Earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings do. And those lovely decorative bits are the first to fall

News of Melbourne’s earthquake today made my left leg hurt. That’s the leg I nearly lost.

On February 22 2011, there were nine of us on a red bus from Sumner to Canterbury University in Christchurch. At 12.51, the unreinforced brick facade of 605 Colombo Street crushed our bus and four pedestrians. I felt brick after brick land on my left hip, and wondered how long I would last.

I’m the only one left — the lucky thirteenth.

I was taken to hospital on the back of a stranger’s truck. I broke more bones than the surgeons were willing to count, spent two months in hospital, and six months off work. More than a decade later, I feel the earthquake in every step.
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During that earthquake, 16 people were killed just on that one block of Christchurch’s main street. Melbourne and country Victoria are full of places just like it, with brick facades, parapets and gables.

It wasn’t the earthquake that killed everyone but me on that bus. It was the building, its lack of regulation, lack of structural support, and lack of a fence. It wasn’t just bad luck.

Emergency workers on Colombo Street in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake. Mark Baker/AP

Changing New Zealand’s Building Act to prioritise “fally-offy bits” of buildings was not in my life plan. But extraordinary events can change ordinary life plans. So when I got out of hospital, I set my ordinary environmental work to the side, and took a couple years to brush up on seismology, earthquake engineering, and the seismic safety of buildings.

Five years later, the NZ Parliament ratified the “Brower amendment” to the Building Act to prioritise fixing unreinforced brick decorative bits of buildings. And now I’m asking Victoria to please learn from your Kiwi cousins.

Earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings do. And those lovely decorative bits of buildings are the first to fall, even in relatively mild earthquakes like the ones Victoria gets from time to time.

Read more: The earthquake that rattled Melbourne was among Australia's biggest in half a century, but rock records reveal far mightier ones

Building back better

After Christchurch, New Zealand learned our lesson and reformed our building legislation. Victoria can skip the truly painful part of the lesson — the deaths and injuries in the streets — and skip straight to the legislative reform.

The smart thing to do is create a separate category for non-structural unreinforced masonry: parapets (the small decorative extension at the top of a wall), gables and chimneys. This is a good idea because:
they are the cheapest to fix
they are the first to fall
they are the deadliest when they do.

A parapet is the decorative extension at the top of a wall, often found on top of buildings. Shutterstock

It makes sense to pick the low-hanging fruit first. It will greatly improve the safety of Victoria’s streets without costing an arm and a leg – literally or figuratively.

Here, the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission recommended it. And GNS Science calls parapets, gables and chimneys “dangerous”, even in cities with low earthquake risk, such as Auckland, Dunedin and Melbourne.

Read more: 10 years since the Darfield earthquake rocked New Zealand: what have we learned?

The building that collapsed on our bus was expected to fall. Everyone knows unreinforced bricks fall. To me, the most predictable losses are the least acceptable. This is especially true when the methods of prevention are as known and straightforward as securing a parapet to the building’s structural core.

Fixing the parapets first has the highest ratio of safety gains to cost. There is no complicated inspection required. Parapets do not hold the building up.

Attaching them securely is less disruptive to the activity inside the building than replacing them entirely. That said, they could easily also be replaced with lighter, less deadly materials, as is often done in California.

Read more: Melbourne earthquake: what exactly happened, and what's the best way to stay safe from aftershocks?

The building that collapsed onto us was worth NZ$30,000 (A$29,000), according to its 2007 government valuation. The Royal Commission heard that attaching the front facade to the building would have cost NZ$200,000 (A$194,000).

By my calculations, saving my left leg cost taxpayers about half a million dollars.

Fixing parapets, gables and chimneys first is also equitable. Unreinforced masonry buildings pose a greater public danger to passers-by than other types of quake-prone buildings that risk collapsing inwards. Placarding the buildings will do nothing for those in the street and on the footpath.

Allowing the parapets to persist unattached benefits only the owner. The risks, meanwhile, are transferred to the public, and onto the public health system if an accident happens.

Fixing the most dangerous and least expensive bits first is also a cost-effective way to preserve heritage buildings. Fixing the fally-offiest bits might render unnecessary the full building strengthening, and might prompt owners to spend the money now rather than in several decades’ time when the entire building needs repairs.

I am not saying all buildings in Victoria or Melbourne should be whizz-bang “earthquake-proof” like those in Tokyo or San Francisco. I am recommending cheap, effective fixes to the bits of buildings that are easiest to fix, and deadliest if you don’t.

I treasure my left leg, scars and all. But please, Australia, learn from your Kiwi cousins.

This article is adapted, with permission, from a 2017 article that originally appeared in the journal Earthquake Spectra.

September 22, 2021

Author

Ann L Brower
Associate Professor of Environmental Science, University of Canterbury

Area of northwestern Quebec rumbled by magnitude 4.1 earthquake

Luca Caruso-Moro

CTVNewsMontreal.ca Digital Reporter
Tuesday, December 28, 2021 


A seismograph reading from the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney on Monday is pictured: Dec. 23, 2019 (CTV News)

Some Quebecers felt the ground, windows and walls around them shake Tuesday night as a magnitude 4.1 earthquake rumbled an area near Val d'Or.

