BY SIMON UTEBOR
An unusually harsh sun raises more questions on the environmental challenges in oil-rich Bayelsa State, writesSIMON UTEBOR
In Bayelsa State, known by its sobriquet, ‘Glory of all Lands’, the typical sunlight on a sunny day is better imagined than felt.
Whenever the sun shines, the state, said to be in proximity to the equator, pours something close to fury on residents.
The ferocity of sunlight is such that some observers have argued that crude oil is so close to the surface of the earth that it colludes with the sun to give a burning effect.
While the coming of rainy season appears to have sobered the heat, the rising incidence of oil spills and bursting of pipelines by vandals have also been fingered as some of the vices responsible for the emission of harsh sunlight.
Scores of residents complain that after their encounter with the blazing hot sun, they are usually down with sun stroke – an illness caused by too much direct sun, which has fever, weakness and headache as its cousins.
A first time visitor to Bayelsa, Jane Raphael, could not hide her feelings when she told our correspondent that the sun radiation was something out-of-this-world.
The light-skinned Raphael, who was baptised with the fury of the scorching sun, stuttered while narrating her nasty experience.
She said, “I cannot imagine that sun could be this harsh. This is the first time I have visited this state. I just arrived from Ogun State.
“As the sun shone, I could not withstand its touch. I had to go and buy an umbrella to shelter myself from the heat of the sun. I had wrongly thought I could brave it; but along the line, I had to beat a retreat. That was when I had to look for an umbrella in order to reduce the intensity of the sun.
“As I was going under my mine, I also noticed other residents using umbrellas, while others were taking shelter in some places waiting for the sun rays to stop before they could continue their movements within Yenagoa metropolis.”
Added burden for albinos
A resident Miss Preye Hitler, also said she had yet to know the cause of the scorching sun in the state.
She said she noticed in the past that after exposing herself to the harsh sun, she would take ill.
Hitler said after taking ill, she usually suffered shingles and heat rashes.
“I usually prayed in the morning that the sun should not be too hot in the afternoon. When I was younger, I was told that early morning sun gives some vitamins. But with the nasty experience I have had in the past, I dread the sun now.
“Last time, I was complaining to a friend about the scorching sun in some parts of the state. Though a layman, he was able to tell me that our peculiar situation in Bayelsa was as a result of too much crude oil in the state. I wondered the nexus between the crude and the sun and I became more confused. I have decided to find out from the experts if too much oil could collide with the sun and the relationship between the two.”
Yet, another resident, who gave his name only as Dandyson, claimed that Bayelsa’s slight peculiarity was because it is close to the equator.
Dandyson, an official of an oil major in the state, described equator as an imaginary line where the earth or any other planets turns.
He posited that most communities in Bayelsa were close to the equator; hence the residents experience hot sun at times.
Dr. Yomi Ebiwari of the General Hospital, Amassomma, Bayelsa State, said the effects of harsh sun on people were many.
She mentioned sunburn, dehydration, eye defects and cancer as some such.
Ebiwari said, “Harsh sun produces ultra violet radiation which causes pcerypium (eye problems). Also, excessive sun light causes sunburn, dehydration and castinormal, especially the light-skinned people and the Albinos.”
Spillage factor
A petroleum engineer, Mr. Felix Igbudu, said there was a relationship between the crude oil in the soil and the blazing of the sun.
Igbudu told our correspondent that the volumes of oil and spillage activities were too high.
He said, “The relationship is that the higher the sun, the higher the evaporation of crude oil which contributes to greenhouse gases that make the carbon circle to be higher. This development now further causes climatic change.
“Also, if there is emission of carbon into the environment, it causes carcinogenic issues. When the sun is high, its intensity makes crude oil to evaporate faster. And when it evaporates faster, it makes the air, which is composed of many other gases, to form carbon circle.
