Shell's Ruptured Pipeline Causes
Panic in Niger Delta

By Adetokunbo Abiola

A Nigerian Non-Governmental Organization, Enviromental Rights Action
(ERA) has chided multinational oil companies operating in Nigeria for leaving
obsolete and rusty pipelines unreplaced for more than the stipulated
official time and the laying of pipelines across inhabited settlements.
Environment Rights Action made this condemnation in a field report released
on Wednesday in Benin City, the headquarters of Edo state, following a
study conducted in Maroko, near Effunrun,  six hundred kilometers from the
Nigerian capital, Abuja.

The ERA report was occasioned by a November 2002 incident which occurred
at Maroko when one of Shell Petroleum Development Company's rusty and ill-
maintained 24 inch pipeline burst and spewed over two hundred and fifty barrels
of crude oil directly into the homesteads and surrounding environment of the
affected area.

The report stated that the local residents interviewed immediately after
the pipeline burst said there was pandemonium as the people within the vicinity
of the pipe feared there could be an explosion which could  cause a devastating
fire outbreak in the settlement.

The report said the local residents complained that it took Shell officials
three days after the November 31 pipeburst to visit the site of the
spill, two after Shell was informed of it, and then a total of five days before
Shell workers could commence work on the ruptured pipelines.
Environmental Rights Action accused the External Relations Manager of Shell,
Mr Frank Efeduma, of claiming the land on which the spill occured as belonging
to Shell and a verbal eviction order to residents to vacate the settlement
or face unspecified consequences in event the order was disobeyed.
The report went to say that during an assessment tour of the affected area
Shell workers were seen excavating the pipelines to enable them plug the actual
point where the rupture occurred while other workers were seen pumping crude 
oil into drums.

The ERA report hinted that Shell has gone back on the official policy of most
multionational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta to replace their
pipelines in swampy areas at least every ten to fifteen years.
In actual practise, the ERA report said, obsolete pipelines as old as thirty
years still criss-cross the Niger Delta and they often get ruptured due to
high pressure and lack of maintanance leading to massive environmental
pollution, fire outbreak and destruction of lives and property.
Maroko, the scene of the pipe burst, is a densely populated settlement of
about twenty thousand residents predominantly traders and farmers, a transit
point for travellers going to and coming from major cities such as Port Harcourt,
Benin City, Warri and others.

Copyright © 2002 Adetokunbo Abiola, Nigerian correspondent to Earthhope Action Network