If BP Spilled Oil in the Niger Delta

When BP America President Lamar McKay first learned the news about the April 20 rig explosion, his first thought may very well have been: "Oh, @#$%. Not the Gulf."

As the extent of the spill's damage has become ever more dangerously clear, BP has gotten publicly pilloried: its stock has tumbled by $30 billion, meanwhile individuals from investors to restaurateurs have slapped the company with an array of lawsuits.

I'm guessing that in the month-long interim since a sheen of black has crept over the Gulf, at least someone in the company — if not McKay — has had the stray thought: "This would have been so much easier in Nigeria."

Take it from ExxonMobil. Over the past week in Nigeria, an industry source tells Reuters, fully 100,000 barrels of oil have been leaked from an Exxon pipeline — an amount that easily outstrips the (estimated) 94,000 barrels that have so far inundated the Gulf. The pipeline's reportedly now been mended, but in the meantime, Exxon's faced virtually no pressure to give any details about the damage involved, or the nature of any clean-up work it intends to pursue.

In other words, it's great to be an oil company wreaking environmental chaos in Nigeria, less good to be one spilling oil off the coast of Louisiana. (But still pretty good: BP made $163 billion in profits from 2001-2009 — any clean-up or litigations costs will be, for the company, pocket change.)

"If this (the BP spill) were in the Niger Delta, no one would be batting an eyelid," says Holly Pattenden, African oil analyst at consultants Business Monitor International. "They have these kind of oil spills in Nigeria all the time."

Photo Credit: marinephotobank