All language subtitles for [English] Black Snow_ Nigeria’s Oil Catastrophe [DownSub.com]

Our people cannot sleep
without having soot

as a thing to worry.

It's terrible.

It's actually terrible.

You wake up in the morning
to black particles.

Everyone you meet in Port Harcourt

has stories about what
they call black soot

caused by the manufacturing
and consumption

of these fuel products in
the illegal refineries.

This black soot has been
falling from the sky

in a region key to Nigeria's
economy for about five years.

Oil theft known as bunkering
and the refining of its spoils

is worsening the damage from decades

of fossil fuel exploitation,

creating one of the world's

most severe ecological disasters.

The illegal oil bunkering is a sabotage

to the economy of the nation.

It's very dangerous to
the health of our people

and we cannot sit down
and see our people dying.

Our sacred forests, our homes

have to give way to oil wells

and no one gets much benefit.

But stealing and refining oil

is a major source of income

in a country where wages are meager

and more than half of working age adults

are either unemployed or under employed.

Many believe that efforts
to stop the illegal trade

will be in vain and that
the health of the people

of the Niger Delta will
continue to suffer.

Imagine a resident of Port Harcourt

who inhales this soot
every second in 24 hours,

seven days a week, 30 days in a month

and for years now.

We are dying slowly but surely

and our lifespan is reducing every day.

Half a century

after prospecting began in Nigeria,

Shell and BP struck crude in 1956.

♪ We've been waiting to sell
in bridge Nigeria is spring ♪

In 1960, when the country declared

independence from the British empire,

citizens were hopeful that
their newfound resource

would bring prosperity to their nation,

but the years following would be volatile,

giving away to civil war and a
succession of military coups.

Nevertheless, Nigeria established itself

as a major oil exporter,
but this came at a price.

There have been many, many years

in the last 40 or 50 years

where oil sales have
accounted for more than 90%

of Nigeria's export earnings
and when oil has contributed

well over 50% of government income,

all this easy money from oil and gas

meant that the government neglected

other areas of the economy
that should have been key

to Nigeria's development,
such as agriculture,

basic manufacturing, and mining.

Aside from oil companies

and a privileged few Nigerians
in business and politics,

the country as a whole
has seen minimal benefits

from being Africa's biggest petro state.

One only has to visit the Niger Delta

to see the extent to
which the wealth generated

by the deposits there has
not been shared equally.

It's a region in which most people live

in really quite impoverished conditions.

There isn't much in way of employment

and you will not find anyone
who lives in the Delta

who thinks that their
people have got a fair deal

out of 60 something
years of oil production.

We drink this river water.

Then if you don't have
money, you drink this water.

Then if you have money, you
buy the water and drink.

In the '90s, in a area called Ogoniland,

a very charismatic activist
called en Saro-wiwa

launched a campaign against
Shell's operations in the area,

accusing it of causing immense levels

of environmental degradation.

These demonstrations
caused Shell's operations

to shut down and exit the area,

but the activists were met
with swift and violent action

at the hands of Nigeria's
then-military dictatorship.

Ledum Mitee is a lawyer, activist,

and survivor of that tumultuous era.

Ken and this other of my
colleagues were executed.

I stood trial with Ken and I was lucky

that I was found not guilty and released.

The fate of ken Saro-wiwa and his comrades

laid the path for a violent
backlash in the 2000s

where militants who preferred
to call themselves agitators

blew up pipelines, attacked
oil and gas facilities,

and kidnapped employees.

Most times, people I ask them,

"Why are they resorting
to armed struggle?"

And the people ask me, "Why shouldn't I?

You guys went no- violently
are you were killed.

So we are not gonna wait to be killed

before we carry the arms."

And that's how militants,

they took over the rest of the region.

People were angry because
they were not getting

what they thought were their just rewards

from the oil from their land

and they decided to sabotage
the pipelines and all that.

We met with a former militant leader,

a former agitator leader who
goes by the nomme de guerre

of Osama Bin Laden.

That name because of what
we used to blow the pipe

and do all those things.

That was our bush name.

We are suffering.

You will see charcoal everywhere.

See this thing?

