By Emmanuel Ekebe
For over five weeks now , the spill from the blowout well 14 in Uzere has continued to run non-stop while the hyped foreign experts who arrived last week are yet to abate the situation.
In effect, it has been much talk and less work and the bastardization of the Uzere environment continues day – in – day out.
To compound the disaster, the rains are getting heavier just as the rising flood keep washing the gushing spill further into farmlands, fish ponds, creeks and the entire ecosystem in the area.
Even the trucks engaged by Heritage Energy to evacuate the spilling crude are also helping to visit their own quota of pollution into the environment.
However, most devastating is the fact that while the crude, sludge, condensate, mud and other visible impurities are being labourously trucked out, gaseous emissions accompanying the spill are evaporating into the air thereby exposing the inhabitants to constantly inhale poisonous and cancerous substances daily.
This is in addition to the imaginable heavy underground sippage causing monumental damage to the various water layers in and around the Uzere community.
Above all, the most disturbing of all the fall out of the well 14 tragedy is that Uzere is in the verge of a large scale earth tremour if the ongoing eruption is not quickly checked.
According to experienced geologists and petroleum engineers, “the seismographic architecture of fosils/ hydrocarbon deposits do occupy specific spaces at various strata far below the earth surface”.
They informed that “when this structure and layers of mineral deposits is charged due to intense pressure or forced shift, it can lead to a blow out as we have now and can cause a large degree of tremor”
The collated experts view indicate that the eruption has invariably distorted the existing outlay seriously and in adjusting to the created vacuum, there are strong indications that Uzere is likely to witness either multiple tremors, vibrations or more similar blowouts amongst other seismographic manifestations “.
Ironically, in the midst of all these emerging threats, the two Uzere oil fields are still running smoothly with gas flaring going on round the clock and neither the Governor of Delta state nor the Minister of Petroleum have deemed it necessary to visit the Uzere people from whom much is being taken but now facing imminent extinction due to no fault of their own.
May the agony of the Uzere not be in vain!
