Barely one week after Shell Petroleum Development Company reportedly dispersed a 40,000 barrel oil spill from Bonga, it has reported another incident.This time, from its Nembe Creek Trunkline (NCTL).
Already more than 200 barrels of spilled oil have been recovered and some 70,000 barrels of oil per day are deferred because of crude theft.The leaked 90 kilometres line has also led to the shutting down in some producing flow stations, while also isolating the facility. The NCTL evacuates majority of Shell and third party crude oil production in Eastern Swamp operations to Bonny Terminal.
A joint investigation conducted by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Bayelsa State Ministry of Environment, Shell and the community, showed oil thieves had installed valves at two points near the Tora manifold in Nembe in Bayelsa State.
Vice President HSE & Corporate Affairs, Shell Sub-Saharan Africa, Tony Attah said “What is really worrying about this leak is that it happened on a facility which was commissioned in October 2009 to replace an old line which was repeatedly targeted by crude oil thieves. Sadly, the crude thieves continue to hinder efforts to maintain the integrity of key national oil and gas assets.”
SPDC is working to complete repair of the line before the end of January 2012.
About 40,000 barrels (1.7 million gallons) of crude oil was spilled from a Shell production platform in the Bonga oil field. The oil leaked into the Atlantic Ocean on December 20, 2011 during what the company called a “routine operation” to transfer oil to a tanker from Shell’s Bonga floating production storage and off-take vessel.
The oily sheen covered an estimated 350-square-mile area, off the oil-rich Niger Delta. Shell has shut down the entire Bonga oil field, a site 75 miles off the coast that produces 200,000 barrels of oil and gas a day.
However an investigation is underway to determine how 40,000 barrels of oil spilled while being loaded onto the tanker. Shell says a break in a transfer line is to blame. Since the leak, teams from the Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company, SNEPCo, have worked around the clock with international oil spill experts, using a combination of dispersants and booms to control the leaked oil, the company said in a statement.
