ChevronTexaco conflicts with Nigeria's communities continue; fire at Escravos' oil terminal
Special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
PetroGasWorks.com
NigeriaCentral.com
USAfricaonline.com
The
Black Business Journal
A huge fire broke out on July 20 at ChevronTexaco's main oil terminal, days after unarmed village women ended a 10-day siege that crippled the oil giant's Nigeria operations. The blaze at the multimillion-dollar Escravos terminal in southeastern Nigeria was ignited by a bolt of lightning during an early morning storm, the company said in a statement.
The lightnin
g
set fire to a storage tank containing about 180,000 barrels of crude
oil. Oil workers used remote-controlled chemical cannons to contain
the blaze and pumped about 80,000 barrels out of the burning
tank.
Additional support was requested from other oil operators, the statement said. No one was hurt, the company said. The fire sent giant flames and a towering pillar of black smoke into the sky.
"The gods are angry. Chevron needs to compensate us for this land. The women leave, and two days later, this thing happens,'' said unemployed villager Lucky Mune, as he watched the blaze from a distance.
The fire was the latest blow to a company still facing a series of takeovers at its Nigerian facilities by unarmed village women.
Meanwhile, on Saturday July 20, unarmed women occupying at least four ChevronTexaco facilities in southeastern Nigeria said Saturday they had freed their two hostages in return for a promise from oil executives to meet with them. The women, who live nearby, are demanding jobs for their relatives as well as electricity, water and other amenities. The protest follows a larger but similar action at ChevronTexaco's main oil terminal that involved about 700 workers -- including Americans, Britons, Canadians and Nigerians -- being held captive for 10 days.
The women, ranging in age from 30 to 90, used a traditional and powerful shaming gesture to maintain control over the facility -- they threatened to remove their own clothing.
The hostages were freed only after the company pledged to build modern towns out of poor villages.
As that protest was ending, several hundred women from a rival tribe seized at least four ChevronTexaco flowstations in the same area. On Friday, the women occupying the Abiteye station took two workers captive, both Nigerians. They were apparently the only employees who stayed behind after the protest action began.
One, a security supervisor, was released hours later and the other, a community relations officer, was allowed to leave Saturday. Far from appearing traumatized, he waved to the women, who cheered as he boarded a ferry.
Fanty Wariyai, a protest leader, said ChevronTexaco promised to send a senior official to meet with the women on Monday. ChevronTexaco officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The protest turned into a hostage-taking after ChevronTexaco angered the women by asking them to send representatives to a meeting with company officials and tribal leaders in the southern city of Warri.
"They want us to meet the community leaders who are men, who live in Warri, and who don't know our suffering,'' Josephine Ogoba, another protest leader, said Friday. "If Chevron will not come here, we will not allow their staff to go.''
The peaceful, all-woman protests are a departure for the oil-rich Niger Delta, where armed men frequently use kidnapping and sabotage to pressure oil companies to give them jobs, protection money or compensation for alleged environmental damage.
The Niger Delta is one of the West African country's poorest regions, despite its oil wealth. Nigeria is the world's sixth-largest exporter of oil and the fifth-largest supplier to the United States. AP
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Founder Chido Nwangwu with the U.S. former Ambassador
Carrington (right) at the U.S. embassy in Lagos during a
courtesy visit.
TRANSITION JELANI WILLIAMS  USAfricaonline.com
and USAfrica The Newspaper mourn the death on July 8, 2002
in Michigan of our friend and brother, Houston-based Pan
Africanist, scholar Lorenza
"Jelani" Williams
who worked tirelessly to foster pan-Africanism in Texas, and
beyond. His work with the Taseti African Studies group in
Houston will always be remembered. My his tireless soul rest
in peace! And, may God protect and guide his family!!
Goodbye
dear friend and
brother!!!
Chido Nwangwu, Founder,
USAfrica Media Networks.
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Africa
suffers the scourge of the 
Africa's
stability
