Is anyone really surprised? For years Chevron has probably been the company which contributed the least to the community. Their employees have lived inside a fortified camp and been heavily discouraged from any contact with the locals.
I know that it's the responsibility of Government to use money from oil revenues and this should trickle down to local communities, but anyone who wants to see how oil companies can be forced to put money into the local community has only to visit the Shetland Isles to the north east of Scotland.
Chevron has done what it wants in the area for years. When single engine helicopters were outlawed by the NCAA for offshore work in 1992, Chevron and its helicopter operator Pan African (now OLOG) just did what they always did - paid somebody to get an exemption. To this day, Pan African is the only operator in Nigeria allowed to operate single engine helicopters (despite the fact that it's parent company, OLOG's other company, Bristow, replaced its 206s with Twin Squirrels) and has even replaced most of its 206s with 407s.
However, I digress. Escravos is a private airfield licensed for day VMC only operations isn't it? Helicopters land next to large masts all the time in Nigeria. I'm sure there are bnever any approaches conducted using only the NDB and GPS in conditions less than strict VMC
Of course, the NCAA, Uncle Tom Cobley et al should have been consulted, but this is Nigeria we're talking about. Look at all the huge masts close to Murtala Muhamed airport or the overpass being constructed close to the runway at the Port Harcourt NAF base.
The local people have a history of opposition to the oil companies (though the protests against Escravos have usually been moderately peaceful - vis. the women's protest), but maybe now, Chevron will have learned the expensive lesson, that talking is often cheaper and more effective than litigation. I guess it will only end up costing the insurance companies more and that insurance for aircraft in Nigeria will be increased another few percent, increasing the costs of operating there for all.
What a sad, explosive, disagreable, topsy-turvy place paradise is.
