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Shell not cleaning Ogoni oil pollution – Amnesty, others

By on August 6, 2014

Little action has been taken to clean up pollution caused by oil production in the Niger Delta region, either by the government or Shell Oil, Amnesty International and other groups have said.

Oil production has contaminated the drinking water of at least 10 communities in the Ogoniland area but neither the government nor Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigeria subsidiary has taken effective measures to restore the fouled environment, according to the new report by Amnesty International, Friends of The Earth Europe; Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development; Environmental Rights Action, and Platform, according to a report by The Associated Press.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has not yet responded to a request by the Associated Press for reaction to the critical report.

A detailed assessment of pollution in the oil-producing area was published in 2011 by the United Nations Environment Programme, which said it would probably take up to 30 years to fully clean the area.

The groups said in the report, “In the three years since UNEP’s study was published, the government of Nigeria and Shell have taken almost no meaningful action to implement its recommendations.

“The failure to fully implement any of the non-emergency measures after three years has resulted in a loss of confidence among many stakeholders. Even the emergency measures have only been partially implemented.”

Among the emergency measures, emergency water supplies were brought to communities affected by the pollution. But the communities say these supplies are “erratic,” often insufficient and the water sometimes “smelled bad and was unpleasant to drink,” said the groups’ report.

In its earlier study, UNEP gave several examples of contaminated water and land, including at Nisisioken Ogale, in western Ogoniland. “Families are drinking water from wells that are contaminated with benzene — a known carcinogen — at levels over 900 times above World Health Organisation guidelines,” said UNEP.

In July 2012 the government created the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project to implement the UN recommendations. But as of July this year, “none of the NGOs monitoring UNEP implementation was aware of any action by HYPREP to meet this commitment,” the groups said.

Oil production stopped in Ogoniland in 1993, but some of the equipment wasn’t fully decommissioned, leaving it open to sabotage and corrosion, the UN report found.

In January 2013, Shell requested approval from the government to decommission its assets in Ogoniland, and was granted an approval more than a year later, in February 2014, according to the report.

“Shell’s description of what has been achieved amounts to almost no action whatever,” the groups said.

“The people of Ogoniland continue to suffer the effects of 50 years of an oil industry, which has polluted their land, air and water. Only some of the emergency measures have been implemented — and then only partially,” the groups said.

The groups accused Shell of putting the blame on oil theft, rather than taking responsibility and acting on the findings of the UN report.

Nigeria, a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is Africa’s largest oil producer and most populous nation. But several communities in the oil-producing Niger Delta say their areas are still underdeveloped and their region has been polluted by oil spills, ruining their drinking water and their sources of livelihood, including farming and fishing.

Oil companies say gangs that break into pipelines to steal crude oil are the main causes of oil spills in the region. Shell, the largest oil company operating in the country, is now facing a lawsuit in the United Kingdom where the law firm, Leigh Day, representing fishermen in the Niger Delta, is arguing the company isn’t doing enough to maintain and protect its pipelines from being sabotaged by oil thieves.

However, Shell Petroleum Development Company said inasmuch as it was making progress in implementing the UNEP report on Ogoniland, it could not singlehandedly implement it.

In a statement issued on Monday, the Manager, Media Relations, SPDC, Mr. Precious Okolobo, said it would take the joint participation of all the stakeholders mentioned in the report to effectively implement it.

In the statement entitled, ‘Shell Petroleum Development Company’s actions on UNEP report’, Okolobo said, “The majority of UNEP’s recommendations require multi-stakeholder efforts coordinated by the Federal Government.

“However, it is important to emphasise that neither the SPDC nor any other stakeholder is in a position to implement the entirety of UNEP’s recommendations unilaterally.”

The UNEP report called for the creation of an Ogoniland Restoration Agency and an Environmental Restoration Fund. It also asked Shell and other operators in the area to take steps to clean up the environment and decommission non-operational facilities.

The slow response of the various stakeholders in implementing the report has generated criticisms not only from the communities, but also from environmental rights groups.

But Shell said, “As the UNEP report stated, treating the problem of environmental contamination within Ogoniland merely as a technical clean-up exercise will ultimately lead to failure.

“Ensuring long-term sustainability is a much bigger challenge – one that will require coordinated and collaborative action from all stakeholders.”

 

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One Comment

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