The environmental groups were still affected 15 years later by fishing grounds and lands in two towns, Oruma and Goi, due to the leaks to pipelines.
Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa, and Shell began exporting through its Nigerian subsidiary in the late 1950s from countries in the Niger Delta. According to the company, it manages about 50 oil fields, five gas plants and more than 3,000 miles of pipelines.
Yet its activities are also damaging in terms of reputation, and Shell and other oil companies, such as the Italian company Eni, have long been plagued by allegations of pollution in the region. In 1994, Bopp Van Dessel, head of environmental studies for Shell Nigeria, resigned, arguing that he was unable to defend the company’s environmental record “without losing his personal integrity.”
“Any Shell site I saw was polluted,” he said. Van Dessel later said on British television. “It was clear to me that Shell was destroying the area.”
In 2008, a U.S. cable issued by WikiLeaks revealed that three-quarters of Nigeria’s pipelines were more than a decade in arrears to be replaced, while some with a life expectancy of 15 years to 30 were still in operation. .
Shell and Eni argued that most leaks were caused by sabotage. Nevertheless, under Nigerian law, oil companies are responsible for ensuring effective standards of safety and practice.
“Sabotage, theft of crude oil and illegal refining are a major challenge in the Niger Delta,” Bamidele Odugbesan, a spokeswoman for Shell’s subsidiary in Nigeria, said in an email. “Whatever the cause, we clean and repair, as we did with the spills in this case.”