For America, the BP spill in the Gulf is a “tragedy that never should have happened,” requiring, “the largest environmental response in this country’s history. In Nigeria, they just call it “Thursday.”

More oil is spilled in Nigeria each year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico due to the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster, reports The Guardian.

Shell, with the federal government as majority stakeholder, blames the spills on saboteurs, vandalism and theft, and not its crumbling infrastructure.

Wallowing in poverty, and oil, and subjugated by gun-toting security guards, what little attempts at fighting back the local population has managed to muster have either been squashed, or appear to be without hope.

Two years ago, Current TV’s Mariana van Zeller traveled to Nigeria to check out the situation in the excellent investigative report, “Rebels in the Pipeline”:
I imagine not much has changed since.

Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it [TheObserver via BoingBoing]
Rebels in the Pipeline [Current]

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