23rd December, 2011
An oil spill near the coast of Nigeria is likely the worst to hit those waters in a decade, a government official said, as slicks from the Royal Dutch Shell PLC spill approached the countryâ€
The slick from Shellâ€
Shell, the major oil producer in Nigeria, said late Thursday the spill came from a “flexible export line†connecting the offshore field to a waiting tanker. The company published photographs of the spill, showing a telltale rainbow sheen in the ocean, but said it believes that about 50 percent of the leaked oil has already evaporated.
The source of the leak has been plugged and experts from Britain were coming to help with the cleanup, Idabor said. Nigerian Navy ships also had been sent into the area to help control the spill, he said.
Shell estimates the Bonga spill likely was less than 40,000 barrels, or 1.68 million gallons. Thatâ€
“Since the Mobil spill, this is just about the most major one,†Idabor said.
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.
However, the size of the spill may be even larger. SkyTruth, a nonprofit 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 kilometers) of ocean, three times what Nigerian authorities believe.
“The spill could be near the upper limit of what Shell has stated,†John Amos, SkyTruthâ€
Bonga sits about 75 miles (120 kilometers) off Nigeriaâ€
Shell in recent years has said most of the spills in the delta are caused by militant attacks or thieves tapping into pipelines to steal crude oil, which ends up being sold into the black market or cooked into a crude diesel or kerosene. Company statistics kept by Shell show spills have dropped as militant attacks in the region subsided, though this single spill at Bonga roughly doubles the amount of oil spilled by Shell this year.
Apparently predicting interest in the spill would grow, Shell already had taken out Internet advertising Thursday on search engines, directing those searching for the spill to their website. Jonathan French, a Shell spokesman in London, said the advertising came in the “interests of full transparency†so people can read the companyâ€
Nigeria, an OPEC member nation producing about 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day, is a top supplier to the U.S.