Oil, power and a sign of hope. Klaus Stieglitz

is new. The old village was destroyed to make room for a facility for the pumping of oil. The town’s 3,500 residents were forced in 2005 by the Khartoum regime to immediately leave. The residents say that North Sudan was in control of their region until the beginning of the year. They received neither indemnification nor assistance in the construction of their new homes.

      The new Rier feels like a refugee camp. It has hardly anything of a time-crafted homeland. In contrast to other communities, the first step in the building of this one was not the construction of the tukuls—the abode huts—and then the laying out of the paths connecting the clumps of houses. In the “new” Rier, the streets were first laid out in a strict grid. Hutches for the residents were then constructed along these roads. The expelling of these people from their town is yet another alarming breach of basic human rights.

      One special source of concern is the quality of the water available for drinking. A hand-operated pump is supposed to transport the water out of the ground. But the residents of Rier do not use this water any more. They assume that the water has been contaminated by the chemicals released by the oil companies. A young girl reports: “The water is bitter. We don’t even wash our clothes with it, because the water attacks the colors and destroys the fabric.” She thus confirms many accounts of the matter. It was these that caused our contact in the region to voice his growing concerns to us.

      We take in Rier our first sample of water on February 13th. It is of the water brought up by this hand pump. We then travel to Koch, which is 23 kilometers away from the refinery. Many of the people we talk to report that their livestock have died and that the water is bad. They are afraid of being called to account for such statements. For that reason, they refuse to tell us their names. “They made all sorts of promises to us: schools, road, supplies. And what have they delivered? Do you see any schools here? What we need is healthful land and clean water, so that we can let our herds graze,” says a young man.

      We subsequently have a meeting with Colonel Peter Bol Ruot, the Commissioner of the county of Koch. He is holding court in a nicely-furnished and extended tukul. His “court” is strangely old-fashioned. The hut is very clean and neat. An acacia occupies the center of the yard, providing shade. We are offered places to sit—on plastic chairs bleached by the sun. The chair of the lord of the manor has been placed behind a small table. A satellite telephone lies on it. This is the status symbol in this remote region. We feel like we are being received by royalty.

      The Commissioner answers our questions in a friendly way. His answers are alarming. In 2006, he states, 27 adults and 3 children died from drinking water contaminated with chemicals. At this moment, up to 1,000 persons have fallen sick due to the water, which has also killed large numbers of livestock. The Commissioner reports having gathered the local residents’ complaints and having relayed them to the oil consortium which is the licensee for Block 5A—the local oil field. In three cases, indemnification was paid—“without recognition of culpability on the part of the operator”, in the words of another official representative when speaking to the “AFP”. No other amends were made, the large number of cases notwithstanding.

      Shortly after the meeting with the Commissioner, we encounter a man39 who works for one of the oil companies. He speaks openly about staff members’ wearing of gloves and face masks while they go about tossing chemical wastes into pits that have been dug for that purpose. As the man says, it’s now the dry season. In the rainy one to follow, these pits will be flooded. We take samples of the water in the wells in Koch and in that of the marshes along the road from Koch to Thar Jath, which goes around the refinery. We also do the same in the wells found in the town of Mirmir and in the swamp there. The least distance between the places of sampling and the suspected source of the contamination—the refinery—is 600 meters; the greatest, 32.7 kilometers.

      We then bring the samples back to Leer, where we confer with the Commissioner40 there. Immediately after that, we meet, quite by accident, Dr. Riek Machar Teny and his wife Angelina Teny. Dr. Teny is the controversial vice president of Southern Sudan, which was accorded autonomy in 2005. Ms. Teny has been since 2005 the Minister of Energy in the joint regime set up in 2005 to unite Northern and Southern Sudan on an interim basis. It is a strange encounter. Riek Machar chats a bit with us. He inquires into our fact-finding mission. Notwithstanding this, we have the impression that we are banging our heads against a wall. What we have to say doesn’t really interest him, or so it seems. One reason for our skepticism may well be his ostentatious display of power, which reminds us of the suffering of the people in Southern Sudan.

      Riek Machar’s wife is a highly regarded politician. She stated at a conference in 2006, held in Juba, that there was a problem with the produced water produced by the extraction of oil. As she mentioned, this crisis was particularly pronounced at the old drilling sites in the north. Companies launching operations in the South were on their ways to handling this.41 That might have thus been one possible reason for her having kept quiet while we related our suspicions.

      On the following day, we fly back to Nairobi, where we hold on the subsequent day a press conference. At it, we present the preliminary findings of our expedition and call upon the government of Sudan to take effective action. The statements given by eyewitnesses that we have gathered suffice to prove the existence of a massive damaging of the health of local residents and the environment.

      We then return to Germany, where we deliver on February 18th the samples of water to a renowned laboratory, which is to scientifically analyze them. The results confirm our assumption. The water taken from the wells in Rier turns out to be strongly contaminated. The analysis revealed a total amount of salt of 6,600.50 milligrams per liter of water (mg/l) and its contamination with strontium of 6.7 mg/l. The water in this sample evinces nitrates amounting to 81.6 mg/l. The USA’s Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended ceilings42 for the total amount of salt permissible in potable water has been set at 500 mg/l. The sample investigated thus exceeds this ceiling 13-fold. The ceiling for nitrate has been established to be 10 mg/l and has thus been exceeded 8-fold. A concentration of nitrates in such amounts can cause infants to take seriously ill. The failure to treat these illness can lead to death. The findings from points of sample collection further afield do not give rise to concerns.

      The result is terrifying, since the commercial-scale production of oil in the region has after all just been launched. It has yet to be fully ramped up.43 The failure to take countermeasures will give rise to a horrible environmental catastrophe in this area. The results of the analysis of the water samples are presented in a press release that forms the subject of a large number of reports in the media in Germany and abroad.

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      Where does the contamination come from?

      Water is of elementary importance in drilling. It serves as the basis for rinsing solutions.44 This drilling fluids plays a key role in the drilling process because it ensures a disturbance-free pursuing of it. “Drilling fluids” refer to the liquids circulating during the drilling of the hole. These liquids transport the ’cuttings’ upwards. They also cool the drill bit and shaft, and secure the wall of the drill hole against collapsing. Chemicals are added to the rinse solutions when drilling in non-firm sediments, which in turn characterize the area being described.45 These chemicals force the formation of a filter crust that seals the porous layers of the rock.46 This prevents a collapsing of the drill hole. The amount of drilling fluids is to be minimized. The solution permeates the porous layers until the point that they are sealed. The solution has another function. It is to preclude an uncontrolled seepage of fluids or gases from the rock into the drill hole. Reasons of costs also dictate the configuration of the solution’s accordance with the respective geological conditions.

      To prevent the corrosion of the drill shaft, an oxygen-free environment has to be maintained. The danger of corrosion of steel is negligibly small at pH values of between 10 and 12.5. To accordingly increase the pH values, sodium, calcium and potassium alkalis are added to the solution. In cases in which the pH values are lower in the solution, phosphates, borates, chromates or special tensides have to be added to the solution. The alkalis include KCI (stabilizes clay) and potashes (K₂CO₃).

      A number of solution additives have two or more functions to fulfill. The drilling