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ReviewoftheEnvironmentalImpactAssessmentReportonGasSupplyProject(AfamFDP)byShellinNigeria

RESEARCH·JULY2015

DOI:10.13140/RG.2.1.3982.4489

1AUTHOR:

AyotundeOlaKolawole

HebrewUniversityofJerusalem

6PUBLICATIONS0CITATIONS

SEEPROFILE

Availablefrom:AyotundeOlaKolawole

Retrievedon:03September2015

Gas Supply Project (Afam FDP), Nigeria

Environmental Impact Assessment Report

By

Ayotunde Kolawole (888404134)

Felix Ogunmokun (888404092)

Course: Ecological Principles in Spatial Conservation Planning

Course Code: 71947

Lecturer: Dr. Yael Mandelik

Department of Environmental Quality Science,

The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment,

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

June, 2015

Table of Content Page

Introduction 1

Objective of the Afam Project 3

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Objectives 3

Justification for the Project 4

Economic Aspects in Conservation Planning (Focal Topic) 4

Study Approach (Data Collection) 5

Ecological and Spatial Effect to Address 5

Possible Biases/Limitation 6

New Field Survey 6

Conservation Planning Tool 7

Conclusions and Recommendations 7

Acknowledgement 7

Bibliography 8

Table 1: Endangered (e) and Vulnerable (v) Wildlife (2007) 8

Table 2: Fisheries and Hydrobiology (2007) 8

Figure 1: Map of Nigeria showing the Delta Regions

Figure 2: Map of the Delta Region showing the project location

Summary

The EIA report was carried out for Afam gas supply project in 2008. The ecology of

the region lies between Rainforest, Freshwater swamp and Mangrove. The main

ecological activities in the area are fishing, tree crop cultivation like Oil palm and arable

crop farming. The objective of this review was to evaluate the quality of the work done

in the EIA report with a focus on economic aspects in conservation planning. The EIA

report was done by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) in accordance

with the requirement of law of the Federal Government of Nigeria. The objective of the

EIA report was to establish site-specific biophysical, health and social baseline

conditions of the project area, integrate all the views of stakeholders, identify

significant potential positive and negative impacts, proffer mitigation strategies and

develop an environmental management plan. Information from existing data sources

and new data were collected for the report. Biophysical variables collected includes

climatic, vegetation and geomorphological features of the area. Socio-economic

variables and environmental/health influencing factors were also collected. Descriptive

statistics, like frequency distribution, microbial count and scoring were used to analyze

data collected. In their findings, conservation was at a risk, as they showed that some

wildlife and aquatic species were endangered and vulnerable, however the name of the

species were not mentioned in the report. Looking at economic aspects in conservation

planning, the focal article (Protecting Biodiversity when Money Matters: Maximizing

Return on Investment) showed that incorporating cost in a return on investment

framework expands priorities to include areas not traditionally highlighted as priorities

based on conventional irreplaceability and vulnerability approaches. In this line of

thought, we find many faults with the EIA conducted for this project. There was no

conservation plan in the approach and also, the methodology applied in the report was

faulty and biased to suit the stakeholders’ agenda. There was no use of proper terms for

conservation report in the whole write-up. After critically examining the report

presented by SPDC, we feel that much could have been done as money was not a

limiting factor for the study and therefore suggest another EIA report be carried out,

and this time with the objective of incorporating conservation plans in the program for

the endangered and vulnerable species. In order to improve on this reports, components

like hotspots, irreplaceability, complementarity, habitat loss, fragmentation and

identification of umbrella species and how the intended development would affect them

should be thoroughly examined.

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Introduction

The Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) commonly called "Shell", was

originally known as Royal Dutch Shell plc, an Anglo–Dutch multinational oil and gas

company headquartered in the Netherlands and incorporated in the United Kingdom1.

Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry,

including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing,

petrochemicals, power generation and trading. It has minor renewable energy activities

in the form of biofuels and wind2. Nigeria happens to be a suitable location for Shell

among its tentacles in the world. This is due to high comparative advantage and richness

of Nigeria in both renewable and non-renewable resources. Nigeria ranks as Africa's

largest producer of oil and the sixth largest oil producing country in the world 3. Despite

all the natural resources endowed with Nigeria, poor harnessing, mismanagement and

lack of technical know-how were the major problems limiting the exploration and

utilization of these resources. Shell discovered its first commercial oil field in Nigeria

at Oloibiri, Bayelsa State in 1956 and through a sustained exploration and efforts had

since discovered more oil fields that have firmly established Nigeria as one of the

world's major crude oil producers with significant gas potential. One of the gas station

was Afam in Rivers State of Nigeria.

