Some residents of oil spill impacted communities in both Bayelsa and Delta States have hailed the speedy recovery of spills that hit their areas by the Royal Dutch Shell Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC).
A visit to some of the communities by Business Hilights Bureau chief for South-South, revealed near completion of remediation activities in the affected communities including some sections of the Trans Ramos Pipeline (TRP) in Aghoro community, Bayelsa and Odimodi community in Delta state.
The visit on Monday followed a statement issued by SPDC on Sunday revealing that it has recovered more than 95 per cent of spilled oil from the recent incidents in Bayelsa and Delta states.
Media Relations Manager of the oil major, Bamidele Odugbesan, said that the pipeline, which remained shut-in since the incidents, supplied crude to the SPDC Joint Venture-owned Forcados Oil Terminal in western Niger Delta for export.
According to him, “In line with the standard operating procedures of SPDC, the TRP was shut down immediately the incidents were reported and the Oil Spill Response and the Emergency Response teams were activated to manage the incidents and prevent further spillage.
“As soon as clean-up and site assessment are completed, we are committed to starting the immediate remediation of the impacted areas in Aghoro and Odimodi.”
SPDC averred that details of the cause and impact of the spills will be captured in the Joint Investigation Visits (JIV) reports, which will be released after sign-off by all parties.
“The JIV is a multi-party exercise involving the regulators, the community, representatives of the state government, security agencies, and representatives of SPDC.
“The outcome is then signed off by the stakeholders to authenticate the findings,” he said.
A community leader in Odimodi, Delta State told our correspondent that “If previous spills were attended with such speed of light by Shell, cases of host community violence in oil communities in the Niger Delta would have been a thing of the past.
