Egi Community Integrated Sustainable Development Plan

LP’s work on the master plan for the Niger Delta inspired staff in the local Total Elf office in Port Harcourt (Elf Petroleum Nigeria Ltd i.e. EPNL) to think about the case for producing an integrated plan for the area where most of the company’s oil and gas production activities in Nigeria are located.

The area, generally referred to as Egi Land, is the traditional Egi Kingdom located in Rivers State in South East Nigeria, in the heart of the Niger Delta region. It covers 16 small communities, which over the past 20 years or so have received some development assistance from ERPNL but, as is the case with many oil companies’ community programmes, there has been no real attempt to pursue a cohesive and systematic plan of action based on a thorough assessment of the community’s needs and aspirations.  Past projects have been responsive and based mostly on compensatory principles –distributing cash to individuals or groups affected by EPNL’s activities. 

We are working on the project in collaboration with our local partner Harcourt Adukeh Associates and have a dual role:

• responsibility for the preparation of an integrated plan for the sustainable development of the Egi communities
• overall coordination of the work of the other consultants and guiding the work of a Project Coordinator who is a member of the local HAA& LP team.  The baseline studies and much of the field work is being undertaken by local consultants whose work will be fed into the preparation of an integrated plan.

We expect to complete the integrated development plan by late April 2008.