On October 20, 2002, a major oil spill occurred at Shell’s Batan delivery line. This pipeline connects Shell’s Batan facility to the Forcados export terminal. The pipeline is operated by its subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (hereafter SPDC). The communities affected by the spill were numerous, including Batan, Diebiri, Ajuju, Ewerigbene and Kumusi.Diebiri-Batn is a riverine Ijaw community in Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State. The local people are predominantly fisherfolks, though some of them also engage in subsistence farming.
Women’s daily life was particularly affected after the spill. The gendered division of labor assigns them the tasks of gathering the oysters and other mollusks from the mangroves, but this fish population was heavily disseminated by the spill [1].
A team, including different stakeholders (police and army officers, representatives of SPDC, and community’s members), led the joint investigation to determine the causes of the spill. Their Joint Investigation Report (hereafter JVR) concluded it was caused by the pipeline’s under water loose bolts and nuts. And yet, already a day after the publication of the JVR, Shell questioned the conclusions of the team and blamed the locals for causing the spill by sabotaging the infrastructures. The company alleged its representatives were forced into signing the report.
A video contradicts the oil multinational. That video shows SPDC representatives trying to dissuade the other team members from writing the cause of the spill in the report [2]. The communities defended themselves, reminding that the infrastructures were old and rusty. Amnesty International recalls that Shell has in several occasions used this strategy, questioning and ignoring the joint investigations’ conclusions, breaking free from its responsibilities, putting people and their environment under high risks because of deficient and inadequately old infrastructures. The NGO Amnesty International linked the attitude of the oil company after the Batan’s spill with a previous case, that of Bodo creek’s spill in August 2008, also refused to accept the conclusions of the JVR [2]. In this latter example, a court case in January 2015declared Shell responsible for the spill and thee multinational had to pay 83 million dollars to Bodo villagers [3]. However, in the case of Batan’s spill from October 2002, the community had no other choice than accepting Shell’s proposition of giving them 100.000 dollars to face the impacts on their daily lives. In return, they had to agree on absolving the multinational from having to acknowledge any responsibility for the spill.
SOURCES
[1] https://www.es.amnesty.org/uploads/media/REPORT_Petroleum__Pollution_and_Poverty_in_the_Niger_Delta.pdf
[2]
https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/OECD-Submission-FoE-and-AI-FINAL-TEXT.pdf
[3]
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-shell-timeline/timeline-shells-operations-in-nigeria-idUSKCN1M306D
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