The Amnesty worldwide and the Center for Environment, Human Rights and Development has said that multinational oil company, Shell, has not cleaned up four oil spill sites in the Niger Delta as the company claimed, the Voice of America (VOA) reports.
Advertisement
Yet in field investigations at four of the spill sites UNEP identified as highly polluted in 2011, Amnesty global and CEHRD found all four remain visibly contaminated in 2015, even though Shell says it has cleaned them. When you go there you can see and smell for yourselves the oil that is still present in the land and the waterways.
“What we since found out is that Shell, the Oil Giants claims to have cleaned up this same oil spill sites”. According to Nigerian law, “the company that operates the pipeline or well from which the oil spilled is responsible to start the clean-up within 24 hours”. Nigeria’s government is the majority owner of Shell Nigeria.
Dummett said Shell is not the only one to blame for the lack of cleanup.
“We disagree with the assertions made with regard to implementation… and would like to reiterate that we have consistently and publicly reported our actions in this regard as well as highlighted ongoing challenges of crude oil theft and illegal refining”, the SPDC said.
The CEHRD/AI report doused cold water on these claims, concluding, “The proportion of oil spills caused by sabotage, as opposed to corrosion and equipment failure, can not be determined because the causes of oil spills in the Niger Delta have not been subject to any independent assessment or verification”.
Amnesty says its investigators sought meetings with and wrote to both Shell and the government’s oil spill regulator, the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (Nosdra), seeking an explanation.
“This is equally the case in Ogoniland, despite the fact that we ceased producing oil and gas there in 1993”, said spokesman Bamidele Odugbesan.
A 2011 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found that oil spills in the Ogoniland region of southern Nigeria had contaminated drinking water, wrecked the fishing industry and threatened the health of local people. These spills were either too small or too far away to have re-contaminated the sites, or had already been cleaned-up, according to Shell and NOSDRA.
The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) said it rejected the groups’ claims. “Based on all of the available evidence, Shell’s public claims to have cleaned up and remediated specific sites, and the company’s broader claims that it has addressed the pollution documented by UNEP, are false”, the report said.
But they said in their report that the evidence from their field investigations showed that the contractors were still failing to adequately clean up oil pollution and that numerous flaws identified by UNEP were still unaddressed.
Advertisement
It also charged “the almost complete failure of the Nigerian government to regulate the oil industry and protect the rights of the people”. “For many people of the region, oil has brought nothing but misery”, said Stevyn Obodoekwe, CEHRD’s Director of Programmes.
