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Nigerian women seize oil terminal by Pablo Rossell 16 July 2002 15:11 UTC |
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Take a look at who owns Chevron PR Nigerian women seize oil terminal Demand jobs for sons: Non-violent action a departure from usual protests Peter Goodspeed National Post Friday, July 12, 2002 Hundreds of impoverished Nigerian women, armed with nothing more than bundles of food and cooking pots, have hijacked one of Africa's largest oil terminals to demand jobs for their sons and electrical power for their villages. Claiming they are tired of living in perpetual poverty in the shadow of a multi-billion-dollar Chevron oil terminal in the middle of the swamps of the Niger delta, hundreds of local women seized control of the huge Escravos Island oil depot and tank farm on Monday. They are demanding face-to-face negotiations with top Chevron officials in order to obtain jobs for their families and electricity for their villages. "Chevron has long been neglecting the Ugborodo community in all areas of life," Anunu Uwawah, one of the protest leaders told Nigerian newspapers. "They have not shown concern at all to involve our people in employment and the provision of social amenities. We will no longer take this nonsense. This is the beginning of the trouble they have been looking for." Chevron officials in Lagos say they are committed to a peaceful solution of the conflict and have opened negotiations with ten of the protest's leaders in the palace of a traditional leader, the Olu of Warri, in the nearby city of Warri. Wole Agunbiade, a spokesman for Chevron Nigeria Ltd., said company managers are continuing to negotiate with the women. "We are hopeful that we will be able to resolve the situation," he said. "But so far, we haven't persuaded the protesters to leave the facility." The women, many of them older than 45, seized a boat used to ferry workers to the island terminal and stormed the Chevron plant on Monday. When they landed on the island, the women split into three groups and immediately occupied the terminal's helicopter landing pad, the dock and a massive tank farm, which stores hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil pumped to it through pipelines from 23 offshore oil fields. The Escravos Island terminal, located in a swamp 300 kilometres east of Lagos, normally exports up to 450,000 barrels of oil a day and is operated by a standing staff of more than 700 Nigerian and international employees, including Canadians, Americans, and Britons, who live and work at the terminal on two week-long shifts. Since Monday's invasion, which now appears to have been reinforced by hundreds more local women, the oil terminal's operations have been severely disrupted and none of the Chevron workers have been able to leave the complex. Chevron officials in Lagos refuse to say if oil exports have been slowed or stopped. For safety reasons, the women have agreed not to light cooking fires on the terminal and are being fed at the Chevron staff canteen. Nigerian police, army and navy personnel are now patrolling the rivers and swamps surrounding the island terminal, but they are under strict orders not to harm the unarmed protesters, police commissioner John Ahmadu said. Protests by local communities, who demand a greater share of the benefits of their country's oil wealth, are common in Nigeria's oil-producing regions. But in the past, most confrontations have been between small armed bands of male kidnappers who have held oil workers to ransom or who have briefly seized control of individual oil drilling platforms. In April, 43 ChevronTexaco workers were held captive for four days on one nearby oil platform before the standoff was resolved through negotiations. In a 1998 attack on the Escravos Island site, armed gangs of youths seized wells and pumping stations, shutting down a third of Nigeria's oil production, and threatened to burn the complex down. The island complex is surrounded by a swamp and seven villages that contain about 50,000 impoverished fishermen who have long resented the sharp contrast between the staggering wealth of the oil compound, with its paved streets, swimming pools and satellite telephones, and their own harsh rural existence. © Copyright 2002 National Post http://www.nationalpost.com/world/story.html?id={7AD1C92B-B665-4FCF-A62C-CBE9B21A1B1C} __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
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