Senate Summons Shell, SNEPCO Over Oil Spill

The leadership of the Senate yesterday summoned the management of Royal Dutch Shell, Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO) over Tuesday night’s oil spill at Shell Nigeria’s 200,000 barrel-per-day capacity Bonga deepwater facility.

The Senate also directed the Federal Ministry of Environment to immediately take necessary steps to halt the spill.

It also mandated Shell to halt further spill from getting to the shoreline while presenting a detailed blueprint on how it intends to deal with the attendant damage.

Giving the directive at a media briefing yesterday, former governor of Kwara State and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology, Sen. Bukola Saraki, disclosed that members of the committee would soon undertake an on-the-spot visit to the affected area with a view to making first-hand assessment of the extent of damages the spill might have wreaked on those living within the area.

The spill, which has released over 30,000 barrels of oil off the Nigerian coast, is the worst since the 1997 spillage from a Mobil producing facility.

In his words: “We will make sure that we do all within our powers to ensure that international practices that guide all oil companies in this type of situations are also followed here in Nigeria, despite the clear handicap of the supervising agency”.

Saraki told the National Oil Spill Detection and Responses Agency (NOSDRA) to carry out an independent assessment of the spill, saying that already, Shell had taken some steps such as deploying helicopters and vessels to the spill site.

“To the best of our knowledge, NOSDRA lacks the necessary equipment such as boats, vessels to navigate the typical terrain where most of these spills take place, helicopters to fly over the affected areas, bums, barriers and most importantly, information command and control centre like other parts of the world to monitor and control this kind of spills.

He lamented a situation where the nation now rely almost exclusively on the grace and benevolence of the oil companies to provide them logistics, equipment and information command and control centre.