Ejiofor Alike
25 December 2011
The federal government intends to probe the oil spill from Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company’s Bonga deepwater field, Minister of Environment, Hajia Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia, said in Lagos yesterday.
She also said the clean-up of the environment, which is being undertaken by various local and international experts, is expected to be completed within the next six weeks.
Mailafia spoke with reporters in Lagos after she led the director general of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, Mr. Peter Idabor and the deputy director in charge of Safety at the National Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Capt. Warredi Enisuoh, to inspect the deep offshore facility.
The minister, who noted that Shell gave an “accurate report” in terms of the quantity of crude oil spilled, which she estimated at 30,000 barrels, added that the federal government would conduct a detailed investigation to ascertain the cause of the incident.
“We are targeting six weeks for the clean-up to be effective. You know the thing with oil is that when it spills, it spreads and for every second, it keeps spreading because the waters are not still.
“In any case, there will be an investigation to ascertain the cause and that will be done, of course by technical experts. It will be in the interest of the company, technical partners and in the interest of the nation.
“We need to ascertain if it was the system or human error. At the moment, our desire has been to ensure that we take care of the problem and this is what we are doing adequately,” she assured.
On her observation at the Bonga facility, the minister said the country was lucky that the spill had not hit the coastline.
She also noted that the use of dispersants for the clean-up had been very effective, but acknowledged that the spill would affect marine life, noting, however, that the overall impact on the environment was at the barest minimum.
“Sure, it is going to affect marine life and the creatures out there, but because it is quite a distance from the shore, we are relatively lucky,” she added.
She stated that Shell was prompt in reporting the incident, adding that a few hours after the spill, experts were invited from different parts of the world to address the issue.
Shell discovered the spill last Tuesday about 120 kilometers off the southern coast of Nigeria.
The company estimates that the amount of leaked oil was less than 40,000 barrels and says the spill has been stopped.
The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency further confirmed that the amount of oil that leaked into the ocean was similar to the last major spill at a Mobil field in 1998.
Shell said the leak happened in a pipeline that transfers crude oil from a production vessel to a waiting oil tanker, but immediately deployed airplanes and vessels with dispersants to locate and break up the leaked oil, which was moving towards the shore.
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