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Subscribe to RSSNigerian villagers say oil washing up on the coast comes from a Royal Dutch Shell loading accident last month that caused the biggest spill in Africa's top producer in more than 13 years.
Shell denies that any of the oil is from its 200,000 barrel per day Bonga facility, 120 km offshore and accounting for 10 percent of monthly oil flows, which was shut down by the spill on Dec. 20.
George Esiri / EPA
A woman walks past some of the hundreds of dead fish believed to have been killed as a result of the recent oil spill off the coast of Nigeria.
Shell says five ships were used to disperse and contain the spill and that this kept any oil from washing ashore.
But local villagers, as well as environmental and rights groups, dispute this account, saying the oil is still at large, coating parts of the coast, killing fish and sparking protests.
On Saturday, a Reuters team visited two of 13 villages whose residents say they were affected by the spill in the steamy swamps of the Niger Delta. In both, there were stretches of beach coated in a film of black sludge with a rainbow tint.
In one, two children skipped along the beach, dodging the puddles of sticky ooze.
Villagers in Orobiri, Delta state, spent much of the day scooping crude from the water in plastic buckets and jerrycans.
"When this spill occurred, we called on Shell to come and do a clean up, ... but since then, they have not turned up, so we the communities now did a clean-up instead," said Jacob Ajuju, the paramount chief of Orobiri village, surrounded by rows of assorted buckets and containers full of crude.
As he spoke, dozens of women villagers marched in protest at the spill, their heads adorned with leafy branches to symbolise unhappiness. Others continued to tip the oil from jerrycans into large plastic drums.
"On Christmas day, all the women you see here, were just at the seaside parking this oil into the jerrycans," said Dennis Igolobuabe, Orobiri community youth president.
Shell says no oil from the spill washed up on the coast.
"We believe the oil on the beach is not from Bonga. We made significant progress every day to disperse the oil that leaked from Bonga," Shell Nigeria spokesman Precious Okolobo told Reuters in an emailed statement.
"We are confident that any oil of that age, colour and consistency that hits the beach is not ours. We are taking samples ... which will be reviewed to provide evidence that this is not Bonga oil on the beach," he added.
Okolobo suggested the oil may have been from "a third party spill which appeared to be from a vessel, in the middle of an area that we had previously cleaned up".
Spills by all oil companies operating in the region are common, and it is sometimes hard to tell whose is whose.
On another beach near Agga village, a man on a motorbike paused to look at scores of silvery fish washed up dead.
"Before this spill came, we were already been informed by Shell in Warri (the main town in the region) during a meeting that this is what is coming ... It's a calamity," said Joseph Gbuebo, community secretary for Agga.
"On the 25th of this month, we saw some helicopters flying, dropping some chemicals along the shore, but this has been injurious to our health," he added.
Shell's pipelines in Nigeria's onshore Niger delta have spilled several times. The company usually blames such leaks on sabotage attacks and rampant oil theft.
BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico ruptured in April last year, spewing nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the sea in what was the worst U.S. marine oil spill. The disaster brought intense negative publicity for BP.
But in Nigera, spills are so commonplace they often go unnoticed by the outside world.
A U.N. report in August criticised Shell and the Nigerian government for contributing to 50 years of pollution in a Niger Delta region that it said needs the world's largest oil clean-up, costing an initial $1 billion and taking up to 30 years.
Separately, the cost of fuel more than doubled in Nigeria a day after the government announced an end to fuel subsidies.
Sign posts at a few gas stations Monday morning put the price at nearly $3.60 per gallon (94 cents per liter), up from about $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per liter) on Sunday.
Many more stations were shut down, while bus and taxi fares had already risen.
The subsidy was one of citizens' few government benefits in the oil-rich nation, and its removal follows the government's Saturday declaration of a state of emergency in some parts of the nation over a growing Islamist insurgency.
Nigeria produces over 2 million barrels per day of crude oil but a lack of investment in refineries and infrastructure means almost all of this is exported, while refined products such as petrol have to be imported at great cost.
