element: ifie and tina
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You don’t expect fire to feel metallic.
That’s what flaring feels like – you feel it as a whine, like metal being rubbed. Turn off the engine, someone said, but it wasn’t on – it was the flame’s vibration shaking the van.
Tina talks angrily. Why is this gas being burnt, when it could be used, and people are suffering because of it?
Then she’s quiet. It just feels wrong.
Gas is ‘flared’ or burnt up as part of the process of extracting crude oil from the ground. Separating the gas from the oil makes the oil more usable. This gas could also be stored and used. But it’s cheaper – if only economically – to burn it off than to build the infrastructure that storage would require.
Especially if you’re not paying for the damage locally, and the tab for the long term is split between everything on earth.
Gas flaring in Nigeria contributes more greenhouse gases – the gases contributing to climate change – than all activity in sub-Saharan Africa combined. More than from Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden or Norway!
Flaring is illegal in Nigeria: its toxicity and effects on health and the environment make it a violation of human rights.
Oil companies get away with flaring and other activities because we want more oil to do more with. There are ways to change this.
Tina and Ifie are filming testimonies so that people around the world see the local cost of oil.
We can also:
- Demand that energy companies are more socially and environmentally responsible
http://climatelaw.org
http://www.foei.org/campaigns/ - Write to the Nigerian government requesting that they uphold this recent court decision
http://www.climatelaw.org/media/Nigeria%20May%202007 - Reduce how much oil (and gas!) we each use and support renewable forms of energy
http://www.greenpeace.org< - Read here for more on the oil spill documented by Tina and Ifie:
Tina and Ifie’s Element relates to Millennium Development Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability.
Lance E said on May 24th, 2007 at 5:39 pm:
I have no problem with companies being focused on profit, because if they actually did operate that way they would not “flare” all that gas into the atmosphere, and they would realise they have low cost labour at their back door. Those people live on $1 a day, pay them $10 a day to do a job and watch everyone benefit. Bottle and sell the gas and watch the companies profits go through the roof. What is wrong with these companies? Are they stupid, or blind, or both?
tovorinok said on July 5th, 2007 at 4:34 pm:
Hello
Great book. I just want to say what a fantastic thing you are doing! Good luck!
Bye
Nigeria: Gas Flaring Continues in Defiance of Government Order - AfricanLoft said on January 15th, 2008 at 2:45 am:
[…] Related item: Element: Ifie and Tina - a documentary of the burden of oil in the Niger-Delta […]
yemi oyedele said on May 29th, 2008 at 7:26 am:
Hey Tina and Ifie.
I have to commend you guys for a very brave step, you are the reason why the like of Ken Saro-Wiwa may have been killed but he’s never dead, I commend you and I hope there will be more like you, the struggle MUST never stop.
God bless you and stay safe.
Yemi