Afam is a small agricultural community located in the Deltas of Nigeria. The ecology

of the region lies between Rainforest, Freshwater swamp and Mangrove. The main

ecological activities in the area are fishing, tree crop cultivation like Oil palm and arable

crop farming. Due to the need to provide more power supply for the increasing

population of Nigeria and her industrial growth, the Federal Government of Nigeria, in

collaboration with Shell, established Afam Power Station in 1962, with the primary

objective of generating electricity from the combustion of natural gas supplied by the

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SPDC and transmitting the electricity generated via the national grid. The Afam Station

was shut down in 1997, since then, SPDC’s 165 Million standard cubic feet per day

(MMscf/d) gas supply facilities have been redundant. Much of the natural gas extracted

in oil wells in the Delta is immediately burned, or flared, into the air at a rate of

approximately 70 million m³per day. This is equivalent to 41% of African natural gas

consumption, and forms the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions on the

planet. Therefore, rehabilitation of the power station to restore gas consumption will be

beneficial to SPDC and the entire nation.

Fig. 1: Map of Nigeria showing the Delta Regions

Fig. 2: Map of the Delta Region showing the project location

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Objective of the Afam Project

The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited proposed to develop

Afam Field since the year of moribund. The main objective of this Afam Field

Development Plan (FDP) project is to provide a robust gas supply of 190 MMscf/d to

Afam Power Station where SPDC plans to build and operate a reliable and economic

combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant that would generate between 600 MW

to 700 MW of electricity by 2008 in support of her license-to-operate commitment.

Specifically, the project is aimed at increasing the operational capacity in Nigeria by

more than 25 percent.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Objectives

The objectives of the EIA were to:

i. Establish the site-specific biophysical, health and social baseline conditions of

the project area, i.e. receiving environment;

ii. Integrate the opinions and views of all stakeholders, particularly host

communities into the project in order to ensure that the completed project is

both environmentally and socially sustainable;

iii. Identify the significant potential positive and negative impacts of project

activities on the ecological, social and health aspects of the receiving

environment;

iv. Evaluate the potential impacts and proffer cost-effective mitigation measures

for the negative impacts and, where possible, enhance the positive impacts that

will further assure the environmental and social sustainability of the project;

v. Incorporate the recommendations of the EIA process into detailed project

design and decisions; and

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vi. Develop an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) that covers all phases of

the project.

The detailed scope of the baseline data acquisition were 4:

Biophysical: which includes; climate and meteorology, air quality and noise,

vegetation, land use/cover, wildlife, geology and hydrogeology, soil/sediment quality,

aquatic studies, groundwater quality, hydrobiology and fisheries.

Social: includes, demography, socio-cultural conditions of the communities, socio-

economic condition of the communities, socio-political structure/organization,

political/dispute resolution institutions and mechanisms, archaeological and historical

data, infrastructure and services, social needs of the communities and community

perceptions, evaluations and expectations regarding the project.

Health: includes; socio-economics/vital health statistics, individual/family/community

health determinant, health outcomes, environmental health determinants, institutional

health determinants, knowledge, attitudes and practices.

Justification for the Project

Rehabilitation of the power station to restore gas consumption will be of immense

benefit to Shell Petroleum Development Company and the Nation as a whole. Thus, it

is in SPDC overall interest to see gas sales to power company build up to at least its

historical peak level.

Economic Aspects in Conservation Planning (Focal Topic)

According to Underwood et al5, considering the protection of biodiversity when money

matters, it should be noted that, it is not all conservation planning tools that are

environmentally viable are economically feasible. It is increasingly recognized that

accounting for the economic costs of conservation to maximize the greatest return on

investments may result into substantially larger environmental and biological gains6.

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However, minimizing the area protected and spatial efficiency, does not necessarily

translate into cost or economic efficiency. In a world with dearth of conservation funds7,

efficiency would be better measured in terms of conservation return on financial

investment, such as the number of species protected per dollar expended over a fixed

amount of time. It is also important to identify biodiversity hotspots as priorities for

conservation investment, so as to capture dense concentrations of species. Dynamic

return on investment approach to a global biome was compared with three alternate

priority setting approaches and a random allocation of funding in the work of

Underwood et al5 to consider conservation efficiency in terms of species protected per

dollar invested. In this EIA study of Afam Gas Project, we shall be looking at how best

the funds available could be put into use to maximize conservation per dollar invested.

Study Approach (Data Collection)

The EIA study was based on existing information on this area, site-specific fieldwork,

laboratory analysis of samples, consultations (with host communities and other

stakeholders) and a number of workshops involving consultants and other stakeholders

including regulatory agencies.

