Oil giant Shell has denied running away from its problems in Nigeria. Shell employs 600 contractor companies, who Janzen says “in principle” survey the lines around the clock;Â Campaigners suggest some contractors may be implicated in theft, arguably putting Shell indirectly in the frame.
30 September 2013
The tanker sailed into the Niger Delta, right under the eyes of Nigeria’s armed forces. Crewed by men working for an international criminal gang, it headed inland, hooked up to “bunkering” points illegally installed on Shell’s Trans-Niger pipeline, and began to steal oil.
“Something went dramatically wrong,” says Jurgen Janzen, Shell’s pipeline asset manager. A year ago today, in the early hours of the morning, Shell discovered both the tanker and the pipeline ablaze, a raging inferno billowing black smoke hundreds of feet above the Delta.