Labor unions, who ironically described the holiday move as the president's New Year "gift" to Nigerians, vowed they would fight it.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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let's look for fingerprints and identify this oil....please....Shell.....get a grip.
Typical lies from big oil...its not our oil. Royal Dutch Shell needs to be held accountable just like BP was. PAy up and shut up.
"Held accountable like BP was." That's hilarious.
do you drive a car? well then.... you need to STFU!
exactly! liberals are hypocrites! another reason OBOMBO can ban drilling
for his green agenda utopia that will never exist!
Ervin likes to blame liberals and all people who think in deeper terms than black or white for all the world's troubles. Last time I checked, it wasn't Greenpeace, climate scientists or labor unions that were paying mercs to assassinate citizen activists (Ken Saro-Wiwa to name one specific person in Nigeria) who were trying to hold those poor multi-national corporations accountable for the most catastrophic environmental and economic devastation to the people of that area. Stop thinking with Rush Limbaughs brain and take his big gold microphone, that must be shoved in sideways, from your keister, and find the facts not the regurgitations from Frank Lutz and the other word tricksters.
Ervin, I do believe you are quite retarded.
Obviously Nigeria is rich in natural resources but not the producer of these resources.
Shell one of the most experienced and knowledgable company in oil production and explaration seem to be running into problems to apply the best practices in Nigeria.
It is a pitty for both sides and for the environment.
The curse of petroleum lies in its distribution and its powerfull regulatory role in worlds highly integrated economic system; which inturn inhibits the effective use of the freedom of will of the parties involved.
Well, Dr., the "curse" of petroleum lies in the greed of the oil companies! And in the corruption of many of the governments of the countries where the oil is extracted.
and the dependence of the consumers. The Curse covers all aspects.
No wonder the black folks in Nigeria hate the white capitalists. They should be given a freakin' refinery at least. This is plain straight colonial exploitation sucking other people's natural resources and I denounce it. I guess wells being Offshore they must feel that they are untouchable and don't owe two-bit negroes anything, and if they starve along the coast from a lack of fish that's OK too. With oil prices being up companies must be in a big hurry to suck out more oil faster while still cutting corners to cut costs out of GREED.
Shame on the thieves for this.
Given a refinery? sounds like you've had too much 'cool-aid', let them build one with the royalty money and provide some jobs to the little thieves, but wait, that means they would have to get off their lazy arse's and actually go to work.
Perhaps one should also look at the black government of Nigeria if you want to point fingers....if they prevented oil companies from oil extraction unless proper controls were put into place, if they taxed and fined those companies and put the money into infrastructure and environmental protection, this would not be such a problem, would it?
The "black" government of Nigeria? You mean like the "white" government of the USA or Britain? That line of thot already diminished your point. The Nigerian government is very imcompetent and corrupt. Yes. Probably turned a blind eye while the giant oil corporations do whatever they like in the country. But what has "color" got to do with that?
The "darker" your country is the more screwed up it is!
Hey D, it seems the more conserverative you are then the more you believe in flat earth and virgin birth myths. Conservatives have never expanded anything beyond the military. Oh and by the way, it was the "lighter" countries that have ruined the "darker" ones by formenting ethnic divisions, exploiting their natural resources and trying to "civilize" these "heathens" by trying to eradicate their cultures and using bloodshed to get this done. Again, I love the infantile ways you conservatives rationalize the ridiculous.
Why should an oil company get involved in cleanup? It's cheaper to bribe government officials.
Nigeria isn't a country so much as a growing ulcer. But compared to Zimbabe (Southern Rhodrsia) and Zaire (the Congo ) it's a vaguely more benign ulcer.
Big oil...lying sacks of @!$%#e! When have they EVER admitted to wrong doing voluntarily??
Do you drive a car? Then STFU!
I've seen write-ups in Nat Geo about the Delta problem. Shell is correct in asserting most of the damage is due to thieves cutting into the pipelines. I remember the pictures of the aftermath of one that caught fire and killed a bunch of people and other pics of it just flowing out of a gash in the pipe as people waited in line with all kinds of plastic bottles etc. to steal it. I am certainly not saying the companies don't contribute, but here, really, they are doing it to themselves for the most part.
