’Arcy
(now SPDC) began prospecting for oil, the environment has been
experiencing systematic degradation. Following the discovery and
drilling of the first oil well in 1956 and subsequent first export in
1958, has been the influx of other oil Multi-National Companies
(MNCs) including Chevron, Texaco, Mobil, and Agip as well as
numerous oil-serving companies. Since the 1970s, the Nigerian state
has also become a major player in the oil industry through its agent,
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which is into
joint venture arrangements with the oil MNCs.
Apart from a
substantial portion of the land that has been taken over by the vast
network of pipelines criss-crossing the entire region, different aspects
of the operations of the oil industry such as exploration, drilling,
export, refining and marketing have been associated with specific
forms of environmental problems and effects on traditional
105