The quake took place about 40 kilometres northwest of the city, or nearly 600 kilometres northwest of Montreal.

It hit at around 6:22 pm and was located 10 kilometres below the surface of the earth, according to Earthquake Canada.


Magnitude 4.1 quakes are considered mild on the intensity scale. It remains unclear whether any significant damage was caused.



A magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck near Val D’Or Tuesday evening. (Image source: Earthquakes Canada)

At the local depanneur in the town of Malartic, the wine bottles on the shelves began to shake, the cashier on duty told CTV News.

"The bottles on the shelves were shaking," she said. "It was pretty strange. I’ve never seen that before."

Many other locals also reported online that they felt the shaking. Some, in the mining-heavy region, first believed they were feeling the effects of blasting at a nearby mine.

ICELAND 

Fagradalsfjall volcano update: more and

 

more frequent earthquakes reflect magma

 

intrusion

Wed, 29 Dec 2021, 04:30

04:30 AM | BY: MARTIN

The seismic activity during 21-28 Dec on the Reykjanes peninsula (image: IMO)

600 quakes have been detected since midnight, but have occurred at a lower number than yesterday at the same time.
A maximum magnitude of 3.6 occurred yesterday at 08:25 local time.
Magma migration at depth is still about to pressurize and the increase in the seismic activity is likely a sign of its accumulation.
19000 earthquakes have already been detected in total, mostly with magnitudes of 4 or more since the seismic crisis started on 21 December.

• All news about: Fagradalsfjall volcano
• Information about: Fagradalsfjall volcano

Tue, 28 Dec 2021, 00:28

Fagradalsfjall volcano update: strong seismic activity continues

The number of earthquakes rapidly increasing but the activity slowed down a bit over the past 24 hours. ... Read all

Sun, 26 Dec 2021, 21:54

Fagradalsfjall volcano update: continuing ground deformation has reached same pre-eruptive February values

The seismicity continues at increasing levels. ... Read all

Fri, 24 Dec 2021, 02:10

Fagradalsfjall volcano update: intense seismic activity continues

The elevated seismic activity continues. ... Read all

Thu, 23 Dec 2021, 01:38

Fagradalsfjall volcano update: seismic activity has been picking up since yesterday, Aviation Color Code raised to orange

The Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) detected an increasing trend of seismic activity began yesterday. ... Read all

How Fault Surface Features Can Tell Us About Future Earthquakes

A new study suggests ways to quantify fault maturity, a property that affects earthquake characteristics.

By Elizabeth Thompson

21 December 2021

The San Andreas Fault, a mature strike-slip fault, is well studied because it lies near major population centers. Understanding fault maturity here and at other faults can help scientists model earthquakes and assess risks to nearby communities. Credit: Doc Searls, CC BY-SA 2.0

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

Earthquakes cannot be forecast like weather, but fault line characteristics, such as structural maturity, can give hints about how a future earthquake may act. Structural maturity is related to the age of the fault, but especially important is its “experience,” how much a fault has developed and changed over time and activity.

Mature and immature faults generate very different earthquakes. Mature faults release less stress, but their rupture propagates quickly down their length, whereas immature faults create high-energy, slower quakes. A quick assessment of a fault’s maturity will help scientists better understand the risks they pose to nearby communities.

A new study seeks to quantify faults’ maturity into a useful metric to help assess earthquake risks. Manighetti et al. measured surface features of fault lines that previous studies had evaluated at several maturity levels. They then analyzed their measurements to see how they related to the maturity judgment.

The researchers found that corrugation (i.e., undulation) and step-overs were good maturity indicators. Immature faults were reliably shorter, with high corrugation and high step-over density. As faults matured, they lengthened and smoothed out, reducing undulations and step-over density.

These traits are not only reliable across faults; they are also detectable at low resolutions. Scientists can map as little as a third of a fault’s length at relatively low resolution and still generate an accurate assessment of a fault’s maturity. This means that these metrics are practical for models and hazard assessments. Applying neural networks to the mapping process would make this method even easier, according to the authors. (Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL095372, 2021)

—Elizabeth Thompson, Science Writer

Citation: Thompson, E. (2021), How fault surface features can tell us about future earthquakes, Eos, 102, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO210677. Published on 21 December 2021.

Text © 2021. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Nearly 300 Years Ago, a Tsunami Hit The Coast of Chile, But Nobody Found It Until Now


The 1960 Chilean tsunami caused disaster in Japan. (NWS/Public Domain)

CARLY CASSELLA
13 DECEMBER 2021

The south-central coast of Chile could be more vulnerable to tsunamis than the historical record suggests.

Geological research among the tidal marshes of Chaihuín has now revealed the fallout of a long, high wall of water that struck land in 1737. Written documents from the time, however, describe no such wave.


"There are records of an earthquake in the area in 1737, but there is nothing in these records to indicate it generated a tsunami," says Emma Hocking from Northumbria University in the United Kingdom.

