Gas leak in Sangana in Brass local government area
Environmentalist raises alarm over gas leak in Bayelsa community
[From CHRIS EZE, Yenagoa]
An environmentalist and former commissioner for lands in Bayelsa State, Surveyor Furoebi Akene has urged Bayelsa State government to quickly evacuate the people of Sangana in Brass local government area of the state following the gas leak at the Conoil facility in the area.
Akene who spoke to our correspondent in Yenagoa decried the nonchalant attitude of the state, federal government and regulatory agencies to the adverse effects of the gas leak on the people.
The former commissioner who is also the Chief Operating Officer of Center for Environmental Preservation and Development said, “It is quite unfortunate what the people are passing through. The lives of the people are in danger.
“The real effects on human beings can only be ascertained when we take laboratory analysis of the gas in the ambient environment. We know that the health hazard on the indigenes of the area is enormous.
“We are suffering this thing in the Niger Delta because our state is not serious about it, the federal government is not serious about it and the regulatory agencies have been bought over.
“It’s a confraternity between the federal government, the National Assembly, the operators and the regulatory agencies. So my serious appeal is that we are Bayelsans, we suffer the effect. The Bayelsa State government should rise up, evacuate these people and give them palliatives because this thing has an after effect. This is gas and they are inhaling it. It will be killing people gradually, destroying their respiratory system”
Meanwhile, the chairman of Sangana Fishing Union, Ikomikumo Noel has lamented that the gas leak has rendered the community homeless as most of the community members who live along the rig owned by Conoil have relocated to a safer places while some have ran to Yenagoa.
In a press briefing in Yenagoa, the chairman recalled that there was also a major gas leak in 2017 from Conoil facility which the fishermen quickly mobilized themselves and rescued everybody at the rig.
Noel continued “They didn’t pay compensation. They didn’t do anything. Yet on 3rd of September, 2020, there was another gas leak. Our fishermen went there to stop the fire but they couldn’t do it.
“Now anytime you go there, there is always spill and all the fishes have died. There is no way we as fishermen can cope. They are continuously constituting nuisance in the oil field.
“Yet on 31st October 2021, another one happened. As we speak I don’t know when I will die because if you see what is happening in the sea, you will have pity for us. The gas is flowing directly to the community, flowing into the sea and killing aquatic animals. Fishes are dying in their numbers. Every day, we are picking fish.
“We are afraid and we are telling our children not to pick again. Gas is still leaking as we speak. We are in danger,” he lamented.
Also speaking, Biebelemo Jonathan, the woman leader of the community said that old women are children cannot go the river again.
She said “There is no way to bath. No way to drink water. My women are suffering. Our grandmothers, our children no way to bath now as I speak to you and no way to go to the river and catch fish”.
