Shell and community disagree on cause of oil spill in Bayelsa community

Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) said the reported oil spill at its diebu flow station in Bayelsa state was from a residual spill linked to a sabotaged old facility.

On August 24, the community of Peremabiri reported that the leak had polluted the environment, causing untold hardship to the fishing colonies.

SPDC Media Relations Manager Bola Essien-Nelson, however, said on Tuesday that the reported leak stemmed from an old incident.

According to Ms. Essien-Nelson, on May 4, SPDC received a report of a theft of a section of its Diebu Creek Oil Well 6 flowline, resulting in an oil leak.

"The Diebu Creek well and flow station (facility) have been out of service since February 26, when the facility was closed due to the unavailability of the Trans Niger pipeline.

“A Joint Investigative Visit (JIV) to the site revealed that the incident was caused by third party interference and theft of SPDCJV property.

"A free-phase oil clean-up was immediately carried out, while the residual impact assessment is scheduled for November, when water levels are expected to be low enough to allow assessment of the impact.

“This will be followed by remediation of the site after due approval of the remediation action plan by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission.

"On August 26, SPDC received a report of an oil splinter seen at the same site as the May 4 incident.

"The community thinks this oil slick is the result of a new spill. It's not.

"A follow-up JIV conducted on September 6 revealed that the splinter was the residual impact of the same May 4 sabotage/vandalism," Ms. Essien-Nelson said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), however, has learned that an operational incident at the flow station has spilled the crude into the company's right-of-way.

A JIV field report by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency seen by NAN said the leak was due to an operational incident, which spilled crude oil into the operational zone of SPDC without impact on the third zone.

JIV is a statutory step for oil companies, host communities and regulators to determine the cause, volume and area affected after each oil spill

Return Koma, who represented the Peremabiri community in the JIV, told NAN that SPDC officials and regulators were unanimous that the incident was being investigated following an equipment failure.

He said an operational incident on Aug. 24 at the Diebu Creek Flow Station, operated by SPDC, released a yet-to-be-determined volume of crude into the environment.

Mr. Koma, who is the chairman of the Peremabiri Community Development Committee, however, said that the JIV could not determine the amount of crude spilled and therefore did not sign the JIV report.

"We conducted the JIV, they accepted responsibility for the leak at the flow station and another at nearby Shaft 6, (and) both were due to equipment failure.

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“We could not agree on the volume of crude spilled and therefore did not sign off on the report,” Mr. Koma said.

(NAN)

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