Mkpoikana Udoma
“The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited is investigating a possible leak on its joint venture transmission pipeline that traverses Bodo in Rivers State following a report received on August 18, 2023. We are working with the community and other stakeholders to ensure we can safely look into and resolve this situation,” Shell said.
However, the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre, YEAC-Nigeria, has said that it would work with the leadership of Bodo community for the Guinness World Records to recognise Bodo as the community with the highest number of crude oil spills in the world.
Executive Director of YEAC Nigeria, Mr Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, recalled that Bodo community, over the years, has recorded multiple oil spills in different dimensions from Shell pipeline, one of which SPDC was still struggling to clean up through the Bodo Mediation Initiative, after an out-of-court settlement of £55million to the community in 2015.
Fyneface regretted that the latest spill occurred at Sugi in Bodo Community, not far from where multiple oil spills have occurred in recent times on the Trans-Niger Pipeline operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd.
The environmental advocacy organization said it has lost count of oil spills incidents in Bodo due to incessant occurrences, hence the need to put the spills on Guinness World Records, GWR, for the community and for the pollutter to be globally named and shamed, to serve as a deterrent to both indigenous and multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta.
“This will help further hold these companies to account on our ecosystem destruction and save the fragile Bodo, Ogoni, and Niger Delta communities, especially with the ongoing cleanup exercise by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP,” he said
YEAC-Nigeria also called on the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency to immediately embark on a JIV with Shell and other stakeholders to the spill site in Bodo City and not to delay it like the Aleto Eleme oil spills incident.
“The JIV report is very important as it would add to the pull of materials to be gathered and presented to Guinness World Records to seek approval for a title for Bodo City as a community with the highest number of crude oil spills in the world.
“Members of YEAC-Nigeria’s One Million Youth Volunteers Network on Human Rights Defenders and Promoters in the Niger Delta and the Crude Oil Spill Alert System in the community have further reported to the Centre that the spill points are now found to be two.
“You wil recall that it was at this same time in August 2022 that five oil spills were reported in Bodo, the same area.
“However, we do not know if the spill points this year will still increase from two and also do not know why the spills are occurring the same period of the year and also wondering if the spill will also occur by this time again in August 2024,” YEAC-Nigeria said.