Ecological and Spatial Effect of the Project

Specifically, the ecological and spatial effect of the project include: loss of farmland

and associated income, changes in traditional occupation, potential increase in road

traffic volume, increase in noise levels, loss of flora and fauna, potential increase in

erosion, changes in local population, increase in social vices, soil degradation, loss of

biodiversity, blockage of natural drainages, changes in aesthetic quality of the

environment, potential for falls into exposed trenches (by animals, unsuspecting

passers-by), threat to health of workers (snake bites, insect stings, injuries etc.), increase

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in dust generation and potential for community unrest (from employment, pollution and

resistance to dismantling of equipment).

Possible Biases/Limitation

The EIA document has been prepared by drawing conclusions from site visits, primary

data and secondary information, therefore, intrinsic randomness of human behavior and

unreliable data sources may forfeit the overall objective of the EIA study. From their

findings (Table 1 & 2) there was a big gap between what their wildlife team found and

what the local people reported to exist in the environment. They saw less than what was

there, and this indicates that their exploration was not thorough. Further still, in their

findings (Table 1 & 2), some wildlife and aquatic organisms were reported to be

endangered and vulnerable, but these organisms were not named. This is however an

incomplete information, and cannot serve as a basis for conservation planning. This

could also be due to lack of expertise among wildlife team to identify these organisms.

Yet again, all through their report, there was no plan for conserving the endangered and

vulnerable species they found in the area. Also, the mitigation measures and other

recommendations they provided in their report are prepared at the level of conceptual

design and implementation framework and may not address the significant impact of

the final work on the environment.

New Field Survey

Although, some steps taken in the EIA report are inevitable, but to improve upon the

report we are going to do the following;

Develop a baseline survey for the project boundary,

Identify all potential environmental impacts due to the project,

Propose for a conservation plan that efficiently utilize the available funds,

Estimating externalities both in the short-run and long-run,

Propose mitigation measures for avoidance of significant negative impact(s),

Evaluate the relevant legislative requirements,

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Evaluate project alternative scenarios,

Formulate an environmental monitoring plan.

Conservation Planning Tool

The following will be considered for the new EIA reports we suggest; components like

the hotspots, irreplaceability, complementarity, habitat loss, fragmentation and

identification of umbrella species in the study area and the impact the development will

have on them.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The project should be committed to implement an environmental conservation, social

management and monitoring plan, which will ensure that the construction and the

operation of the Afam Gas Power Plant involves full implementation of all proposed

mitigation measures and complies with high environmental standards, the requirements

of the environmental legislation and guidance notes as applicable in Nigeria and

international guidelines. Monitoring data should be analyzed and reviewed at regular

intervals and compare with the relevant standards so that any necessary corrective

actions can be taken into account.

In conclusion, this project should be executed, but modified to make it realistic,

accountable, compensatory and conservative, rather than tailoring its findings towards

the interest of stakeholders at the expense of its ecological and environmental

consequences. Conserving vulnerable and endangered species should be of major

priority, while the problem of likely pollution should also be ironed out, especially as

it affects the aquatic animals and subsequently fishes. Finally, incorporating some

economic estimators to account for both negative and positive externalities

accompanied by the project in the short-run and long-run respectively is germane.

Acknowledgment

Our appreciation goes to Dr. Yael Mandelik for giving detailed knowledge about this important course.

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Bibliography

(1) http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/at-a-glance.html

(2) Webb, Tim (17 March 2009). "Shell dumps wind, solar and hydro power in favour

of biofuels". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2013.

(3) Nigerian National Petroleum Company (2015).

www.nnpcgroup.com/nnpcbusiness/upstreamventures/oilproduction.aspx

(4) The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (2007). Environmental

impact assessment for Afam FDP (gas supply) project in Nigeria.

(5) Underwood EC, Shaw MR, Wilson KA, Kareiva P, Klausmeyer KR, et al (2008)

Protecting biodiversity when money matters: Maximizing return on investment. PLoS

ONE 3(1): e1515. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001515.

(6) Naidoo R, Balmford A, Ferraro PJ, Polasky S, Ricketts TH, et al. (2006) Integrating

economic costs into conservation planning. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21: 681–

686.

(7) James A, Gaston KJ, Balmford A (1999) Balancing the Earth’s accounts. Nature

401: 323–324.

Table 1: Endangered (e) and Vulnerable (v) Wildlife (SPDC, 2007)

Table 2: Fisheries and Hydrobiology (SPDC, 2007)