LAGOS— THE Kula community in Rivers State lifted its blockade of three oil pumping stations yesterday after energy giants, Shell and ChevronTexaco, agreed to discuss funding local development projects. The three plants had been occupied since Sunday morning by protesters from the ethnic Ijaw fishing community of Kula, which lies in coastal swamps near the Atlantic coast 100 kilometres south-west of Port Harcourt.
The end of the protest saw more than 100 oil workers, who had been blockaded on board the stations, freed, including an American and a South African. But the firms said they had yet to resume production at the sites, which pump 90,000 barrels of crude per day from a network of swampland oil wells.
"We’ve agreed to meet with the protesters in Port Harcourt tomorrow (today) to discuss the issues that they have raised," a spokesman for the US major, ChevronTexaco, said by telephone from London.
A Shell spokesman confirmed the occupation was over. "They have all left. They have gone to an adjoining village called Freetown," he said, also speaking from London, where the Anglo-Dutch multinational is based. Two of the sites, Ekulama I and Ekulama II, are operated by Shell and the third, Robertkiri, by ChevronTexaco.
Both firms are now due to meet representatives of the Kula community in Port Harcourt.
"The deputy governor has set up a committee to look into ways of resolving the situation," said Emmanuel Okah, spokesman for the Rivers State government. Okah said the government had made contact with the protesters and hoped to persuade the oil companies to spend more on local development in Kula. "They have to meet certain social obligations to the community," he said. "These are not armed youths, they are not violent."
Managing Director of Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary SPDC, Mr Basil Omiyi, said: "They say they want to have a memorandum of understanding with us, like the neighbouring communities. We hope to sort it out in the next few days." Shell and other oil companies working in the Niger Delta sign "memoranda of understanding" with villages to record promises to fund local development, such as job creation schemes, building work and supplies of electricity and water.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and the fifth largest exporter in the world, supplying 2.5 million barrels of light sweet crude to the international market, mainly to the United States and Europe.
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