I can see the stain on the clothes.

Our objective that time is that

they cannot collect our oil

without making our place okay for us.

Do you see?

If they're getting the oil from us,

they should make our place fine.

The Ogoniland native is one of the leaders

in a loose coalition of
heavily armed militias

that carried out a campaign,
which at its height,

reduced Nigeria's oil
production by up to 40%.

This violence became so
bad in the late 2000s

and was having such a negative impact

on Nigeria's daily oil output

that the then president
offered the main leaders

and their men an amnesty program.

The leaders got properties

and lucrative business
opportunities for disarming

and their men got monthly stipends

which they still receive to this day.

Now he prefers to present
himself as a peacemaker.

This will encourage me to do more

and make sure that the Ogoni people,

all the place have peace, thank you.

If we lay down our arms,
they will empower us.

They will find job for our boys.

Then they will make sure that
the environment here is okay.

But the environment is anything but okay

and many of the jobs
that have been created

are in the black market.

Much of the crude oil

that is stolen from pipelines

makes its way to illegal refineries

that are situated deep in the creeks

and deep in the forests
of the Niger Delta,

far from the prying
eyes of the government.

It's at these sites

where the entire industry
of illegal refining,

which is commonly known in the Delta

as kpo fire takes place.

The products that they produce

in these refining sites
are sold to traders

who go and sell these products
throughout the Niger Delta

and throughout the wider country.

The government currently estimates

that up to 150,000 barrels
of oil are stolen every day

equivalent to about 10%
of official production.

Some industry figures estimate the scale

of the theft is even greater.

So what we are seeing today

is the flip side of the same militancy

instead of breaking pipelines,

just to spite the government
and the oil companies,

we break pipelines to make money

through illegal refining.

The tapping of pipelines, stealing of oil,

and the emissions from
the refining process

have added another complication

to the region's environmental
crisis and as expected,

it's affecting the health and wellbeing

of local inhabitants.

We first observed these
medical refining issues

that culminated into the
appearance of the soot

in Port Harcourt and its metropolis

sometime in 2017 when it
became very much visible

and since then we've been
having issues with respiration,

issues with the heart,
issues with the liver,

issues with the kidneys of residents

of Port Harcourt and its environments.

The complaints are valuable.

They're not static.

They are just too many.

And this is what we inhale every day.

If we bathe our body, it's charcoal.

If we step on the ground,
everywhere is charcoal.

This issue of black soot is not new.

It's been around for a couple of years,

but the governor told
us that he was obliged

to launch his war against illegal refining

because the problem had become so bad.

What we did was from our own vigilante

to monitor what is going on.

I cannot tell you here authoritatively

that we have completely stopped.

I can say that we have been able

to reduce the level of
these illegal activities.

If identify a site, I'll destroy it.

Since launching his crusade,

the governor's task force

claimed to have found and destroyed

at least 480 of the so-called ovens

used for cooking the crude oil.

The governor declared a
total war on illegal refinery

to keep the people of Rivers State alive.

You can't drink from the water.

You can't do anything from this place

because of these activities
of illegal oil refineries.

This is the route.

They bring in their speed boats here.

On drums and barrels?
Yes, in barrels.

You can smell oil.
Crude, yes, it's crude.

All our rivers here are gone.

The environment is messed up.

We have published names.

We have also conducting
house to house arrest.

When we visited a site

which had recently been
dismantled and destroyed

by the local government,
it really gave us a sense

of the size of this industry
in this very small area.

If we don't destroy the
heart of the activity.

which is the illegal refining centers,

then the crude will be cooked,

the soot will still be in the air,

and you just be scratching the surface.

We have done what the
governor has told us to do

and it has yielded huge amount of results.

That was one small area in River State.

So if there was that
many ovens just there,

it gives an impression of
how many might be elsewhere

throughout the Delta.

Fyneface Dumnamene is a local activist

who spent years fighting
for environmental justice

for the residents of the River State.

The entire Niger Delta
is the most polluted part

of the earth anywhere in the world.

This community has been
massively polluted by hydrocarbon

from the activities of
multinational oil companies.

