Oil, power and a sign of hope. Klaus Stieglitz

being drilled: be it bedrock, loose rock, sediments or sedimentary rock. Clay and argillaceous rock are found in and around Thar Jath. This requires the stabilization of drilling holes through the addition of sodium chloride, calcium chloride or potassium sulfate. These additions replace the sodium ions found in clays with potassium or calcium. The result is the reduction of the clays’ absorption of water. Potassium-based drilling fluids are especially important when drilling in clays and argillaceous rocks. This is because they optimally prevent the absorption of water—due to the anti-osmotic characteristics of potassium ions—in formations whose makeup is unknown.

      The extremely great potential dangers emanating from the use of chemicals in drill drilling fluids cause it to be strictly regulated by internationally-applicable guidelines. Augmenting this peril is another technique employed when extracting oil. Highly-concentrated salts-containing solutions are injected into the oil deposits, so as to increase the pressure in them. The crude oil and the previously-injected salts-containing solutions are pumped to the surface, where the crude oil is separated from the so-called “produced water”. The extraction of each liter of crude oil requires the employment of from 3 to 9.5 liters of produced water47 — an incredible amount. This produced water often has a higher content of salt than does ocean water. The produced water also often contains noxious metals and radioactive materials.48 The general practice is to inject the produced water—via another injection hole—deep enough into the ground, with this meaning its being transported to layers of rocks that are far away from potable water.49 Should, however, the produced waster be disposed of via in-feeds into surface waters, or via shallow drilling into layers containing ground water, the risk arises that this polluted water will—via wells—be incorporated into humans’ food cycle.

      That Sudan has this problem has been well-known for quite some time. This problem was the topic at a conference held in Juba in 2006. The conference was about revamping the production of oil in the era commenced by the conclusion of the peace agreement, and marked by a possible participation in the industry by Southern Sudan.50 This conference showed that Chevron, the US petroleum giant, used the proven—but expensive—procedure ensuring the safe disposal of produced water upon its drilling of Sudan’s first oil wells in the period until 1983. Chevron injected the contaminated water into deeply-laying layers of ground. It was Chevron’s successors in the country’s oil industry that developed the methods yielding the damaging of the environment now becoming apparent to all.51 The oil field at Thar Jath is estimated to contain 149.1 million barrels.52 A barrel of oil is comprised of 159 liters. Taking a mean of 7 liters of produced water per liter of oil, and extrapolating that to account for the entire potential of oil to be transported yields the figure of 1,659,483.3 million liters of waste water to be disposed of.

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      On March 18, 2008, Sign of Hope sends a letter to the operator of the refinery in Thar Jath. The letter requests the operator to make a statement presenting its position on the results of the tests. This operator is the White Nile Petroleum Operating Company Ltd. (WNPOC). This consortium is based in Khartoum. Some 67.875% of its shares are held by Petronas Caligari Overseas, a subsidiary of Petronas, a company owned by the government of Malaysia; with 24.125% being owned by the India-based Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Videsh Ltd.; and 8% by Sudapet (Sudan National Petroleum Corporation), the Southern Sudan state oil company.53 Petronas’ holding of two thirds of the consortium’s equity arose from its acquisition in 2003 of the shares held by Lundin, a Swedish company.54 Petronas is the most important partner of the government of Sudan in the area of oil production and processing. This applies to all areas of licensing. The company is thus the most influential stakeholder in oil in Sudan.55

      Sign of Hope’s letter courteously requests the operators to comment upon the results of the collection of samples of water, and to elucidate how the wastes arising in the production process are disposed of. The operators are also called upon to detail the measures they plan to institute to provide the residents of Rier with safe water. The operators do not respond.

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      On March 28^th, in response to urgings by Spain and Germany, the Human Rights Council of the United Nations publishes a resolution calling for the integration of the rights to have safe drinking water and proper sanitary facilities into the catalog of human rights. The resolution is in response to a report issued by the UN High Commissioner. It states that more than a billion people in the world have been denied access to safe water, and that 2.6 billion people have to endure not having sanitary facilities. The UN High Commissioner has issued an urgent call for the recognition of the right to have clean water as a human right.

      An independent expert panel was commissioned to compile a listing of the best practices employed in the procurement of safe and clean water and the arrangement of sanitary facilities. The commission was for three years. It comprised the pursuing of a dialogue with all political and societal stakeholders, with these to include national governments, the UN, and academic institutions and NGOs—and, in this case, especially on-site ones.

      Experts on water have been fighting for decades for the recognition of the human right to clean water. These experts view the resolution as constituting an important step towards the achievement of this right.56 The outcome of the process of identification of rights—now that it has finally been instituted—is to be a legally enforceable right to clean water for each person on this planet.

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      Sign of Hope commissions in July, 2008, Hella Rüskamp, a hydro-geologist, with the conducting of a study on the causes of the contamination of drinking water in the Thar Jath and Mala regions of oil prospecting. The objective of the study is to document or refute the possible connection between the activities of companies that are prospecting for oil (test drilling, treatment and disposal of produced water) and the contamination of groundwater by primarily salts and heavy metals.

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      Everyone expects the final race of this year’s Grand Prix season, to be held on November 2^nd in Sao Paulo, to produce a world championship for Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton’s car is a McLaren-Mercedes. Hamilton is in fifth place during most of the race. This will suffice to put Hamilton atop the year’s rankings of the drivers in Formula 1, and thus past Felipe Massa, a Brazilian driver who is leading this race in his Ferrari. The race is somewhat boring—until the second to last round, in which it experiences an unexpected development. Rain starts to fall, causing the most of the drivers to change their tires. While this is occurring, Sebastian Vettel, a German driver, guns his Toro Rosso past Hamilton, surprising him in the process. Goodbye, world championship! Hamilton’s best result will now be to rack up the same total points as Massa, who has, however, achieved a greater number of victories this year. This means that Massa is on track to nab the world championship. Hamilton dogs Vettel meter-by-meter, but he doesn’t have any way of re-passing the Vettel, who is an incredibly strong driver. Is his dream really over? Ferrari’s team in the pits is getting ready to celebrate. One hundred thousand spectators are cheering on their country-person Massa. But then, in what is practically the very last moment of the race, Hamilton and Vettel race past Timo Glock, whose Toyota was in fourth place. Hamilton goes from being sixth to fifth—and thus wins the world championship. He is 23 years old. This makes him the youngest world champion in Formula 1 history. His victory represents the first time since 1999 that a car with a motor manufactured by Mercedes has won the championship.57

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      At Sign of Hope we are working at top speed to prepare a further documentation of the contamination found and of its causes. This documentation is to back up the findings of the previous one. The organization’s research includes monitoring the Internet. It causes us to encounter the Facebook page of a person working for Central Processing Facility (CPF) in Thar Jath. The page shows us that the gigantic facility—which we thought was a refinery—is actually a plant processing crude oil. At it, the crude is separated from the produced water and sands. The crude is then pumped down a pipeline to refineries in the north, at which it is further processed. An evaluation of the satellite photographs reveals that there are some 70 oil wells in the oil field. They feed the oil to the CPF. This does not include abandoned drill holes, next to which are also to be found pits containing the hazardous drilling fluids.

      Sign of Hope has a discussion with one of