“The required carbon circle is about 60 per cent. When it is beyond the required carbon circle, it makes the ozone layer to be depleted. When this occurs, it will have direct penetration from outer space and causes what we see today as the increase in weather harshness. Where it is supposed to be cold, it becomes hot while there could be cancer, rashes and many other side effects.”
He, however, offered some recipes to ameliorate the trend.
Igbudu, who said the rate of oil spills was rampant, urged the government to embark on orientation of youths.
He added, “The rate of oil spill in Bayelsa communities is high. Therefore, the government should give massive orientation to youths. They should be told that their actions could cause negative effects on the environment.
“The government should find work for them to do or create an enabling environment to engage them. This will discourage them from bursting pipelines resulting in acidic soil not conducive for plants, fishes and animals’ growth.
“Pipeline bursting also contributes to the poverty of the people. Petroleum activities can occur in a place for more than 50 years. This is a big problem because it causes a lot of sicknesses in areas where such is prevalent. The oil companies should also do something to ameliorate the problems.”
Impact of fossil fuels
Also, an environmental activist, Mr. Morris Alagoa, said there was high prevalence of fossil fuels.
Alagoa, Coordinator of the Environmental Right Action and Friend of the Earth in Bayelsa, said fossil fuel was one of the chemicals blocking the ozone layer and that it caused climate change.
He added that the burning of fossil fuels by humans constituted the largest source of emissions of carbon dioxide, which is one of the greenhouse gases creating radiative forces that contributes to the warming of the atmosphere.
He said, “The more they evaporate, the more they impact on climatic conditions. The sun is very harsh because the heat is too much. We are also not making use of the trees. People fall trees indiscriminately, not minding the adverse consequences.
“The trees are supposed to absorb carbon dioxide. When the atmosphere is heated, it can contribute to the heating up of the ecosystem.”
Alagoa said when the sun had direct impact on the crude, it operated within the lower level of the atmosphere and that gave rise to consequences of the scorching sun in the state.
“Everybody is suffering from it here. The heat is also as a result of climate change and something drastic must be done to improve on the level of shoreline protection in the state,” the environmentalist submitted.
Shoreline protection zero
Alagoa also posited that the level of shoreline protection in the state is zero.
He said, “Talking about shoreline protection, while I appreciate the enormity of the need in communities along the Atlantic coastline, other communities along our rivers suffer similar danger of being washed away.
“Communities along the Atlantic shoreline in this connection comprise Twon Brass, Sangana, Okpoama and Odioma in the Brass Local Government Area. In Southern Ijaw LGA, Koluama and others are facing a serious danger.”
He said those along the Bayelsa rivers, such as Abobiri community in Ogbia LGA, Anibeze in Sagbama LGA and Peremabiri in Southern Ijaw, should be protected.
The equator
Scientists at the ARM Climate Research Facility, USA, while dissecting the differences between the equator and the poles, submits that on earth, the equator receives more sunshine than the poles.
Their submissions give credence to Dandyson’s standpoint that most communities in Bayelsa experience scorching sunlight because of their closeness to the equator.
The scientists, in their postulations in www.education.arm.gov/studyhall say the more sunshine received in the equator was due to the simple geometry of the earth’s curvature.
Earth curvature, according to the scientists, is a given amount of sunshine in a beam, falling on the equator, which points directly at the sun.
This, they said, had more intense effect than the glancing rays spread over much larger areas of the curving surface near the poles.
They said, “In addition, extensive ice and snow at the poles reflects back to the space some of the sun’s energy that reaches the earth.
“Much more sunshine is absorbed to heat the earth and the equator. This means the land at the equator becomes hotter than the poles – two sides of the opposite ends of the line on which the earth or any other planet turns.”
Crude oil effects
Some oil experts believe that crude oil contains compounds which have toxic and cancer-causing properties to humans and plants.
According to experts, such as Ibuki Y, Toyooka T and others, oil spilled in environments are usually exposed to sunlight.
However, they opined that the toxicity of sunlight exposed by crude oil had been poorly understood.
