A landmark United Nations study into the long-term environmental impact of oil production in Nigeria says that oil spills have led to acute health risks for area residents and widespread environmental damage that may take as many as 30 years and $1 billion to clean up.
August 4th, 2011:
U.N. Study Says $1 Billion Needed for Oil Cleanup in Nigeria
A Tainted Water Well, and Concern There May Be More
For decades, oil and gas industry executives as well as regulators have maintained that a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that is used for most natural gas wells has never contaminated underground drinking water.
Shell Gambles U.S. Rules on Arctic Drilling
Shell, Europes largest oil company, says it must decide by October whether to assume that U.S. regulators will issue all 35 permits it would need to explore under the Beaufort and Chukchi seas next year during the four mildest months, from July to October.
Guardian Front Page Story 4 August 2011
Shell accepts liability for two oil spills in Nigeria
Oil giant faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars following class action suit brought on behalf of communities in Bodo, Ogoniland
Oil in Nigeria: a history of spills, fines and fights for rights
On Wednesday Shell admitted liability for two massive oil spills in Nigeria. Ever since oil was discovered in the country in 1956, it has been a source of strife
Adam Vaughan: Thursday 4 August 2011 09.22 BST
Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1993, two years before he was executed by the Nigerian government. Photograph: Greenpeace/AFPOil was first found in Nigeria in 1956, then a British protectorate, by a joint operation between Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum. The two begun production in 1958, and were soon joined by a host of other foreign oil companies in the 1960s after the country gained independence and, shortly after, fell into civil war.
The rapidly expanding oil industry was dogged in controversy from early on, with criticism that its financial proceeds were being exported or lost in corruption rather than used to help the millions living on $1 a day in the Niger delta or reduce its impact on the local environment.
Shell admits liability for huge oil spills in Niger delta
…amount leaked into the local environment could be as much as 10 million gallons.
…”one of the most devastating oil spills the world has ever seen…”
By Richard Hall: Thursday, 4 August 2011
Oil company Shell could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars after accepting responsibility for two devastating oil spills in Nigeria’s Ogoniland region.
The agreement comes after the community in the Delta region of Nigeria brought a class-action lawsuit against Shell in the UK, alleging that spills in 2008 and 2009 had destroyed the environment and ruined their livelihoods.
Until now, Shell has claimed that less than 40,000 gallons were spilt in the accidents. But experts who have studied the spills in Bodo, Ogoniland, said the amount leaked into the local environment could be as much as 10 million gallons.