Environmental Impact of the Oil Industry
- Background Environmental Conditions – i.e. what would the environment be like without the oil industry;
- Agents of Impact – i.e. the causes;
- Actual Impacts and their Results – i.e. what does the agent actually do.
This is a Logical Assessment and a couple of easy examples are set out below.
| SEQUENCE | FIRST EXAMPLE | SECOND EXAMPLE |
| BACKGROUND ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS
As limited examples |
Cultured Lowland Tropical Rainforest (on fossilised beach ridges) under significant pressure from farmers, loggers, hunters and gatherers from a large town nearby. | Mangrove Swamps: the atmosphere of which is otherwise unpolluted. Subject to: Harmattan dust Jan to Mar, heavy rain (up to 2,000mm per month) May to Oct; and, in-coming marine winds Apr to Dec. |
| AGENT OF IMPACT | A RURAL ROAD connecting a main road to a village previously only accessible by a footpath and a walking journey of about two hours | GAS FLARING |
| ACTUAL IMPACT One example |
Disruption to natural drainage systems | Emission of CO₂ and Methane |
| RESULTS OF THE IMPACT Limited examples |
Flooding & raising the water table upstream, likely to alter soil conditions with a subsequent alteration of the agricultural and cultured forest environment. | Addition to Global Warming gases. |
These examples show nicely how real environmental impacts have to be investigated in an iterative way. This is because the investigation process may start at any point in the sequence. For instance, in the field, an investigation may arise from the sudden death of forest trees. Initial investigation may suggest that the deaths are caused by unusual flooding, which demands a wider investigation of the drainage system, in turn demanding an understanding of the environmental background.
Nonetheless, in the end, following investigation, and with all the possible facts at hand, a disciplined logical assessment must begin with an understanding of the environmental background and then followed up with the logical sequence as described above.
If this disciplined and logical approach is not followed then it is very easy to draw the wrong conclusions. Easy for instance, to assume that all the environmental problems in the Niger Delta which have arisen in the past forty years are caused by the oil industry simply because the industry has been active for the same period. A good example of this is the environmental problems which have arisen from the unprecedented population increase of the past forty years. Undoubtedly the oil industry has encouraged large-scale inward migration into the Niger Delta, but even without the industry there would have
166
