• ERA/FoEN wants independent report
The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), says it has recovered over 95 per cent of spilled oil from the recent spill incidents on sections of the Trans Ramos Pipeline (TRP) in Aghoro and Odimodi communities in Bayelsa and Delta states respeftively.
The pipeline, which has remained shut-in since the incidents, supplies crude to the SPDC Joint Venture-owned Forcados Oil Terminal in western Niger Delta for export.
In a statement, SPDC acknowledged the spills as very regrettable, adding that in line with its standard operating procedures, the TRP was shut down immediately the incidents were reported and the Oil Spill Response and the Emergency Response teams were activated to manage the incidents and prevent further spillage.
“As soon as clean-up and site assessment are completed, we are committed to starting the immediate remediation of the impacted areas in Aghoro and Odimodi,” SPDC said in a statement.
According to Shell, details of the cause and impact of the spills will be captured in the Joint Investigation Visits (JIV) reports, which will be released after sign-off by all parties.
“The JIV is a multi-party exercise involving the regulators, the community, representatives of the state government, security agencies, and representatives of SPDC. The outcome is then signed off by the stakeholders to authenticate the findings,” the oil company said.However, commenting on the development, Spokesman for Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria, Philip Jakpor, said the claims of SPDC must be reconfirmed by an independent body before they (the claims) could be validated.
Jakpor told The Guardian in a telephone chat on Sunday, that: “What I can tell you is that it is not the duty of SPDC to tell us it has progressed in a clean-up; it is the affected communities that should be saying so.“Certainly, an independent body should come up with a report in that respect. The announcement should be the work of the independent body, and not Shell.
“It is also the responsibility of government to tell us that. If we have not heard from government, we don’t believe.”Meanwhile, the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), said it had adopted a new technology to tackle the menace of oil spillage in Nigeria.
The technology, according to the Agency, would assist in rapid response to oil spill and prevent further degradation of the environment.The Minister of Environment, Aisha Mohammed, had also said the use of oil spill modelling techniques in predicting the direction of spilled oil in the marine environment was quite a laudable innovation.She described it as a tool, which presents a very valuable opportunity for both oil spill preparedness and response activities.