In the excerpts of their study, published in PubMed.Gov (www.nibi.nlm.nih.gov,
“Crude oil was exposed to SSL for approximately seven days. The WSF obtained from unexposed crude oil showed no toxicity, whereas the WSF obtained from crude oil pre-exposed to SSL induced acute cell death on exposure to UVA irradiation, which was more remarkable in human skin fibroblasts than human skin keratinocytes.”
Effects of scorching sun on the skin
Dermatologists (skin doctors) say that prolonged exposure to sunlight causes brown spots; red, scaly spots; drying and wrinkling; and, worst of all, skin cancer.
In health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care, skin doctors say if one’s skin doesn’t produce the protective melanin pigment well or if one is exposed to the sun before enough pigment can be manufactured and dispersed, the ultraviolet rays could kill skin cells.
They added, “Even a mild sunburn that produces only a little redness destroys the top layer of your skin, just as if you had seared it with a hot iron.
“Despite these increasingly well-known dangers of sun exposure, many of us, on occasion, get lazy when it comes to protecting our skin or just can’t resist the myth that getting some colour from the sun makes us look healthier.”
No end to gas flaring
Alagoa posited that gas flaring is still rampant in the state.
He said, “Only recently, some communities in Bayelsa have seen some gas gathering plants as part of the measures to check the rising trend of flaring.
“Sometimes in some flow stations (where gas is flared by oil companies), their gas tunnels were not used optimally.
“For instance, in Imiringi, Ogbia Local Government Area of the state, there used to be two tunnels. However, at times the gas companies put it off for months. And when they manage to put it on, you see only one working instead of the two that are there.”
He alleged the Federal Government was not meeting its counterpart funding to tackle the menace.
Alagoa lamented that most communities were not aware of the intricacies of gas flaring.
He said, “Gas flaring affects rain water to the extent that when gas is being flared and rain falls, the particles of smoke affected the water. Research indicates that the flared gas also goes into the ground and in turn affects the plants, fishes, animals and the bodies of water.
“To this extent, experts believe that it is one of the factors responsible for low life expectancy in the state. Also, people are going blind because of gas flaring. As we speak, if you go to most communities, women are crying that they have lost most of their cash crops to the oil industry,” he explained.
Negligence
Paramount ruler of Ikarama in the state, Chief Daniel Francis, noted that oil companies operating in the area were doing nothing to check gas flaring in affected communities.
The monarch, who spoke in a telephone interview with our correspondent, alleged that the regulatory bodies were only monitoring but no better response was coming from their own end.
Alagoa also corroborated the monarch’s submission, saying the Federal Government and relevant agencies were not doing enough to check gas flaring in the state.
He called for the urgent passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill into law, saying that development would go a long way to redressing the flaring problems.
He noted that the prerogative accorded the minister of petroleum resources to give licences to oil companies to flare gas without inputs from the communities was a disservice to the people.
“PIB should be passed quickly to address the challenges of gas flaring and other petroleum related issues. The government is not doing enough. They have been shifting the goal-post,” he said.
Efforts to get the side of the regulatory agency, the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, were unsuccessful.
When contacted, an official in the Public Relations Department, Mr. Cyprus Nkangwungu, asked our correspondent to call him later for the agency’s response.
But when the journalist called him later for his response, his phone rang out several times. As of the time of going to press by 9pm on Wednesday, Nkangwungu had yet to respond.
But a multinational oil company, Shell Petroleum Development Company, said recently at a sensitisation programme in Yenagoa, that frequent pipeline sabotage disrupted the firm’s gas processing system.
It said the development had negatively impacted on performance, contributing to about five per cent increase in flare intensity last year.
The company said, “Joint venture funding challenges have resulted in delays to some gas-gathering projects: two of these projects, which were expected to gather an additional 35 per cent of associated gas by 2014-15, are likely delayed.”
“SPDC will continue to work closely with its joint venture partners and other stakeholders to minimise delays to the key projects on which further flare reduction depends,” it said.
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