oil spill(s).

photos by boston.com

the 49-day-and-counting oil spill has most likely invoked in you the same reaction as me. it's making all of us sick. the amount of oil spilled is certainly alarming. i read (via mongabay.com) a statistic today that on May 31,

the federal government says that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has currently released approximately 504,000 to 798,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf based on forty one days of leaking: about 2-4 percent of the United States' one day consumption.

2-4%.

photo

and a co-worker of mine also led me to some reports that while we make a huge fuss over the Gulf spill, people in the Nigerian Delta are used to it. read the guardian to learn more, but what I understand is that oil spills take place multiple times a year off the Nigerian coast in much higher amounts than the Gulf spill.

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.

A spokesman for the Stakeholder Democracy Network in Lagos, which works to empower those in communities affected by the oil companies' activities, said: "The response to the spill in the United States should serve as a stiff reminder as to how far spill management in Nigeria has drifted from standards across the world."