That's a problem, because it suggests our future tsunami predictions are based on a miscalculation. Instead of recurring once every 280 years, earthquakes that have the potential to produce tsunamis may arrive as frequently as once every 130 years.

The discovery is based on the sediment layers found in a tidal marsh near Valdivia, a historic city on the south coast of Chile that was hit by a massive, magnitude 9.5 earthquake in 1960.

This ground-breaking event ultimately triggered a deadly tsunami that hit the Chilean coast at a height of about 25 meters, while also battering the coasts of Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand and Hawaii.

Written records suggest earthquakes near Valdivia were followed by tsunamis in 1837 and 1575, but for some reason, the earthquake in 1737 lacked a corresponding wave.

In the past, researchers have explained away this missing tsunami by suggesting that the 1737 earthquake was caused by a deep rupture between two tectonic plates underneath the land, as opposed to under the sea.

But when researchers analyzed the sediment and single-celled algae found in Chaihuín, they found evidence of tsunami inundation on land.

Aerial view of the Chaihuín tidal marsh. (Northumbria University)

"By combining deformation and tsunami modelling, we show that our evidence of coastal subsidence and tsunami inundation at Chaihuín is better explained by offshore, shallow megathrust slip rather than by deeper slip below land as previously suggested," the authors write.

The most likely depth of the earthquake that caused this tsunami would be around 20 kilometers (12 miles) or less. After all, a shallower earthquake that hits offshore is more likely to produce a tsunami in its wake.

At Chaihuín, the authors found three distinct sand sheet layers, deposited by locally sourced tsunamis.

The layer A deposits coincide with the 1960 earthquake and tsunami, while the sands of B and C represent tsunamis derived from the 1737 and 1575 earthquakes, respectively.

Although there were other earthquakes that hit during the time that layer B was deposited, the 1737 earthquake was the closest to this salt marsh. Other geological research elsewhere along the coast has not turned up similar deposits, which suggests the tsunami from the 1737 earthquake hit a smaller region than the 1960 tsunami.

The same fault lines, therefore, appear capable of producing slightly different natural disasters over time - something we need to be acutely aware of in the future.

"Tsunami hazard assessment is often based on historic records of flooding along particular coastlines, with the frequency of past tsunami occurrence used to predict the potential future risk," explains Hocking.

"However, such records are sometimes incomplete because reporting of tsunamis can be greatly affected by societal unrest or other crises. In this case, it is believed that the lack of chronicles of a tsunami could be attributed to uprisings that had driven settlers from most of the colonial outposts in the area."

As a result, researchers are calling for caution when it comes to using historical records to predict future earthquakes and tsunamis.

To give ourselves a better idea of what could happen in the future and when, we need to compare historical records to direct geological evidence.

The new findings only come from one region of the Chilean coast, about 20 kilometers south of Valdivia, so further research will be needed in other nearby areas to truly understand the scope and timing of the 1737 tsunami.

The study was published in Communications Earth & Environment.

FEATURE: Divestment, not reform, to dominate Nigeria's oil sector in 2022

HIGHLIGHTS

Time running out for Nigeria's upstream: analysts

Implementation of Petroleum Industry Act critical

Pumping barely close to two-thirds of total capacity


Author
Eklavya Gupte with Staff Reports
Editor
Jim Levesque
Commodity
Energy Transition, Natural Gas, Oil

2022 poses to be a very challenging year for Nigeria. Africa's largest oil producer faces a race against time to implement reforms needed to bolster exploration and check declining oil production as it fights a wave of divestments from international oil companies.

The signing into law of the long-delayed energy legislation called the Petroleum Industry Act, previously known as the Petroleum Industry Bill, in August this year is not expected to bring the much-needed succor to the oil sector. Rather, Nigeria is likely to contend with a gale of divestments by major oil companies to reduce operating, security challenges and the huge costs of battling with the pandemic, industry officials and analysts told S&P Global Platts.

The landmark PIA was signed into law Aug. 16 and was expected to turn the state oil company Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. to a private company within six months in order to make it easier for the struggling company to raise funds for oil exploration and production. But impact of this bill has so far been barely felt.

Divestment dilemma

The PIA could be hugely beneficial, but government officials have lacked professionalism in putting it into place, Abiodun Adesanya, the CEO of Lagos-based oil consultancy Degeconek, told S&P Global Platts.

"The fact is that this Petroleum Industry Act is coming a little too late as it has been delayed for too long," Adesanya said. "Those who were rightly placed to pioneer the implementation are not the people in government now."

"So, I expect to see more divestment by oil majors from selected assets because things are not working as they should be."

Many oil majors are starting to divest legacy oil and gas assets in Africa as they target net-zero carbon emissions while hanging onto their most efficient and often largest oil projects.

Nigeria could be the worst hit as Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil are close to selling their onshore assets in the West African country.

Nigeria is under pressure to implement the PIA as soon as possible, according to Mike Sangster, managing director of TotalEnergies in Nigeria.

"The window for investments into fossil fuels is narrowing," he said at a recent industry event. "Very few years would remain for access to urgent funds to develop the Nigerian petroleum industry."




