Oil, gas, protests, and debate
By Kernan Andrews
FOR MORE than 50 years, communities along the Niger Delta have protested against oil extraction in the region. Their stories, as well as those of younger, more militantly minded protesters, will be told in the documentary Sweet Crude.
Sweet Crude, a new documentary on the oil industry’s effects on communities in the Niger Delta, will be screened in the Town Hall Theatre today at 2pm as part of the Galway Film Fleadh. It will be followed by Power Struggle an open, chaired, discussion comparing the situation in the Niger Delta with the controversial Corrib Gas Project in Erris, Co Mayo.
Sweet Crude is a history of non-violent protest against the human and environmental consequences of 50 years of oil extraction in the Niger Delta. It also talks to members of a new insurgency group who, in the three years since the filmmakers met them as college students, became the young men of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
The discussion panel will feature Sandy Cioffi, the Seattle-based film and video artist, and director of Sweet Crude; Michael McCaughan, journalist and author of The Price of Our Souls - Gas, Shell, and Ireland; and Willie Corduff, Erris resident, long-standing opponent of the Corrib Gas project, and winner of the International Goldman Prize for the Environment in 2007. The discussion will be chaired by Dr Andy Storey, chair of AfrI Action from Ireland NGO and lecturer in development studies at UCD.
Corrib Gas Representatives, The Mayo Pro-Gas Group, and Fr Kevin Hegarty a public supporter of the project, were invited to have places on the panel but declined.