Shell falsified oil spill result -Amnesty International

Amnesty International says it has fresh
evidence to show that oil super major, Shell,
falsified and manipulated oil spill investigations
and documents in Nigeria.
The rights group accused the oil company of
wrongly reporting the cause and volume of
pollution devastating the Niger Delta and made
false claims about cleanup measures,
according to a report by the Associated Press.
The future of farmers and fishermen whose
livelihoods are destroyed by such spills,
depends on reports that can be “very
subjective, misleading and downright false,”
according to an independent United States
industry expert hired by Amnesty International
to review documents newly obtained under
Nigeria’s Freedom of Information Act.
The report offers detailed analysis to back
longstanding charges that oil companies blame
sabotage for spills sometimes caused by
corrosion and other faults in aging pipelines.
Sabotage or oil theft means a community is
not eligible for compensation.
Shell Nigeria said it “firmly rejects (the)
unsubstantiated assertions” and seeks “greater
transparency and independent oversight” in
reporting oil spills.
“Solutions to the terrible tragedy of oil
pollution in the Niger Delta need to be found,”
said a statement provided in response to the
report, according to the Associated Press.
Shell was the first company to start producing
oil in the Delta, in 1958.
Shell repeated assertions that most spills were
caused by growing theft that experts estimate
at between 100,000 and 200,000 barrels of oil
a day.
One questionable report claiming sabotage was
accepted by a Netherlands court that ruled
against compensation for a Niger Delta
community, Amnesty noted.
The report, prepared
in collaboration with
the Centre for
Environment, Human Rights and Development,
sheds new light on one of the worst
environmental disasters in Nigeria, a 2008 spill
that affected about 30,000 people in the
Delta’s Bodo creek area, and is the subject of a
lawsuit in Britain.
Some experts say the spill caused the largest
loss of mangrove habitat ever caused by an oil
spill.
Shell documents say the leak started on
October 5, 2008 and 1,640 barrels of oil were
spilled. Government and community
documents say the leak started on August 28.
United States-based Accufacts, the industry
expert hired by Amnesty, reviewed a video of
the leak and estimated that up to 4,320 barrels
of oil was flooding Bodo each day for at least
72 days.
When Amnesty challenged Shell with its
evidence, the company for the first time said it
had turned off supply to the affected pipe,
and, therefore, the volume of the spill could
not be that high. Yet, the video showed oil
spurting months later, on November 7.
Shell says it cleaned up the Bodo spill between
October 30, 2008 and December 2009. But it
also says it did not have access to the area to
stop a second major spill that began on
December 7, 2008.
Nigerian regulators have not certified the site
as clean, as mandated by law.
Martyn Day of Leigh Day, the British law firm
representing about 15,000 people from Bodo,
said the Amnesty’s report “makes it now clear
that Shell has a totally deficient system …that
has led to a massive underestimate of how
much oil has leaked out into that area.”
[Punch]