Production setbacks

This all comes at a time when Nigerian is struggling to produce at even two-thirds of its total capabilities.

Nigeria has the capacity to pump around 2.2 million b/d of crude and condensate, but in 2021 output has been languishing near 1.55 million b/d due to a slew of operational and technical issues.

The Nigerian government is aiming to attract much-needed investment to bolster oil exploration and production and increase reserves and output to 40 billion barrels and 3 million b/d, respectively, by the mid-2020s, but these targets are starting to look unattainable.

The pandemic and the acceleration of the energy transition away from fossils fuels does not bode well for Nigeria, which is desperate to kickstart its exploration and production programs.

Projects like Shell's Bonga Southwest/Aparo, TotalEnergies' Preowei and Exxon's Bosi are all at risk of never being developed. These fields have the potential to add a total of around 400,000 b/d to Nigerian oil production.

"Investment decisions are billed to be taken on these landmark projects around next year to arrest Nigeria's sagging oil production volumes," an official from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission told S&P Global Platts. "But there are dark clouds hovering around sanctioning these projects now due to the emergence of the new COVID-19 variant."

Ongoing field and pipeline issues, fiscal stress and insecurity in the Niger Delta are likely to continue to threaten the growth outlook for Nigerian oil output, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.

Bonny Light, Escravos and Forcados have all faced production issues in 2021, while the output of other key grades, such as Qua Iboe, Brass River, Agbami, Akpo, and Egina, has also remained consistently low this year.

Nigerian oil supply will grow to 1.7 million b/d by April 2022, down from levels of 1.9 million b/d in April 2020, Platts Analytics said in its recent forecast.

Gasoline subsidies

How Nigeria's government will navigate its policy of ending gasoline subsidies from July 2022 remains another stern test for the African oil producer.

Nigeria imports almost all the gasoline it consumes locally, estimated at 1.25 million mt/month, due to the poor performance of the four state-owned refineries. The government's subsidy is the difference between the landing cost of gasoline and the regulated pump price.

The removal of these costly subsidies is domestically viewed as unpopular and politically sensitive, with opposition parties and labor groups urging the government to reverse decision.

The Nigerian Labor Congress, the umbrella body for Nigerian workers, has said it will reject the government's bid to increase fuel prices. "The impact of price hike will be would affect be felt by all Nigerians, motorists, households, transporters, who are already contending with stagnated wages."

Tackling One Of The Fracking Industry’s Biggest Problems

By Robert Rapier - Dec 21, 2021

• The fracking industry has often been criticized for its tremendous water usage.
• Plasma Pulse Technology is a new fracking tech that requires no chemicals or water. 
• Its developers describe it as a technique that is complementary to fracking, at a fraction of the cost.

In the previous article, I discussed some of the issues involving water and hydraulic fracturing (fracking). In a nutshell, although fracking has proven to be a highly effective means of boosting oil and natural gas production, the process requires millions of gallons of water. Further, there is the potential to contaminate water supplies. Although fracking isn’t going away anytime soon, it would be beneficial if there were some complementary tools for drillers in the event that conventional fracking could prove to be problematic. For example, an extremely arid area with certain types of hydrocarbon resources could be ripe for such a technique.

Several years ago, I first heard about Plasma Pulse Technology. As with many new technologies, I approached it with a healthy degree of skepticism. I like to see data, and at that time there wasn’t a lot of data yet available on the technique.

Plasma Pulse Technology was invented at St. Petersburg State Mining University in Russia. Conventional fracking uses water at high pressure to break open channels that then enable the flow of oil or natural gas into the well. In contrast, Plasma Pulse Technology through a powerful electrical discharge produces a high-pressure plasma pulse (5,000 psi), and the subsequent compression shock wave propagates along the path of least resistance (i.e., in the perforations). These compression shock waves propagate over long distances.

The first two or three pulses clean the perforation. Subsequent pulses penetrate into the reservoir, clean the existing channels, and create a network of micro-cracks. This enables oil to more easily flow into the well. Following the application of the technique, oil production can be boosted for several years.

To be clear, this isn’t voodoo. The technique is described in some detail in multiple technical reports and research papers. For example, in Petroleum Research Karan Patal et al. report on the technical details of how the technology works and specific case studies in Plasma Pulse Technology: An uprising EOR technique.

Its developers describe it as a technique that is complementary to fracking, at a fraction of the cost. It doesn’t always work in the same niche as fracking, but it has been shown to boost production in previously fracked wells.

Novas Energy rolled out Plasma Pulse Technology in China, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the Middle East a decade ago, and in 2014 it was introduced to North America. Novas Energy North America President and CEO Ken Stankievech described the advantages of the technology to me in a recent phone call:

“The cost differential between Plasma Pulse Technology and hydraulic fracking jobs is substantial. On a vertical well, Plasma Pulse Technology is 75% cheaper than an equivalent hydraulic fracturing job. On a horizontal well, depending on the lateral leg length of the project, it can be 90% cheaper than a traditional job, while operating without the extreme consumption of water and caustic chemicals.”

