Advertisements

Advertisements

Advertisements

Leading global rights watchdog, Amnesty International (AI) weekend released a report showing that Royal Dutch Shell and Italian oil giant, Eni had been in the habit of doctoring oil spill reports in a way and manner compensation to host communities can be watered down or considered needless.

The report also accused the majors of “serious negligence”, saying “It takes both companies weeks to respond to reports of spills and publishing misleading information about the cause and severity of spills, which may result in communities not receiving compensation”.

Whereas Eni failed to react to the report, a Shell spokesman said Amnesty’s allegations “are false, without merit and fail to recognise the complex environment in which the company operates”.

Business Hilights recalls that both Shell and Eni have for decades been two of the most active oil majors operating in the Niger Delta region. Besides, analysts argue that due to deep-rooted corruption in the Nigerian oil sector, government may not really muster the courage to take a cue from the report and do the needful in investigation the due properly.

It is on record that the current lifelessness of certain lands in parts of Ogoni community in Rivers State cannot be unconnected to years of reported and unreported spill of crude oil under the operations of Shell.

However, Shell has reported 1,010 spills since 2011, and Eni 820 since 2014, according to Amnesty, which said among those 1,830 reports it found 89 “about which there are reasonable doubts surrounding the cause provided by the oil companies”.

In 2015, the Bodo community and a British law firm negotiated a 55 million pound pollution settlement with Shell in 2015.

Through the federal government had in line with United Nations recommendations launched a cleanup of Ogoniland, in the last two of the operations, according to the Rivers State government and other stakeholders, no meaningful feat can be said to have been recorded in the cleanup process.