another terrible oil spill hits Nigerian coast and environment
An oil spill near the coast of Nigeria is likely the worst to hit those waters in a decade, a government official said Thursday, as slicks from the Royal Dutch Shell PLC spill approached the country's southern shoreline.
The slick from Shell's Bonga field has affected 115 miles (185 kilometers) of ocean near Nigeria's coast, Peter Idabor, who leads the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, told The Associated Press. Idabor said the slick continued to move toward the shore Thursday night, putting at risk birds, fish and other wildlife in the area.
Shell, the major oil producer in Nigeria, said Wednesday the spill likely occurred as workers tried to offload oil onto a waiting tanker. The company published photographs of the spill, the quintessential rainbow sheen on the ocean’s surface, but said it believes that about 50 percent of the leaked oil has already evaporated.
The source of the leak has been plugged, but the spill still threatens the shoreline and wildlife, said Peter Idabor, who leads the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency. Experts from Britain will go help with the cleanup. Slicks from the Bonga spill likely will reach beaches near Forcados on Thursday, affecting wildlife there, Idabor said.
The Bonga oil field sits about 75 miles off Nigeria’s coast, and can produce about 200,000 barrels of oil and 150 million cubic feet of gas a day, though production has been halted since the discovery of the spill. Shell operates the field in partnership with state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.
Shell estimates the Bonga spill likely was less than 40,000 barrels, or 1.68 million gallons. That's about the same amount of oil that spilled offshore in 1998 at a Mobil field. The 1998 spill saw oil slicks extended for more than 100 miles to Lagos, the country's commercial capital.
However, the size of the spill may be even larger. SkyTruth, a non-profit group based in West Virginia that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems, estimated the oil spill might stretch across roughly 350 square miles (920 square kilometres) of ocean — three times what Nigerian authorities believe. "The spill could be near the upper limit of what Shell has stated," John Amos, SkyTruth's founder and president, told the AP on Thursday. However, he said he needed more information to determine the spill's true scope.
Shell, the major oil producer in Nigeria, said Wednesday the spill likely occurred as workers tried to offload oil onto a waiting tanker. The company published photographs of the spill, the quintessential rainbow sheen on the ocean’s surface, but said it believes that about 50 percent of the leaked oil has already evaporated.
The source of the leak has been plugged, but the spill still threatens the shoreline and wildlife, said Peter Idabor, who leads the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency. Experts from Britain will go help with the cleanup. Slicks from the Bonga spill likely will reach beaches near Forcados on Thursday, affecting wildlife there, Idabor said.
The Bonga oil field sits about 75 miles off Nigeria’s coast, and can produce about 200,000 barrels of oil and 150 million cubic feet of gas a day, though production has been halted since the discovery of the spill. Shell operates the field in partnership with state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.
Shell estimates the Bonga spill likely was less than 40,000 barrels, or 1.68 million gallons. That's about the same amount of oil that spilled offshore in 1998 at a Mobil field. The 1998 spill saw oil slicks extended for more than 100 miles to Lagos, the country's commercial capital.
However, the size of the spill may be even larger. SkyTruth, a non-profit group based in West Virginia that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems, estimated the oil spill might stretch across roughly 350 square miles (920 square kilometres) of ocean — three times what Nigerian authorities believe. "The spill could be near the upper limit of what Shell has stated," John Amos, SkyTruth's founder and president, told the AP on Thursday. However, he said he needed more information to determine the spill's true scope.
Nigerian authorities hope to use oil booms and chemicals to disperse or collect the spilled oil, Idabor said. In a statement, Shell said its Nigerian subsidiary already had sent ships out to the slick to use dispersant on the oil sheen. The company also said it would use infrared equipment to trace places where the sheen is the thickest.
Environmentalists blame Shell for polluting the country’s oil-rich Niger Delta. Some environmentalists say as much as 550 million gallons of oil poured into the delta during Shell’s roughly 50 years of production in Nigeria — a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon Valdez disaster per year. An estimated 11 million gallons was released during the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
Shell in recent years has said most of the spills in the delta are caused by thieves tapping into pipelines to steal crude oil, which ends up sold into the black market or cooked into a crude diesel or kerosene.
Nigeria, an OPEC member nation producing about 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day, is a top supplier to the U.S.
Oil spills are a common event in Nigeria and occur due to a number of causes, including: corrosion of pipelines and tankers (accounting for 50% of all spills), sabotage (28%), and oil production operations (21%), with 1% of the spills being accounted for by inadequate or non-functional production equipment. The largest contributor to the oil spill total, corrosion of pipes and tanks, is the rupturing or leaking of production infrastructures that are described as, "very old and lack regular inspection and maintenance"
Since the discovery of oil in Nigeria in 1956, the country has been suffering the negative environmental consequences of oil exploration and exploitation. Between 1976 and 1996 a total of 4647 incidents resulted in the spill of approximately 2,369,470 barrels of oil into the environment. In addition, between 1997 and 2001, Nigeria also recorded a total number of 2,097 oil spill incidents. In 1998, 40,000 barrels of oil from Mobil platform off the Akwa Ibom coast were spilt into the environment causing severe damage to the coastal environment.
Sources:
wkyc.com
Wall St.Cheat Sheet
sfgate
Global News
The Irish Times
ablorg.tumbler
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