He added that they have performed the technique on wells as deep as 13,000 feet, but says the original tools have now been modified for extreme depths of 30,000 feet.

So far Plasma Pulse Technology has been used primarily on small wells, but the results have been promising. Novas Energy provided several case studies, some of which are available in the published literature.

Here are some of the cases in which the technique has been used:

• The Kuwait Oil Company well RA-000A was producing oil of about 196 barrels of oil per day (bopd) before the plasma stimulation and after the job the well is producing a stable rate of about 363 bopd. Plasma pulse produced an incremental oil gain of 167 bopd — an increase of 85% from the initial oil production rate. (Source: Chellappan, Suresh Kumar, et al. “First application of plasma technology in KOC to improve well’s productivity.” SPE Kuwait Oil and Gas Show and Conference. OnePetro, 2015.)
• Alberta Case Study 1 – Vertical well Lower Mannville, Retlaw Alberta. Pretreatment oil production of 12.6 barrels of oil equivalent per day (Boe/d) increased after treatment to 26.5 Boe/d — a 109% increase. The average 24- month increase is 73%.
• Alberta Case Study 2 – Vertical well Lower Mannville, Alderson Alberta. Pretreatment oil production of 27.8 Boe/d increased after treatment to 48 Boe/d — a 73% increase. The average increase was 44% over a 40-month period.
• Russia Case Study 3 – Vertical well in the Taylakovskoe oil field, a tight sandstone deposit.  Pretreatment oil production of 40 Boe/d increased after treatment to 145 Boe/d — a 275% increase. The average increase was 80% over a 48-month period.

Case Study 1 and 2 are available from the public data fields GeoScout provided directly from the client to GeoScout, a third-party data management company authorized by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). The Russian study was done by Slvneft-Megionneftegas.

Early results are promising, but oil and gas companies are notoriously conservative when it comes to embracing new technology. But Novas Energy believes 2022 is going to be a breakout year for them, as they have a committed book of business of more than 100 oil and gas wells for plasma treatment.

According to Stankievech “More and more of our clients are realizing that Plasma Pulse is an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective technology that can boost hydrocarbon productivity without breaking the bank.”

By Robert Rapier 

Is the world ready to live without oil?

The climate crisis has put the end of oil onto the agenda, but achieving that is a colossal task given the world economy's deep dependence on petroleum.

"In 2021, several developments showed clearly that (the petroleum) industry doesn't have a future," said Romain Ioualalen at the activist group Oil Change International.

The International Energy Agency warned in May that an immediate halt to new investment in fossil projects is needed if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to stand any chance of limiting warming to 1.5C.

The call was a revolution for an agency created in the wake of the first 1970 oil shock to protect the energy security of rich, oil-consuming nations.

Another major moment in 2021 was the emergence at the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow of a coalition of nations that pledged to phase out oil and gas production, although no major oil and gas producing nation joined that group.

"It is no longer taboo to talk about the end of the extraction of hydrocarbons during international climate summits," said Oil Change International's Ioualalen.

And fossil fuels - which still represent 80 percent of energy consumed - were explicitly blamed for driving climate change, which was not the case when the Paris climate pact was reached in 2015.

More recently, environmental defenders scored a symbolic victory when oil giant Shell decided to exit the development of the controversial Cambo oil field off Scotland saying the investment case was "not strong enough".

'Dependent'

"We've known for several years that the end of crude oil ... is near," said Moez Ajmi, an energy specialist at professional services firm EY.

"But is the world ready to live without oil? It is still very dependent in my view."

The IEA also believes that oil demand is still set to rise. It expects it to reach its pre-pandemic level of just under 100 million barrels per day next year.

With crude prices having rebounded in the past months, oil producers are rolling in cash and can afford to pursue new projects.

"Any talk of the oil and gas industries being consigned to the past and halting new investments in oil and gas is misguided," OPEC leader Mohammed Barkindo said recently.

The head of French oil firm TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanne, said he's "convinced the transition will take place because there is a real awareness, but it will take time."

He believes the issue is being approached from the wrong end. Instead of focussing on reducing oil, attention should be shifted towards consumption.

Demand for fossil fuels "will decline because consumers have access to new products like electric vehicles," said Pouyanne.

In the first half of the year, electric vehicles accounted for 7 percent of global auto sales, according to BloombergNEF. While that is still a small percentage, it is growing fast.

'Transformational year' 

Oil Change International's Ioualalen said that arguments put forward by oil companies and producing nations are cynical and focus on the short term.

"They're trying to justify an unsustainable trajectory at any cost," he said.

"We're still far from a decarbonised economy, of course, but it is the energy system investments that are made today that will lead us there," said Ioualalen.

Whatever the horizon for the end of petroleum, industry players are still only willy-nilly preparing for it as pressure upon them mounts.

US oil majors ExxonMobil and Chevron were long holdouts but finally announced this year investments into the energy transition.

"2022 has the potential to be a truly transformational year," said Tom Ellacott, senior vice president for corporate analysis at energy research and consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie.

"It's clear that sitting on the decarbonisation sidelines isn't an option" given the increasing pressure on the oil industry.

