Members of the Bonny Community in South South Ri vers State of Nigeria have raised the alarm that the oil spill from one of the facilities belonging to the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) was endange r ing aquatic life in the area.
‘You could see fishes, crabs, lobstars all floating dead in the oil. Our own is a tidal water setting. There is slow tide and ebb tide. The slow tide water comes up and in the ebb, water goes back,’ Chief Sodienye Abere, chairman Bonny environment consultant committee, said.
PANA reports that Shell itself had confirmed the oil spill from one of its facilities on Bonny River.
Abere said fishermen first noticed the spill on 2 August and reported same to the Bonny local government.
‘We went out to see things for ourselves and observed that the spill came from a facility belonging to shell. We alerted shell and they agreed that the pipeline belonged to them, but we expected them to have come to do a joint investigation with us.
‘This is the seventh spill in the area this year, six of them from shell but this one is the highest, both in terms of spread and quantity.’
Abere said the spill stretched from Dutch island, near Okrika, Opobo channel to Finima,going to the Atlantic ocean.
He said if Shell had intervened earlier, the spill could not have spread to more areas as it had done now.
‘We have written to shell to intervene and bring in relief materials immediately to assist the fishermen, whose primary livelihood had been impacted seriously. They cannot go to fish now,’ Abere said.
In its reaction, a spokesman for Shell, Mr. Precious Okolobo, said the company received a report of an oil spill on 11 August following which the company organized a helicopter over fly to confirm the spill came from the facility at Cawthorn channel.
Investigations, Okolobo said, are continuing to determine the quantity of crude oil spilled into Bonny.