Shell oil spill contaminates Nigerian farmlands

Photo by Heleno Kaizer on Unsplash

A new oil spill at a Shell facility in Nigeria has contaminated farmland and a river this week, upending livelihoods in the fishing and farming communities in part of the Niger Delta.

The region has long endured environmental pollution caused by the oil industry.

The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, or NOSDRA, said the spill came from the Trans-Niger Pipeline operated by Shell that crosses through communities in the Eleme area of Ogoniland, a region where the London-based energy giant has faced years of local resistance to its oil exploration.

Activists have published images of polluted farmland, water surfaces blighted by oil sheens and dead fish mired in sticky crude from the spill which began on June 11.

While spills are frequent in the region due to vandalism from oil thieves and a lack of maintenance to pipelines, according to the United Nations Environmental Program, activists call this a "major one."

It is "one of the worst in the last 16 years in Ogoniland," said Fyneface Dumnamene, an environmental activist whose non-profit monitors spills in the Delta region. 

"It lasted for over a week, bursts into Okulu River — which adjoins other rivers and ultimately empties into the Atlantic Ocean — and affects several communities and displaces more than 300 fishers," said Dumnamene of the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre.

Shell stopped production in Ogoniland more than 20 years ago amid deadly unrest from residents protesting environmental damage, but the Trans-Niger Pipeline still sends crude from oil fields in other areas through the region's communities to export terminals.

The leak has been contained, but treating the fallout from the spill at farms and the Okulu River, which runs through communities, has stalled, NOSDRA Director General Idris Musa said.

"Response has been delayed," Mr Musa said, blaming protesting residents. "But engagement is going on."