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.
In preparation for this seminar, Dr. Zalik has recommended reading An Environmental Genocide: Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria.
Speaker Profiles
Anna Zalik is a professor in Global Geography, Environmental and Urban Change at York University where she teaches international environmental politics and the political ecology of extraction.Zalik’s research examines the political economy of oil, gas and other extractive industries, with a focus on the merging of corporate security and social interventions in strategic exporters, particularly Nigeria, Mexico and Canada. She is a former Ciriacy-Wantrup Fellow in Natural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley.
Zalik has worked on various international projects concerning hydrocarbons, substantive industrial transparency, and the contested regulation of extractive industries beyond national jurisdiction. She has given invited presentations at many venues internationally and serves on a number of academic editorial boards.
Isaac ‘Asume’ Osuoka coordinates Social Action International, an organisation promoting resource democracy and the human rights and livelihoods of marginalised communities in West and Central Africa. Osuoka previously served as Coordinator of Oilwatch Africa, a network supporting communities impacted by the petroleum industry in the continent.
Osuoka has participated in many international fora and served as a panelist at the United Nations’ Expert Group Meeting on the Use of Non-Renewable Resource Revenues for Sustainable Local Development. Osuoka holds a doctorate from York University and is a former Vanier Scholar.
Both Osuoka and Zalik served as members of the Expert Working Group of the Bayelsa State (Nigeria) Commission on Oil and Environment.
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