Oil Spills in Nigeria

[Richard Akindele]

ABOUT five decades after the discovery of crude oil in commercial quantity, Nigeria has woken up to the reality of the danger of oil spills on host communities and the nation at large.

Recently, the Federal Government set up the National Oil Spillage Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA). The agency as the name implies, has the clear mandate of monitoring the coastal areas of the Niger Delta to ascertain the possibility of oil spill, degree of the spillage when it happens and consequently, initiate remediation activities for the purpose of restoring and recovering impacted sites.

Besides, the agency would also conduct checks to establish the level of integrity of the facilities used by the oil companies in their exploitation and exploration activities. Already, the Minister of Environment, Mrs Helen Esuene, has issued a directive to oil companies to forward to the agency details of their pipeline network, type of product conveyed by each pipeline and the times as well as source and destination of the products.

Though the agency is being set up belatedly, it is also instructive that it is coming at this time when the nation has been having a herculean task trying to manage the aftermath of oil spill.

Nigeria is a key member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to the United States, the largest producer in Africa and the eight largest exporter of same in the world. Currently, she enjoys a daily quota of 2.4 billion barrels per day (bpd).

This has also placed enormous pressure on the oil-producing communities due to increased seismic and sundry oil-prospecting activities in the area. Not only are the people put under pressure, the facilities particularly the pipelines are subjected to continual usage.

The net effect is a spate of burst pipelines occasioning oil spills. But by far, the major cause of oil spill is vandalisation, more commonly described as "acts of sabotage" by the oil firms. For instance, in 2003 alone, Shell recorded 221 incidents of oil spills, out of which two-thirds were allegedly caused by saboteurs.

Nigeria has had the misfortune of one oil spill too many due largely to negligence on the part of the oil companies when they fail to adhere to basic international standards in facilities installation and clear acts of sabotage of oil bunkerers and miscreants. Add to that is oil waste dumping and indiscriminate gas flaring. All these coalesce to destroy the biodiversity of the affected areas leading to loss of wild life, aquatic life, soil and health degradation. In the main, the nation loses economically and socially.

Sometimes, when there is a spill, it creeps and spreads to the shoreline, thus threatening both coastal and terrestrial life. The Niger-Delta region, the prime targets of the oil spills, has experienced all these and the effects are made manifest in the brackish waters of the region and the disappearance of fishes from the sea bed.

This is why the establishment of this agency is a welcome development. Worthy of note, however, is the fact that this is not the first time that government has instituted such interventionist or remediation agencies. But most times, they get subsumed in the stupor of bereaucracy. Consequently, they lose focus, essence and their core values. We hope the same fate does not befall NOSDRA.

Oil spill is not a novelty. It has been since the history of oil. And it is not peculiar to Nigeria. The only difference, however, is that in other climes, response by both governments and the oil companies are usually swift.

The nuisance of oil spill has become so worrisome to the extent that it has produced ancillary companies specialising in the manufacture of oil spill containment facilities. Such products include oil skimmers used to recover and eliminate oil spills, oil spill containment devices, emergency spill kits, crude oil sludge control systems, stem jet refrigeration, bio-remediation product distribution, chemical clearing solutions, among others.

The new agency should ensure that oil companies in Nigeria maximise the use of these facilities in their operations. This way, the chilling incidents of oil spills would be curtailed, if not eliminated.

But the agency cannot be effective if it is not insulated from red tape. We urge the supervising ministry to spell out the mandate of the agency and give it all the support it needs, both financially, technically and otherwise, to enable it discharge its duty. But more importantly, we urge the vandals and illegal bunkerers to desist from blowing up oil facilities. It is an economic sabotage.
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[Richard Akindele]

LAGOS (MarketWatch) -- Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN), has dispatched a team of investigators to locate the site of an oil spill in its trunk line that has led to 50,000 barrels of oil a day being shut in, a spokesman for the company said Friday.

As a result of the spill, Shell has shut down four of its flow stations in Nembe in the Niger Delta - Nembe 1, 2, 3 and 4, the official said.
"We are trying to get to the site of the spill, which is in a swampy area, and then decide how to repair the trunk line," the spokesman said.

He said the spill occurred last weekend.

The spokesman said Shell had "no idea of the cause of the spill," and said it would be premature to attribute the incident to the activities of Niger Delta militants.

Attacks by the militants, who are fighting for regional control of Nigeria's oil resources, have cut Nigeria's oil production by more than 500,000 b/d, most of it from Shell's operations.

The Shell official said the location of the spill makes both the search for the site and subsequent repairs difficult. "We have first to create a dry environment and then determine what has happened."

Shell is Nigeria's largest oil-producing company, with nearly half of the country's output coming from the Shell Petroleum Development Company, a joint venture Shell operates with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNP.YY), EPNL and Agip (AGI.YY).
Company Web site: http://www.shell.com