Ogonis laments 500,000bpd untapped crude oil in their communities

The Movement for the Survival of Ogonis People (MOSOP) said it’s worried that   a proven oil production capacity of 500,000 barrels per day of crude oil is still untapped in their community’s soil.

The President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke, said it’s regrettable that an amount of oil remains stranded under the soil where he said the Ogoni people walk daily without electricity, water, healthcare and in an environment that is polluted and unfit for human habitation.

He said barely 30 years after a crisis that affected the national economy, another oil war may be looming in Ogoni Kingdom of Rivers State following what he described as a clandestine move of some oil-operating firms to resume production in the area.

Fegalo who stated this in an open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Wednesday, called on the president to prevail on what he described as the “unholy deal” with an oil firm which he said was “an alliance for resumption of oil exploration in Ogoni” against the wishes of the people.

• Mpox: Gavi set to secure 500,000 vaccine doses for Africa
• Leveraging Call Recording in Business: Strategies, Tools, and Benefits

In the letter titled “OML 11: unholy secret deals threaten oil resumption In Ogoni”, MOSOP said, “Since 1993, following disagreements with the previous operator, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, the Ogoni oil fields within OML 11 have remained redundant, stranded and undeveloped.

“This unfortunate situation has trapped a proven oil production capacity of 500,000 barrels per day to remain stranded under the soil where the Ogoni people walk daily without electricity, water, healthcare and in an environment that is polluted and unfit for human habitation”.

The movement expressed concern about the activities of the said oil firm “to frustrate our current peace efforts through a desperate, backdoor attempt to force itself on the Ogoni people despite our outright rejection of the company due to their utter display of untrustworthy character and traits not different from the previous operator, SPDC.