The Toxic Legacies of the Oil and Gas Industry – Lessons in Decommissioning from the Niger Delta to North America, with Anna Zalik and Isaac Osuoka

In March 2025 Shell Oil announced it had divested the last of its holdings in Nigeria, through a series of sales and non-transparent contracts that abandoning the legacy of close to a century of pollution from Shell installations in the Niger Delta to Nigerian firms. Shell’s announcement followed on the formal launch in Nigeria of the report “An Environmental Genocide: The Human and Environmental Cost of Big Oil in Bayelsa” in late 2024.

The latter, the outcome of five years of work by the Bayelsa State (Nigeria) Oil and Environmental Commission, demonstrates the long term health and environmental impacts of oil industry’ pollution and the need for massive ecological restoration of the Niger Delta.

In this presentation, members of the Expert Working Group of the Bayelsa Commission discuss the findings of the report, the ongoing global project to implement the report’s recommendations, and the implications of the Niger Delta example for other international jurisdictions, including Canada.

Learn more and register for the event here: The Toxic Legacies of the Oil and Gas Industry – Lessons in Decommissioning from the Niger Delta to North America, with Anna Zalik and Isaac Osuoka