As the United States, and indeed, the world grapples with more than three-month old continuous crude oil slick from the British Petroleum Plc’s Deepwater Horizon rig that has created the worst environmental disaster in history in the Gulf of Mexico, the Shell Petroluem Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC)says it has completed the clean up and remediation of 2,000 oil spill sites in the Niger Delta between 1999 and last month.

This translates to around 173.9 spill sites a year across SPDC-operated fields in the Niger Delta.

Head, Remediation, SPDC-East, Augustine Igbuku, who disclosed this during a special media session in Port Harcourt, last Thursday, said that the company would soon complete clean up and remediation operations on the backlog  of 250 crude spill sites  in the area.

Igbuku, however, regretted that even as Shell was making frantic and proactive effort to clean up and restore impacted environments to their natural state, deafening challenges arising from intermittent sabotage of crude facilities, hot tapping, and activities of illegal refineries as well as denial of access to spill sites have impeded progress on the remediation process.

He noted that these illegal operations have triggered about 200 new spills every year in the past few years.

Igbuku explained that it takes SPDC about a year to clean-up and remediate a major spill site usually caused by sabotage activities and between 3 to 5 months to clean-up and remediate a minor spill site occasionally triggered by operational failure.

Shell said that more than 70 per cent of all oil spilled from its facilities between 2005 and 2009 were caused by thieves who drill into pipelines or upon up wellheads to steal crude oil and natural gas liquids, and attributed the rest to operational failures.

The Tide recalls that the total number of spills in 2009 was 132, against the average of 175 spills per year between 2005 and 2009.

Of the 2009 figure, crude thieves spilled about 103,000 barrels from SPDC facilities in 95 incidents, which represents an average of one spill every four days, and some 98 per cent of total volume of oil spilled last year.

In contrast, operational failures such as corroded pipelines, equipment failure and human error resulted in the spillage of 2,300 barrels in 37 incidents.

However, of the total 105,300 barrels spilled from both sabotage activities and operational failures in 2009, more than 72,000 barrels were recovered in clean-up operations across the region, especially in Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta States, respectively.

The Tide investigations show that Shell remediated and certified 143 spill sites in 2009, and replaced 318 kilometres of pipelines and flow lines.

A further 439 sites are at various stages of remediation while work on six pre-2005 spill sites remains in linbo due essentially to access difficulties and community issues.

Available statistics show that in 2005, sabotage spills numbered about 115, with operational failures accounting for some 60 incidents, which resulted in around 17, 000 and 800 barrels spilled, respectively.

In 2006, about 125 sabotage incidents occurred, with some 40 operational spills, which recorded around 10,000 barrels apiece, while 2007 recorded nearly 200 sabotage and 50 operational spill incidents, accounting for 20,000 and 16,000 barrels spilled, respectively.

However, in 2008, around 120 spill incidents were recorded against some 45 operational spills, which spewed about 48,000 and 50,000 barrels, respectively, into the environment.

Nelson Chukwudi