Americans would "do it to themselves" too if they were impoverished and natural resources were literally being pumped out of the earth and out of the country. Don't criticize people living in conditions which you clearly don't understand.
gtfyre. What do you want them to do with crude oil? it's too thin to coat the hull of a wooden boat and not refined for any use. I don't suppose they have their own mini cracking labs to make their own gasoline. At best if Nigerian locals cut into pipe it's an act of sabotage against the exploiters. Can crude be used for fuel maybe?
They must be using it for something because I saw the same show and they are indeed carting the crude away in containers.
Maybe they should elect 'OBAMA' that way he could spread the wealth. With a spill he'd probably triple their checks.
Do you actually know how to properly spell, capitalize, and use punctuation? I mean, really. You just sound like a right-wing nutjob with your 'OBAMA' this and your arze's that.
speaking off spelling you spelled ASS wrong!
Want to make a difference? DRIVE LESS. It's not as hard as you think.
Anyone else seeing a pattern here...anyone?
Pathetic. How long are we going to let them rape the environment that WE rely on??? They're going to make their millions and be long gone, and the rest of us will have nothing to fall back on. This is scary! There are more than us than there are of them. This has to stop.
How could anyone expect big oil to admit to polluting the shores of Africa when they barely wanted to admit to polluting the shore of the U.S.? Bad press is the only reason why the BP caved in to cleaning U.S. shores, but if no one communicates what is going on in Africa, Shell can continue to deny for as long as they want. And I don't expect there to be an outcry about what is happening in Nigeria...unfortunately there never is.
Who cares about nigeria? It's a turd hole as it is. They won't even notice the extra oil on the beach. It's not like it will affect tourism......
...and after we nuke Iran off the face of the Earth!
I thought those Nigerians were starving to death; I wish oil would wash up in my bath tub, I'd bottle and sell it, they must not be that hungry yet! Too busy scaming American's over the internet, with their little
"My name is blah blah blah, and my father was a traveling antique's saleman, blah blah blah, who left me
his inheritance in the form of a check that I need you to cash for me, because I'm a stupid thief, and the only reason I was born was because my dad didn't even have a job, but had plenty of time for mistakes!
... a whole country full of mistakes, if you ask me!
For real? First they protest the price and now this? They should STFU and take this oil it's free!
Once again horribly toxic dispersants were used to sink and hide oil and the marine species suffered having to try to live where a toxic soup had been sunken into their environment. Dispersants do not clean up spills they hide oil and kill marines species and destroy natural resources. Humans will now ingest this contaminated seafood and suffer adverse health effects themselves. There was a product successfully tested by BP in the gulf that turns oil into CO2 and water, and does not let the oil sink. Why was it not used in Nigeria?
Probably it wouldn't be very convenient for them OR save them the kind of $ that saying they 'didn't do it' will.
where's the outcry of the toxic batteries in all these green cars that run on coal, gas and oil?
where's the outcry on the batteries exploding and GM recalling 80,000 vehicles? nowhere!
like they guy said STFU!
2 THINGS:
I'm glad I don't buy from them OR BP
&
Not surprised the media isn't covering this!(Very sad.)
I think the nigerian government need to take a hardline legal action against those imperialist corporations. Nigerian government needs to start suing all the oil exploration companies in nigeria. Each individual commmunities needs to start suing the corporation instead of acting in a radical manner. All legal professionals needs to start building environmental exploitation cases against all oil magnates. Take them to court and make them sweat. We need to start a common sense rehabilitation of nigeria image. We need to abstain from violence. STOP THE KILLING, STOP THE GENOCIDE AGAINST EACH OTHER. WE NEED TO REPAIR OUR IMAGE BEGINING NOW. WHY ARE WE GOING MAD AGAINST EACH OTHER. NORTH AND SOUTH STOP THE BABARIC BEHAVIOR.