A Dutch TV documentary, produced in partnership with environmentalist organization, Milieudefensie, based in The Hague, Netherlands, has indicted employees of Shell’s Nigeria subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) over alleged ‘deliberate vandalization of oil pipelines’ for profit.
Aired by Aljazeera, the programme cites witnesses who said pipeline leaks were intentionally caused by SPDC employees.
“According to sources, Shell employees profit from these intentional oil leaks by pocketing money from clean-up budgets,” the programme, Zembla, said.
The report is a result of an 18-month investigation conducted by Milieudefensie and verified by Zembla, the company that produced the programme said.
“According to Shell, 95 per cent of the leaks are a result of sabotage. The oil company denies any responsibility for these. The perpetrators of these leaks are said to be local criminals and organized gangs. Now, Shell employees themselves are accused of being a part of a perverse industry of deliberate leakage. Zembla verified all of this, and interviewed the sources on camera,” the producing company, BNNVARA said.
“Shell employees persuade local youths to vandalize the pipelines. If a clean-up is necessary, these same youths are then hired to perform it,” one resident of a Niger Delta community told Zembla.
“And then, they split the money from the clean-up. The recovery department from Shell sabotages the pipelines. If the clean-up will take seven months, they will stop after only three months.”
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) reported in January this year that there had been more than 45,300 oil pipeline breaches between 2001 and the middle of 2019.
“Unfortunately, the combination of crude oil theft, illegal refining and pipeline vandalism, has become a major threat to Nigeria in meeting its revenue projections in recent time,” NNPC’s Managing Director, Mele Kyari, said at the time.
Responding, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) dismissed the report alleging that its staff were involved in crude oil pipeline vandalism for gain, describing the report as lacking substance and without proof.
SPDC’s Media Relations Manager, Bamidele Odugbesan, said in a statement, in Lagos, “SPDC does not have any formal report of named SPDC staff members or contractors involved in pipeline vandalism or crude oil theft.
“SPDC, like other Shell companies globally, investigates all credible reports it receives of misconduct or unethical behaviour and takes robust action where evidence exists.”
According to Odugbesan, the company has multiple ways the public can report allegations of wrongdoing by anyone working for SPDC, including a telephone helpline available round the clock and a dedicated email address.
He said the company monitored its joint venture facilities, and “any incident or suspected criminal activities are promptly reported to the regulators and government security agencies for investigation and possible prosecution.”
Explaining one of the measures adopted by the company to discourage host communities from tampering with SPDC assets in their communities, Odugbesan said that apart from not paying compensation for spills found to have resulted from sabotage activities, contractors from host communities were not awarded clean-up contracts for sabotage spills in their communities.
He said, “All spills are assessed by a government-led joint investigation team. Where sabotage is established, the clean-up contract is not awarded to contractors from the host community to ensure that possible accomplices do not benefit from such activities.
“SPDC cleans up and remediates areas impacted by spills that come from its operations, irrespective of cause of spill,” Odugbesan added.