by Chanan Tigay

(May 23) -- Now a month old, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill still dominates the headlines, with politicians, pundits and ordinary people debating who's to blame and wondering if it will eclipse the Exxon Valdez as the worst spill in U.S. history.

Meanwhile, Nigeria reportedly leaks as much oil as the Valdez -- which spewed nearly 11 million gallons of crude into Alaskan waters in 1989 -- every year, with little attention paid.

A top 10 oil exporter with proven reserves of 36 billion barrels, Nigeria today also ranks among the world's worst in petroleum safety. According to reports, last year alone the West African nation had more than 2,000 active spills.

George Osodi, AP

Nigerians evacuate their homes as an oil pipeline burns in 2005. Nigeria reportedly leaks as much oil as the Exxon Valdez did in 1989 every year.

Indeed, a half century of oil exploration -- and, experts say, exploitation -- has earned the Niger Delta a dubious distinction: Environmentalists call it the most polluted ecosystem on Earth.

Concerns about offshore drilling have intensified in light of the Gulf Coast spill, with President Barack Obama ordering a slow-down in new drilling while the accident's causes are investigated. Sensing an opening, a group of environmental and human rights activists this week released a hoax announcement claiming that Shell Oil had ordered a halt to its offshore operations in Nigeria.

Members of the Nigerian Justice League said their prank, timed to coincide with Shell's annual general meeting in the Hague, was meant to shine a light on Big Oil's role in damaging the Niger Delta region -- and triggering an increasingly violent atmosphere on the ground.

"Shell's operations in the delta have helped transform that area into the world's most polluted ecosystem, which has in turn resulted in a human rights catastrophe," said Christopher Francis, one of the Nigerian Justice League organizers.

No Hands Are Clean

Experts say that while Big Oil is not blameless, Nigeria's abysmal petroleum record in fact stems from an explosive mix of politics, weak regulation and corruption.

Oil production in Nigeria began in earnest during the 1950s, when the British discovered reserves in the delta, near Port Harcourt. Initially profits were split 50-50 between the colonial government and Shell, which the government had awarded a monopoly on mineral recovery. By the 1960s, though, a number of other oil companies had arrived on the scene, including Gulf, Mobil and Texaco.

Decades of messy oil exploration have since despoiled the delta environment, depriving the local population of its traditional livelihood: fishing. Experts say this has prompted the migration of many locals into surrounding communities populated by other ethnic groups, where they inevitably compete for land and resources, destabilizing the political landscape.

Matters were further complicated by the lengthy illness of Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, who died earlier this month. He had launched a peaceful campaign to rein in a delta insurgency, aimed at oil infrastructure, that sprang up in the late 1990s. Efforts to curb the violence -- which has included bombings, kidnappings, and battles with government troops -- crumbled during Yar'Adua's sickness, however, and rebel attacks eventually slashed the region's oil production by more than half, clearing the way for Angola to overtake Nigeria as Africa's leading oil exporter.

Moreover, the oil companies have secured local approval for their operations using methods that "have not worked very well," according to former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell.

"These methods often involved paying fees to traditional rulers," Campbell, now a senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told AOL News. "But either the 'traditional rulers' weren't traditional rulers, or they kept the money for themselves."

Patronage, often based on ethnic affiliations, has fed intertribal tensions, leading to violence between groups eager to maintain footholds in the oil-rich region, observers say.

For its part, Shell Oil says its critics ignore the challenging context in which the company operates.

"Shell shares concern about the environment and welfare of communities in the Niger Delta, but often the reality and complexity of operating in the delta is not recognized," a Shell spokesman told AOL news. "The vast majority of spills, for example, are the result of sabotage, but Shell cleans up the spills regardless of their cause."

One engineer who has worked on a U.S. oil company's offshore rig outside of the Democratic Republic of the Congo confirms Campbell's account of corruption in the region.

"For me to go offshore, I had to have a special card that would let me fly out there," he said, speaking to AOL News on condition of anonymity. "The card was a form of payment, so that some guy in the government could get a little extra money. So the company I was working for would pay him, and I had this little yellow piece of paper so that I could get on the helicopter.

"The people don't see the revenue that the oil company is paying the government," he said, adding that according to his colleagues who worked on rigs in Nigeria, "Nigeria's worse."

An Uncertain Future

By way of comparison to Nigeria's reported 2,000 active spills last year, a report prepared for the National Council for Science and the Environment says U.S. coastal waters saw 263 spills of 100 barrels or more a year, on average, between 2002 and 2004 (the last period for which complete data are available).

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. estimates that some 650,000 gallons of oil are spilled in 300 separate incidents each year. But conservative assessments from a World Bank study indicate that the figure is in fact a great deal higher. The Associated Press reported that Shell alone spilled nearly 4.5 million gallons of oil into the Niger Delta last year.

Insiders say that unlike the United States, a good number of Nigeria's spills are not the result of operational accidents but sabotage -- chiefly, "bunkering" operations in which mom-and-pop oil shops induce spills while attempting to tap pipelines.

Still, slim rays of hope are breaking through. Nigeria's new president, Goodluck Jonathan, has pledged to fight corruption and make peace in the Niger Delta a priority.

"The federal government, strictly aware of the need for a properly coordinated amnesty program, has achieved the much-desired peace in the Niger Delta region," Jonathan, a former environmental official with a degree in zoology, was recently quoted as saying by United Press International.

He was referring to a program in which thousands of former rebels put down their arms last year in exchange for promises of clemency, cash and employment. The initiative has bred a state of relative calm in the area.

"We will consolidate on the gains of the amnesty program and do all that is humanely possible to prevent the Niger Delta from once again descending into a nightmare," Jonathan said.

Meanwhile, a much-delayed measure known as the Petroleum Industry Bill now awaits action in the National Assembly. The so-called PIB, which has been the subject of long and sometimes difficult negotiations between the government and the oil industry, is an attempt at comprehensive reform of Nigeria's oil and gas industries. Among other things, it would boost the government's take in new offshore developments and improve community programs in the Niger Delta.

Many analysts, however, say the bill, at least in its current form, is unlikely to pass -- in large part because of strong opposition from the oil companies, which fear the measure would diminish their profits and could jeopardize billions of dollars in investments.

Concerned onlookers also worry that Big Oil has a big ally in Nigeria's new oil minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke. The daughter of a Shell employee, she spent close to 15 years working for the company's Nigerian joint venture.

For now, at least, it appears increasingly likely that the Gulf of Mexico spill will lead to a moratorium on offshore drilling in the United States. And while such a move would be cheered by environmentalists, some analysts warn that it may not be good news for Nigeria.

Writing in a New York Times op-ed, New America Foundation scholar Lisa Margonelli noted: "All oil comes from someone's backyard, and when we don't reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria -- places without America's strong environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them."

Nigerian Spills Make Valdez Look Like Drop in Bucket