Experts believe that 2022 will see more investment in wind and solar power as well as technology to capture carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants and factories.

NIGERIA

Fishermen say ExxonMobil yet to pay compensation years after oil spills

The fishermen estimate their losses at N11 billion but the company claims it does not know the case.

ExxonMobil Nigeria Headquarters

By Oge Udegbunam
December 27, 2021

Fishermen in Akwa Ibom State have accused ExxonMobil, the American multinational oil and gas corporation, of refusing to take responsibility and pay compensation for a series of oil spills that occurred in the state between 1998 and 2012.

The fishermen said they were encouraged to take their case out of the court in expectation a settlement will be reached. Years after, despite several petitions and reminders to government officials and the company, nothing has been done to help them.

The fishermen, under the Akwa Ibom Cooperative Fisheries Association, said oil spills occurred between 1998 and 2012, leading to the destruction of their nets and other fishing tools and livelihoods.

The group held a protest in Abuja in July to press ExxonMobil to pay for damages for hardships its members suffered in the last 14 years as a result of oil spills, estimating the compensation at N11 billion.

On October 4, 2021, it sent a petition to the National Assembly through the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, requesting the Nigerian government’s intervention in the push for compensation from the oil firm.

On 24 September, 2021 the group sent a reminder to the lawmakers through the office of Ike Ekweremadu, the Enugu senator.

“We, the board of directors and members of Akwa Ibom Co-operative Fisheries Association Limited wish to remind you of our plight and request contained in our letter of 24 July, 2018 (copy attached) on the above subject and to express our utter disappointment at the way our matter of injustice and spiteful treatment is being handled by the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the notice read.

The union said it went to court in 2005 to seek redress, but ExxonMobil quickly approached Eme Ufot Ekaette, a former senator, to plead with them to withdraw the case from court, with a promise that they were willing to settle the matter and pay compensation to enable them to return to business.

Documents seen by PREMIUM TIMES showed that the group filed a suit against the oil firm in 2005 but on 7 January, 2008, the group withdrew the case with the applicant number CA/C/3/2006 from court.

In 2010, the Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology under the then chairmanship of Grace Bent told ExxonMobil to compensate the group for the ruin the spills wrought on the community. The company has failed to comply 11 years later, the group said.

In 2015, ExxonMobil replied to a letter from the group, acknowledging that oil was released on January 12, 1998 from its Usari Idaho pipeline after scientific investigation but no damage was discovered in the environment.

It also confirmed that an oil spill occurred through the same pipeline in November 2012 but at the time of responding to the letter, its investigation was in progress.
A tale of endless havoc

Several oil spills occurred in Akwa Ibom between 1998 and 2012. An ExxonMobil pipeline in 2010 spewed multiple gallons of oil into the Akwa Ibom water, aggravating the unrelieved woe of environmental degradation in the Niger Delta.

The spill occurred at an ExxonMobil platform between 32 and 40 kilometres offshore at a platform, which feeds the Qua Iboe oil export terminal. The oil firm declared force majeure on Qua Iboe oil shipments due to the pipeline damage.

The leakage discharged barrels of crude into the Atlantic Ocean, contaminating the waters and coastal settlements in the predominantly fishing communities along Akwa Ibom and Cross River states.

The group of Akwa Ibom fishermen, whose members travelled nearly 1000 kilometres to Abuja, submitted a petition on July 8, to the National Human Rights Commission, requesting that the Nigerian government help them get justice.

The director, corporate affairs & external linkages, at the NHRC, Halima Oyedele, promised the aggrieved protesters that their grievances will be addressed.

The group said it has made significant efforts to get the oil firm to pay the compensation since the first oil spill in 1998.

They said a panel set up by ExxonMobil to handle spills-related issues received their complaints but has failed to redeem its pledge to pay them.

The leaders of the group, Johnson Ntegwung and Effiok Essien, said their members were asked by ExxonMobil to hand over all damaged fishing equipment, and that the submitted tools were destroyed by the company on the explanation that they did not want those items to be recycled for further claims.

“That pursuant to the above, the panel of enquiry, therefore, made recommendations that the total sum of N100, 000.00 (One Hundred Thousand Naira) be paid to each of the fishermen whose fishing equipment had been damaged as a result of the spills, at least to cushion the effect of the fishermen’s predicament due to the spills,” the group said.

When PREMIUM TIMES contacted ExxonMobil, the spokesperson, Ogechukwu Udeagah, denied knowledge of the case.

He requested details of the court case be sent to him. After the documents were sent, Mr Udeagah promised to send the documents to the legal department.

But at the time of filing this report, he did not respond.

Also, a spokesperson for the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), Idris Musa, Okey Emeh, said he could not comment on the case as it was in court.

“The DG cannot say anything for now, the matter is still in court. It is against the law to speak about a case that has no judgement yet,” Mr Emeh said in August.

But the fishermen group insisted the matter was agreed to be settled out of court in 2008.

