From: Arodiegwu Eziukwu, Yenogoa

A lingering face off between Shell and its host communities at Adibawa oil fields has hampered oil spill response for a leak that occurred on July 12, further endangering the environment.

Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) said that the oil leakage from its oil fields located in Edagberi community in Rivers was caused by thieves who targeted the Well Head.

According to a statement from Mr Joseph Obari, an SPDC Spokesperson, members of the host community were frustrating the efforts of the oil firm to recover spilled crude and remediate the polluted environment.

“Following a reported spill at Adibawa- well-8 in the Eastern Niger Delta reported July 12, the statutory Joint Investigation Visit remains delayed.

“The Caretaker Committee Chairman of Ahoada West Local Government, Ikechukwu Obuzor is leading mediation after the leadership of the Edagberi Betterland community prevented the representatives of industry regulatory agencies, the Rivers State Ministry of Environment and SPDC from accessing the spill site at Adibawa well-8 for crude oil recovery and remediation operations.

“After a seeming agreement last week by the leadership of Edagberi Betterland community for oil recovery to commence, a group of youths demanding payment of money and employment refused SPDC Oil Spill Response team access to the site.

“SPDC regrets the continued delay to recovery of the spilled oil.

“On July 12, SPDC received reports of a spill at Adibawa- well-8 in the Eastern Niger Delta. The spill appeared to have been caused by an attempted theft of the wellhead.

“Upon receiving reports of the incident SPDC took containment measures including the construction of dykes, pits and the deployment of booms to prevent further impact on the environment.

“The leak was stopped on July 15, but attempts to conduct the statutory Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) on July 16 and 17 to determine the cause and extent of the leak were unsuccessful.

“Without the JIV, SPDC cannot carry out badly-needed clean up and remediation of the site.” Obari said.

However Chief Sunny Jacob Ubele, Paramount ruler of Edagberi community said on Friday that the allegations that the community denied SPDC access were false and baseless.

He said that the community cooperated with officials of the oil firm but expressed reservations when Shell officials attempted to manipulate the Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) procedure.

“It is very untrue that we denied them access, if we did how did they manage to stop the spill?, they had fixed a JIV on our meeting day and we told them to fix it for the next day.

“When we got there with them we found out they went to the site unilaterally and tampered with the evidences that would assist in arriving at conclusions, so we told them that we were excluded from that exercise.

“We pointed out to them that what they did constituted a JIV without community and we declined to sign the JIV reports because we were not part of it and the JIV was inconclusive.

“There is not truth in the allegations, today the council of chief met and restated that they should commence recovery of crude from the site, Ubele said.

The Paramount Ruler explained that the youths had merely insisted that the 10 persons from the community hired to provide labour were grossly inadequate.

“As we speak, all contentions have been resolved as the oil firm had increased the labour slots for the oil recovery efforts from 10 to 25 slots.

“They commenced recovery of spilled crude from the impacted areas on Thursday, ” The Monarch said.

However John David, an Oil industry observer condemned the neglect of the environment by the two contending parties for material gains.

“What we saw in the Adibawa site is condemnable and I do not spare any party of blames, How come Shell has lost goodwill with its communities that they will need a Council Chairman to broker peace? And Shell has a Community Relations Department under a Manager.

“On the side of the community they thought they were holding the oil firm to ransom, but it is their own environment that suffered while they were agitating for labour jobs which is temporary and transient,” David submitted.

A visit to Adibawa Oil Well 8, location showed that members of the community were fetching the spilled crude from the well head.