Shell, Nigeria accused over oil spill clean up
Shell was on Tuesday accused of making false
claims about the extent of its oil spill clean-up
operations in Nigeria and urged to take more
action to help worst-hit communities.
Amnesty International and the Centre
for Environment, Human Rights and
Development (CEHRD) charged the oil
major with failing to implement
recommendations from a critical 2011
UN report.
The claims came a week before the 20th
anniversary of the execution of Ken
Saro-Wiwa, who helped bring the extent
of oil-related ecological damage in
Nigeria to world attention.
Wiwa and eight community leaders from
Nigeria’s southern Ogoniland area were
hanged on November 10, 1995 after
being convicted at a secret trial of
murdering four local chiefs.
Nigeria’s then military government
ignored pleas for clemency from world
leaders.
Special vigils and protests outside Shell
petrol stations were planned in the run-
up to next week’s anniversary, Amnesty
said.
But campaigners said communities in
the creeks and marshes of Nigeria’s oil-
producing southern delta region were
facing the same problems Wiwa
highlighted two decades ago.
“Twenty years; nothing has been done,”
Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, a
human rights and environmental activist
from Port Harcourt, said in a statement.
“Ogoniland is still polluted… no clean-up
has been done… justice has not been
achieved. Twenty years and what they
fought for has not been addressed. That
cannot continue.”
– ‘False claims’ –
Amnesty and the CEHRD’s claims come
in a new report, “Clean It Up: Shell’s
False Claims about Oil Spill Response in
the Niger Delta”.
The 38-page document said most of the
recommendations of a UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) report had not been
implemented since its publication five
years ago.
Thirteen out of 15 areas visited between
July and September this year were still
“visibly polluted” or contaminated,
despite claims to the contrary by Shell
and the government.
The inadequate clean up left thousands
of people “exposed to contaminated land,
water and air, in some cases for years or
even decades,” said Amnesty researcher
Mark Dummett.
Either no clean-up had been carried out
or had been done badly, the groups
suggested, adding that other spills may
have happened since.
Activists have long highlighted the
problem of oil spills in Nigeria and the
impact on local populations, most of
whom rely on fishing and farming to
earn a living.
Ogoniland has become a symbol of
Nigeria’s troubled relationship with oil,
which has made government officials
and oil majors rich but done little for
local people.
Amnesty has previously accused Shell of
not implementing the UNEP
recommendations, which said at the
time the clean up could take 30 years
and cost $6 billion.
The latest report also criticised the
government watchdog the National Oil
Spill Detection and Response Agency,
accusing it of certifying areas as clean
when they were not.
The agency should be better-resourced
and given more powers, as well as
forced to become more accountable and
transparent about its operations, the
authors argued.
– Shell ‘committed’ –
Shell has not pumped oil from Ogoniland
since 1993 when it pulled out because of
unrest but still runs pipelines through
the area.
Activists say the pipelines are poorly
maintained and old, making spills more
frequent.
Amnesty and the CEHRD urged Shell to
conduct proper clean-up operations but
the company’s Nigerian subsidiary itself
said it rejected the groups’ claims.
In a letter published in the report the
Shell Petroleum Development Company
of Nigeria said it was “committed to the
implementation of the UNEP report”.
It had “initiated action on all the
recommendations addressed directly to
it”, it added.
“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 letter
read.
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