NIGERIA
Shell, ExxonMobil Face Huge Remediation Costs over Abandoned Onshore Assets
December 28, 2021




Shell, ExxonMobil Face Huge Remediation Costs over Abandoned Onshore Assets

•Aiteo considers options against multinational oil company over Nembe spill

•Sector not ripe for full-blown deactivation processes, says industry regulator


•Stakeholders want enforcement of rules


By Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja


Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria and ExxonMobil are presently faced with huge remediation costs over their failure to properly decommission and cap oil and gas assets across the Niger Delta, especially the ones sold to Nigerians in recent divesture programmes. A situation that creates severe environmental risks and pollution to host communities in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

THISDAY gathered from stakeholders that the recent case of Aiteo’s Nembe wellhead blowout, brought to the fore the need to enforce the relevant laws and to ensure that the multinationals that sold the assets to the Nigerian companies pay remediation charges.

While Aiteo is presently engaged in a legal tussle with Shell, seeking the sum of over $2.5 billion compensation over the sale of Oil Mining Licence 29, THISDAY gathered that the Nigerian oil and gas company is also considering fresh legal action against the multinational over the Nembe spill and other wells not properly capped.

On the other hand, Seplat Energy Plc last month announced that together with its partner, that it was in competitive discussions to acquire ExxonMobil’s Nigerian shallow water business. With this, stakeholders have expressed concern about what would happen if the deal is sealed and some of the ExxonMobil’s assets that were not properly capped causes another environment challenge.

“The present environment challenge is what is likely going to be faced when Shell sells it entire SPDC oil blocs in the Niger Delta without properly capping the oil wells and providing for remediation” an oil and gas expert who pleaded to remain anonymous stated.

Findings by THISDAY have revealed that many of the oil and gas assets sold to Nigerians, mostly by the International Oil Companies (IOCs), are rarely decommissioned or properly abandoned, a development that clearly breaches existing laws regulating the industry.

Decommissioning is the cessation of operations at an oil and gas platform and returning the seafloor to its pre-production state for installations and any relevant structures that have come to the end of their productive life.


Onshore decommissioning involves capping oil wells, clean-up and taking out all production and pipeline risers that are sustained by the platform, removing the platform and getting rid of it in a junk storage area or manufacturing yard.

International conventions guiding decommissioning operations include the Geneva Convention on the continental shelf, 1958; United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 1982; and Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and other Matters, 1972.

But despite extant regulations and the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), THISDAY learnt that there was rarely any adherence to full decommissioning for the infrastructure that had been sold and there might be no such arrangements for those for which buyers were being sought.

According to Section 232, (1) of the new Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), “The decommissioning and abandonment of petroleum wells, installations, structures, utilities, plants and pipelines for petroleum operations on land and offshore shall be conducted in accordance with good international petroleum industry practice.”

In Section, 233 (1), the new law affirms, “Each lessee and licensee shall set up, maintain and manage a decommissioning fund held by a financial institution that is not an affiliate of the lessee or licensee, in the form of an escrow account accessible by the commission.

“The decommissioning and abandonment fund shall exclusively be used to pay for decommissioning and abandonment costs. Where a lessee or a licensee fails to comply with the decommissioning and abandonment plan, the decommissioning and abandonment fund shall be accessed by the commission to pay for the performance by a third party.”

Arising from one of the deals, Aiteo recently claimed in a suit that it paid $799 million to Shell for the acquisition of the NCTL pipelines and the assets and that $389.6 million had been lost by the company as a result of the leakages in the pipelines and the degraded conditions of the asset.


Aiteo also claimed that $933 million had been expended for the repairs of the pipelines and acquisition of equipment, including well-heads, generators, and pumps, as well as replacement of the flow lines within the NCTL, which it bought from Shell.

It was learnt that the big oil companies had continued to sell “dead” assets to the country’s local businessmen under the guise that they could no longer cope with militancy or community issues, especially in the Niger Delta.

What they have not told buyers is that there would be huge remediation cost down the line from over 30 to 40 years of neglect.

The recent case of Aiteo’s Nembe wellhead blowout, stakeholders said, brought to the fore the need to enforce the relevant laws and implement proper shutdowns of oil and gas assets in the abandonment and restoration process. Many experts believe that if the wellhead was properly and permanently plugged and decommissioned, since it was not commercially viable, the blowout that happened in Nembe would have been avoided.

It is believed that Nigeria’s transitory regulatory environment and inability of the authorities to strengthen environmental and petroleum laws for the deactivation of abandoned wells and aging oil facilities have also not helped matters.

Speaking with THISDAY, the immediate past Chairman of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), Nigeria Council, Joe Nwakwue, stated that the availability of regulations had not always been the problem, but enforcement. However, he explained that it was not wholly an IOC issue, noting that there are usually agreements with whoever is buying non-producing assets on steps to take to decommission them.

Nwakwue said, “There are regulations around assets that are no longer in use and it has nothing to do with the transfer of the assets. So, whether it’s Shell or Aiteo, for instance, there are rules.

“When a wellhead is no longer producing, there are two steps: it is either there’s a TP&A, which is to temporarily plug and abandon it or you permanently plug and abandon.

