BP logo is seen at a fuel station of British oil company BP in St. Petersburg, October 18, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Alexander Demianchuk
Showing posts with label spill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spill. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
Shell to negotiate with Nigerians over oil spill compensation
On 02:34
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1 of 2. A Shell logo is seen at a petrol station in London May 15, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Stefan WermuthBy Estelle Shirbon
LONDON | Thu Sep 5, 2013 7:08pm EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Compensation talks will begin in Nigeria on Monday between lawyers for Royal Dutch Shell and for 15,000 Nigerian villagers who say their livelihoods were destroyed by oil spills from pipelines operated by the company.
The Nigerians launched a suit against Shell at the High Court in London in March 2012, seeking millions of dollars in compensation for two oil spills in 2008 that polluted the waterways of the Bodo fishing communities in the Niger Delta.
The legal action is being closely watched by the industry and by environmentalists for precedents that could have an impact on other big pollution claims against oil majors.
A vast maze of mangrove swamps and creeks, the Niger Delta is home to communities of subsistence farmers and fishermen living alongside the multi-billion-dollar oil industry.
"They want to be fairly compensated for their losses from the time the spill took place until the oil is cleaned up and the Bodo Creek is returned to its natural state," said Martyn Day of the Nigerians' London law firm Leigh Day.
A Shell spokesman confirmed that talks would begin on Monday between Leigh Day and lawyers for the Anglo-Dutch firm. They will take place in Port Harcourt, the main city in the Delta, and will be attended by representatives of the Bodo communities.
The region has been plagued by a range of problems including sabotage, kidnappings of oil workers for ransom, theft of crude from pipelines, armed rebellions, and conflict between communities over clean-up contracts or compensation deals.
Shell accepts responsibility for the Bodo spills but the two sides disagree about the volume spilt and the number of local people who lost their livelihoods as a result. A previous round of compensation talks broke down in 2012, before the lawsuit.
"CRIMINAL ACTIVITY"
"We're hopeful that an acceptable agreement can be reached with the Bodo community," the Shell spokesman said. "Such an agreement would provide fair compensation, as well as a way forward on cleaning up the entire area affected by oil spills, whether caused by the two 2008 operational incidents, or by criminal activity."
Citing independent experts, Leigh Day says up to 600,000 barrels of crude were spilt, which would make it one of the worst spills in history. The volume spilt in Alaska in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster was put at 257,000 barrels.
But Shell, citing a report by a joint investigative team not controlled by the firm, puts the volume spilt in the two original incidents at just 4,100 barrels.
Shell accepts that a significantly higher volume of oil was spilt later but says this was due to other factors including sabotage. It has also complained that its clean-up teams were at times denied access to sites by local groups.
A Shell spokesman said the talks would focus on the number of people affected, the actual financial loss suffered, and the amount of time for which those affected should be compensated.
The Bodo case is particularly troublesome for Shell because the area is in Ogoniland, a part of the Delta that was the scene of one of the company's worst public relations disasters.
In 1995, nine Ogoni activists including the environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who had been campaigning against Shell's activities in his homeland, were tried on trumped-up charges and hanged by the then military government of Sani Abacha.
Although Shell was not directly responsible for the Ogoni deaths, it was widely blamed for cooperating with Abacha's brutal and corrupt administration.
(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Chinese chemical company apologizes for fish-killing toxic spill
On 01:48
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BEIJING | Fri Sep 6, 2013 6:49am EDT
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Shenzhen-listed company identified by authorities as being responsible for a toxic spill that killed thousands of river fish apologized on Friday and said it would punish those responsible.
Hubei Shuanghuan Science and Technology Stock Co., a manufacturer of inorganic chemicals, said it began a week-long production halt on Wednesday and blamed the spill on a sewage release "that exceeded standard levels."
"The company apologizes to impacted parties and the vast majority of investors for this incident," it said.
The company said however, that it was not the only one to blame for the pollution affecting a 40-kilometer (25-mile) stretch of the Fu river, which lies near the heavily populated city of Wuhan in China's central Hubei province.
It said its own investigation found other companies in the area had discharged improperly treated sewage and nearby farms failed to control the flow of animal waste into the river.
Hubei Shuanghuan came under fire from the provincial environmental protection agency when workers unearthed the dead fish, saying ammonia levels in the river had risen far beyond acceptable levels, China's state-controlled Xinhua News Agency reported.
Environmental degradation has proven to be one of the hazards of China's rapid economic growth. In January, choking smog enveloped Beijing for more than a week and in March thousands of dead pigs were discovered floating in a river that provides water to Shanghai.
China's new leadership has identified pollution, long a source of public discontent, as one of its top challenges and has vowed to more strictly police industrial companies that have been given free rein to pollute by local governments eager to maintain jobs and revenue.
(Reporting By Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Matt Driskill)