Shell’s claim on Niger Delta pollution “blatantly false”

“By inadequately cleaning up the pollution from its pipelines and wells, Shell is leaving thousands of women, men and children exposed to contaminated land, water and air, in a few cases for years or even decades”, Mark Dummett, a London- based business and human-rights researcher at Amnesty, said in a statement.

Earlier this year Amnesty global revisited the Bomu manifold three times and found the site still massively contaminated, despite claims from Shell and the Nigerian government’s watchdog pollution body that it had been cleaned up satisfactorily in 2012.

“When Shell came to our community, they promised that if they find oil they’ll transform our community, and everybody will be happy…”

However, a spokesman for Shell’s Nigerian unit rejected the findings of the report, and said that it remained committed to cleaning up all spills from its facilities, “irrespective of cause”.

The report said that the government should strengthen the capacity of NOSDRA to function to high professional standard, especially by providing an increased budget for its operations.

Shell was forced to stop extracting oil from Ogoniland in 1993 because of protests by local communities who said the drilling was causing too much pollution, but its pipelines still cross the region.

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”. According to the oil giant’s own figures, there have been 1,693 oil spills leading to more than 350,000 barrels of crude oil being lost since 2007.

“The company directed researchers to its website, but this provides very little information about clean up”.

“Shell has publically said that, since 2011, it has addressed the pollution documented by UNEP”.

AI said one contractor who had been hired by Shell told Amnesty global how half-hearted and superficial clean-up efforts failed to prevent lasting environmental damage.

It also charged “the nearly complete failure of the Nigerian government to regulate the oil industry and protect the rights of the people”.

A 2011 investigation by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) documented the contamination at Shell’s sites, prompting a promise from the Anglo-Dutch oil major to follow through on cleanup.

Dummett confirmed that a number of places and locations which the National Oil Spill ‎Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) had certified as clean are visibly contaminated.

Strict rules in the country require visible oil in water to be gone within 60 days from a spill, but photographs obtained by researchers from Amnesty worldwide and the Centre of Human Rights and Development appear to show visible oil in multiple sites even years after spills.

” For many people of the region, oil has brought nothing but misery”.

Shell “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”, Ajeh said in the letter published in Amnesty’s report.