The people of Ogoni are dying
as a result of pollution.

If you test an average Ogoni man,

you will see that he or she has
been polluted in their lungs

because of what they inhale every day

in the polluted
environment that they live.

In Niger Delta, we have
well over 40 million people.

23 million of these are young people

and a lot of these will
have a lesser percentage

that are gainfully engaged.

The youth of the Niger Delta have waited

for the oil companies to
provide jobs for them.

They are not getting the jobs.

When they go to them to
seek for opportunities

to be able to be employed,
they are not getting it.

Fred Barikpoa says he's been involved

in the black market of
oil refining since 2016,

but has had to stop due
to the recent crackdown.

His cousin Favour said
she used to sell the fuel

and suffers from multiple ailments

that she blames on inhaling oil fumes.

We don't have any means of livelihood.

We don't have any support.

Since we don't have any other means,

we don't have any other
choice than to risk our lives

and all of my friends are
going into the business more

and the business is killing
a lot of people more.

If you get to the mortuary,
you see what we are saying,

but since we don't have any option,

we are going into the
business that is killing us.

You can see my sister,
Favour, they are suffering

because I have no option
than to go for the business

for her to sustain a little.

When this thing started,
I cannot stand it.

I cannot do anything in here.

So I am praying, pleading
for the government.

They should do something about it.

When I saw the woman,
she's having Anasarca.

That means that generalized body swelling.

There has been oil spills there before?

Everywhere.
Everywhere?

A lot of these kpo fire thing?

It's everywhere.

It's all everywhere.

If you look at the woman,
she could hardly breathe.

She couldn't walk

because her heart is failing.
Congestive cardiac failure.

She has the classical
features of almost all,

all the major complications
of the soot is manifest.

We want to check your heart,
your liver, and your kidney.

Help me and get me out of this
trouble and this sickness.

I still want to live.

I have children to take care of.

I have family to take care of.

The life span of residents
of Port Harcourt,

it is reducing and it will keep reducing

far as long as we still breathe in

this polluted air occasioned by the soot.

According to Amnesty International,

hundreds of oil spills occur
in the Niger Delta every year

and they are rarely properly cleaned up.

While most go unnoticed
by the outside world,

two recent incidents did
capture public attention.

In November 2021, a well
exploded, spewing oil and gas

into the surrounding
rivers and mangrove swamps

for almost 40 days.

A meaningful cleanup
has yet to take place.

A few months later,

a storage tanker blew up
just off Nigeria's coast.

The environment ministry says

it was holding up to
60,000 barrels of oil.

The environment has been
irredeemably damaged

and yet nothing is happening.

Nobody has been held to account.

No government official has been sacked.

No action has been taken with respect to,

you know, holding people accountable

for failure to take care
of their responsibilities.

In 2010, the United
Nations Environment Program

produced a report about oil
spills' environmental damage

in the Ogoniland, recommending
a five-year cleanup project

estimated to cost one billion dollars

and funded primarily by Shell.

A government agency

called the Hydrocarbon
Pollution Remediation Project

or HYPREP has been put in
charge of the cleanup effort

and awarded its first contracts in 2018.

While HYPREP does publish
regular activity updates,

Ogoniland residents claim not to have seen

substantial progress as of yet.

12 years later, there's a lot of concern

about the progress of the project

and activist groups, environmental groups

accused the people managing the project

of not operating in a
particularly transparent way.

We had a lot of hope and
some sense of satisfaction

that at least we have achieved something,

but several years after, I'm afraid that

I cannot say that there's a cleanup.

They haven't even finished
cleaning up the sites

that were classified as simple
and are yet to even give out

the contracts to clean up the
areas categorized as complex.

HYPREP did not respond

to several requests for comment.

Not much have been achieved in Ogoni

that was supposed to serve as a model

for other parts of the Niger Delta

and I think they need to go
back to the drawing board

and be able to carry out the
environmental remediation

of Ogoni and then extend it
to other parts of River States

and other parts of the Niger Delta

because if they keep
delaying this process,

the lifespan of an average
Ogoni Rivers man and Delta man

will continue to reduce because we live

in polluted environment
every day of our lives.