Oil activists work for social change

By Allison Sundaram

"As an individual you feel there is very little you can do, but there is actually a lot you can do," Austin Onuoha of the Center for Social and Corporate Responsibility said last week. "A change process is started by individuals."

Onuoha, and Antoine Berilengar, S.J., discussed the impact of oil production on African countries and the responsibility of oil companies to the people of Africa in front of a full audience in the Benson parlors on Oct. 14.

Santa Clara was the eighth stop on an 11-university tour co-sponsored by Catholic Relief Services and the Jesuit National Conference. The topics discussed included Nigeria, where Onuoha is based, and Chad, where Berilengar serves as religious representative for the country's oil extraction committee, the Petroleum Revenue Oversight and Control Committee.

Oil was discovered in Chad in 1973. With the start of production $2 billion in revenues is expected annually. In other African countries, much of the revenue is absorbed into the local governments and does not trickle down to the people. Chad's Petroleum Revenue Oversight and Control Committee was designed to allocate oil funds and ensure that local people benefit.

Responsibility was a main theme of the talk. "No one seems to be responsible," Berilengar said. "You go to the oil merchants and they say that they are doing business, we are not in charge of your people, go to your government. You go to the government and they say go to the workmen. You go to the workmen and they say this is not my job. No one wants to be responsible."

Speaking of his committee's purpose, Berilengar said that "it is this committee that has the vision that oil should be a blessing for the local population. Oil should provide opportunity and equality for the people of Chad. Oil should help to bring peace."

Onuoha talked about Nigeria as an example of a country which has lived with an oil 'curse' since its emergence from colonialism, where revenue from a country's oil doesn't go to benefit the country's people. Since 1960, Nigeria has made approximately $350 billion from the oil trade; however 70 percent of Nigerians live on $1 a day.

"What happened to that money?" Onuoha asked. "Has it been embezzled or has it been applied to other areas? Then we are told it's been applied to community development projects, so we have to monitor that."

Both Onuoha and Berilengar asked Santa Clara students to facilitate a change. Using Chevron as an example because of its San Ramon headquarters, Onuoha said "Chevron operated for close to 40 years without a human rights policy," and urged students to work for that to change. "We don't want it to be voluntary principles, we want mandatory principles."

Berilengar encouraged students to use their power as consumers to encourage oil companies to form better relationships with the communities they affect. "We hope that in ten years there will be a good relationship," he said.

"I think it's useful for them to see how the choices they make in what they buy can affect people in Nigeria and across the world," Political Science and Environmental Studies professor Leslie Gray said. "It's good to know what companies you're buying oil from as well because some have better human rights records than others."

The speakers encouraged students to have empathy with those suffering.

"If people in Chad and Nigeria understand that the ordinary people of the United States of America share their pain and understand that what is happening to them by the oil companies is wrong, it gives them hope," Onuoha said.

"If they feel that you support what the oil companies are doing, how the oil companies are trampling on their rights, it becomes more painful because it causes division in our shared humanity."

Contact Allison Sundaram at (408) 554-4546 or asundaram@scu.edu.