“The problem was that neither of those happened, so that means that it was still theoretically operational. There was need to have abandoned the well when it was no longer in use. That didn’t happen and that’s why we had that spill.”

He said it did not matter who owned the assets because transfer was a different issue entirely, which should not be mixed up with the decommissioning process.

According to Nwakwue, “What happened to the commitments? When you talk about asset transfer you’re talking about decommissioning commitment, because when you are selling the assets that’s when the issue of who should decommission will come in because it goes into the pricing.

“If I’m buying an asset from you with what is called retirement obligation, I will have to deduct that cost from what I will pay you. I am sure that Shell transferred its commitment to Aiteo.”

Nwakwue maintained that the Aiteo facility was just one of several that had been left without proper decommissioning operation, noting that there are even many more assets that have not been sold.

He held, “There might be a lot of wellheads that are no longer producing but they are active, they are exposed to pressure. Whoever owns the asset should have a programme to temporarily abandon them to make them safer.

“There are regulations, but who is monitoring? That is the question. Who is ensuring that the regulations are followed? Those are the questions that need to be answered.

“The regulator should step up their game. They need to have a programme where facilities that are not no longer in use are temporarily or permanently abandoned and decommissioned to keep the environment safe.

“Irrespective of who is operating them, the primary issue is that there are regulations that have not been followed through and is important that the commission is alive to those responsibilities.”

Secretary General of the Niger Delta Ethnic Nationalities, Capt. Bassey Henshaw, told THISDAY that the oil companies must clean up the environment they had degraded over the years as well as pay compensation before any talk about leaving their onshore and shallow water operations in the region.

Henshaw said, “We do not dispute the fact that they can go green or whatever, but there has to be some closure. You have a business running and there are issues emanating from those businesses. You do not wake up and say you are going green. All the issues have to be fixed and resolved.

“We cannot hold them to ransom if they want to leave, but they have to have a closure of the previous business they have done, the degradation of the environment, the oil spillages and all.”

An oil industry enthusiast, who had covered the sector widely, Ms Ijeoma Nwogwugwu, wrote in a recent article, “As a result, oil multinationals that want to avoid spending several millions of dollars on decommissioning, have taken advantage of the loopholes by selling their oil assets, including aging and rusting infrastructure, to local oil firms.

“Since the late 2000s, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips have sold their stakes in about 20 to 25 oil blocks to local oil operators at ridiculously exorbitant prices.

“All the acquisitions were leveraged buyouts that left several Nigerian banks with massive exposures to the oil and gas sector. Many of the loans are yet to be repaid to date.”

Nwogwugwu said one way to avoid this debacle was to adopt what obtains in other jurisdictions where it is mandatory, prior to asset sale, for prospective bidders to possess the wherewithal to decommission aging oil and gas infrastructure. She mentioned the $3 billion sale of the Bass Strait operation in Australia, as a case in point.

But in a reaction, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), the industry regulator, stressed that the industry was not mature enough for wholesale decommissioning activities.

Head, Health Safety and Environment, NUPRC, Mr Afeez Balogun, told THISDAY that for divested assets, the buying companies were always encouraged to look holistically at the liabilities and factor them into the purchase arrangements.

According to Balogun, “The premise for full-blown decommissioning is not yet there in the Nigerian oil and gas industry, as many of the assets still have long mileage to offer. Add to that the fact that we are currently investing technology for improved oil recovery that will save a lot of costs and further increase the mileage of these assets.

“So, there is really no crisis, as many uninformed people would want to assume. However, for divested assets, the buying companies are always encouraged to look holistically at the liabilities and factor that into the purchase arrangements.

“Fortunately, the divesting companies are currently the big ones that have JV agreements with NNPC, and we are aware that decommissioning arrangements with the companies are being put in place.”

However, he stated that the PIA was now more explicit and gave more strength and bite to the rudimentary regulations that the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) already had in place.

“So, before we reach a crisis level, if we ever will, all these arrangements should have given us adequate protection to make things easier,” Balogun said.

“We are also watching and are set to tap from all the numerous innovations being brought about by the developed world on decommissioning on all fronts, including environmental and legal considerations, technology, service provision and financing,” he added.

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, recently said the federal government would carefully scrutinise oil companies that would bid for the takeover of assets that Shell and other oil majors will be divesting from in the country.

“In the past, companies were just allowed to buy assets that they had no capacity to operate. We would no longer allow that to happen again because government is the ultimate loser,” Sylva stated.

Shell and ExxonMobil are two of the most vocal IOCs in the country, which have been in talks to sell off some of their assets, especially those onshore and in shallow waters.

A leading global oil and gas consulting firm, Wood McKenzie, had put the total value of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), the subsidiary Shell proposes to totally divest from, at $2.3 billion.

According to the document, 19 Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) will be put up for sale by the oil giant in onshore locations and shallow waters in the company’s eastern and western operations in the Niger Delta.

Only last month, Nigerian oil and gas company, Seplat Energy, revealed that it was actively engaged in negotiations to acquire ExxonMobil’s shallow water assets in the country. A Reuters report had in 2019 put the expected potential disposals at $3 billion.