As bad as the Macondo oil spill is, the prospect that it will lead to tougher regulations that drive exploration out of U.S. waters is stoking fears and reminders of worse oil disasters in other countries.

"There has never been a situation where an oil spill took place and the president of Nigeria goes to that site and takes a look, and what has happened in the Gulf is much less than what we have experienced," said Nigerian writer and activist Ben Wuloo Ikari, pointing to President Barack Obama's multiple trips to the Gulf Coast since the disastrous blowout of the BP deep-water well.

He said spills are more frequent in Nigeria because of company and government apathy.

"You will not see their staff on the scene, mobilizing the people the way BP is doing in the Gulf," Ikari said.

Ikari is an Ogoni, an ethnic minority from the resource-rich Niger Delta of Nigeria. The African nation is the fifth-largest exporter of oil to the U.S., and one of the most environmentally degraded regions on the planet. Over the last 50 years, the amount of oil spilled in Nigeria amounts to one Exxon Valdez spill a year, according to a recent analysis of data by Amnesty International.

Though Ikari has been a U.S. resident for 10 years, the Gulf disaster evokes grim memories of home. "It reminds me of what my people have been through and what they are still going through," Ikari said. "People are displaced from their way of life. Their health is in jeopardy."

But as debate rages over how the U.S. can prevent further catastrophic spills in U.S. waters, some industry and environmental observers warn that an onslaught of draconian regulations and financial burdens could push operators out of the Gulf and into nations less able to or less interested in protecting the environment. Countries in west Africa, including Nigeria and Angola, are frequently mentioned as examples.

Beyond protecting its own jobs and national security, Ikari said, the world's largest energy-consuming nation has a moral obligation to produce as much of its own oil as possible. He cites the destruction oil production has wrought in Nigeria as one reason why.

Could be happening now

The flight of offshore drilling rigs from the Gulf of Mexico to less stable lands may already be under way. As it investigates the Macondo blowout and resulting deadly explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, the Obama administration wants to impose a six-month deep-water drilling moratorium. That already has led several companies to announce plans to move drilling vessels overseas.

Norwegian oil company Statoil said recently it would invoke force majeure on two of its contracts in the Gulf because of the proposed six-month ban, leading to speculation that its drilling contractor, Maersk, would move its rigs to West Africa or Brazil. Force majeure is a clause in contracts that allows parties to avoid liability if they can't perform their obligations because of circumstances beyond their control.

Pulling up anchor?

Earlier this month, Houston-based drilling company Cobalt International Energy gave notice of force majeure on its contract with Diamond Offshore and said it would look into pulling up anchor.

"We are currently in conversations regarding the potential to move one or more of our rigs to international jobs," Diamond spokesman Les Van Dyke said in an e-mail.

Regulations under discussion would raise the liability for potential oil spills to levels that none but the largest companies could meet, or require companies to sock money away in escrow, said John Felmy, chief economist with the American Petroleum Institute, a top industry trade group.

He said such financial regulations concern the industry more than new environmental or safety rules.

Industry groups chafe at the suggestion that member companies cut corners when doing business in developing countries.

Still, the idea that governments in those countries might be less attentive to environmental risks comes up frequently as a reason the U.S. government must strike a delicate balance when imposing new regulations that raise the cost of doing business.

Many drawbacks

In a recent research note, Houston-based energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. said the spiraling Macondo situation could prompt deep-water drillers to migrate to areas that are less environmentally safe, in addition to eliminating thousands of U.S. jobs, impairing Gulf state economies and increasing the nation's dependence on foreign oil.

Even if companies extract oil safely overseas, the risk of spills rises because they must transport the crude thousands of miles by tanker, rather than through subsea pipelines to nearby coastal refineries. Many of history's biggest oil spills have been caused by tanker groundings or collisions.

Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America, suggested as much in testimony before a House subcommittee earlier this month.

"Reducing our energy production, absent a concurrent reduction in consumption, would shift additional jobs and dollars offshore and place millions of additional barrels per day into tanker ships that must traverse the world's oceans," he said.

But Jackie Savitz, senior scientist at Oceana, an international ocean conservation group, takes issue with what she calls the industry's "veiled threat" of abandoning the Gulf, saying the oil produced in the region represents only a fraction of U.S. energy consumption.

"If we could alleviate the need for that additional oil through conservation, energy efficiency and clean energy, we could avoid taking these risks without pushing them off on other countries," Savitz said.

Able to do the job better

Ben Wuloo Ikari, 41, who now lives in St. Louis but grew up amid the din of gas flares and pipeline spills near his home city of Bori in the Niger Delta, insists the U.S. is better equipped to hold multinational companies like BP accountable.

"If you keep giving money to Nigeria because of this oil that they sell to you and you don't have to tell them to stop gas flaring or have to tell them to do other things right, then you are a partner in that deadly business," he said.

The Ogoni have long accused Shell Petroleum Development Co., which is operated as a joint venture with the Nigerian government, of environmental atrocities over the years, allegations Shell denies. The company stopped producing oil in the region in 1993 but says its oil pipelines still cross through and are frequently vandalized.

Constant reminder

Amanda Little, an author of Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells — Our Ride to the Renewable Future, who describes herself as a pro-drilling environmentalist, said one reason the U.S. should continue drilling domestically is to remind itself of its crippling dependence on oil.

"We are going to keep drilling in other areas and putting other coastlines in ecological peril," she said. "And what is most concerning to me is that we will stop caring and thinking about the risks and stop feeling any sense of accountability for our own demands."

As Ikari watches the Gulf spill fallout, he laments a way of life being shattered in the Gulf but also says people there have something few in his land have experienced when it comes to oil spills - hope.

"With the help of the American government and American people, that will come back," he said. "It won't be totally the same, but they will have money to start lives again, maybe in other trades. That's not anything close to what happened to the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Nobody is going to pay you … in the first place."

monica.hatcher@chron.com