The Potentials of ADR for Corporate Remediation in the Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Sector of Nigeria

The exploration of carbon-based petroleum resources seems to be a curse to the Niger Delta inhabitants of Nigeria, given the negative impacts of multinational oil companies' operations on the Niger Delta ecological space. It is no longer new knowledge how harmful environmental activities affect human rights and the climatic systems. There is no other part of the world where multinational companies are directly linked or contribute to enormous ecological shocks than in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria owing to poor regulatory and institutional frameworks that drive the political will in engaging the corporate power and engender corporate responsibility.By implication, the indigenous peoples of the Niger Delta are left with fewer options in seeking access to remedy and justice within municipal law and in extraterritorial contexts resulting in the fate of notable cases like Gbemre, Okpabi, Jalla, Agbara, and Bodo Community. One observable trait across these cases is the limitation of contentious litigation as a mechanism for enforcing ecological and human rights justice, given some of the typical challenges adjudicatory mechanisms face in a jurisdiction like Nigeria.Considering the above reality, the Nigerian Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) was enacted in 2021 to overhaul the sector. The PIA established two regulatory agencies- the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (the Authority) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (the Commission), which are saddled with the mandate to make regulations on specific issues within their scope. One such Regulations made by the Authority is the Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Alternative Dispute Resolution Regulations in 2023 under its powers in Sections 33(t), 120 (j), 163 and 179(2) of the PIA. The main aim of the Regulations is to establish the Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre as a non-judicial grievance mechanism and provide the procedures for timely and cost-efficient dispute resolution in the sector. Therefore, the crux of this piece is to review and analyze the Regulations and examine whether it has the potential to provide the needed forum for dispute resolution and the quest for justice. The extent such Regulations will facilitate the engagement of the responsibility of the multinational oil companies operating in Nigeria in the light of their obligations under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) to facilitate and provide remediation where they contribute or directly linked to human rights violations which in most cases are induced by environmental harms and climate change impacts will also be a subject of discussion and analysis in this piece