A new report from Amnesty International has accused Shell of failing to clean up multiple oil spills in the Niger Delta.
Oil continues to contaminate water around the Bomu Manifold in Nigeria in August 2015, Amnesty International said, three years after Shell said they had cleaned the area.
Amnesty International
The oil giant Shell has been accused by Amnesty International of repeatedly failing to clean up the results of oil spills from its infrastructure in Nigeria.
Some of the spills where researchers for the charity found continued contamination dated back as much as 45 years, while others showed apparent oil pollution despite having been certified as clean by the Nigerian government within the last year.
Shell has reported around 200 spills a year in Nigeria for each of the last five years. The company blames attempts to steal oil from pipes as a large contributor to the high number of spills, but Amnesty International said ageing infrastructure is also a major factor.
Strict rules in the country require visible oil in water to be gone within 60 days of a spill, but photographs obtained by researchers from Amnesty International and the Centre for Human Rights and Development appear to show visible oil in multiple sites even years after spills.
The charity timed the launch of its new report to mark the 20th anniversary of the execution by the Nigerian government of nine Ogoni tribal leaders who had campaigned against oil extraction on their territory.
Relatives of those killed had accused Shell of "collusion" in the deaths. In 2009, Shell settled a civil claim from the families for $15.5 million, without admission of liability.
A disused flow station in the Bomu Manifold. Amnesty claims much of the oil infrastructure in Nigeria is badly outdated, contributing to spills.
Mike Uwemedimo / Amnesty International
The oldest spill for which researchers found oil still present dated back to a 1970 fire and subsequent spill near Boobanabe, where researchers found "waterlogged areas with an oily sheen" and "soil was black and encrusted with oil".
This was despite, Amnesty said, the site having been declared cleaned-up in 1975 and again in 2012.
Researchers also found "soil soaked with crude oil" around the Bomu Manifold – where several Shell oil routes coincide – dating from a large fire in 2009, declared clean in 2012; further south in the Barabeedom swamp, which was declared clean by regulators a year ago; and in Ogale, which was declared clean in 2012.
Amnesty International said in its report researchers had then cross-checked the areas against Shell's database of leaks to make sure the contimation they reported could not have been caused by more recent spills.
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