By George Onah
Port Harcourt—The Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, says it has cleaned up and remedied 2,000 oil spill sites within the Niger Delta region, between 1999 and June 2010.

The company added that  it will soon complete clean up and remediation on the backlog of 250 crude spill sites in the region.
Head, Remediation, SPDC  East, Mr. Augustine Igbuku, who addressed newsmen in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, said that the 2,000 spill sites translate to 173.9 spill sites a year across SPDC operated fields in the Niger Delta region.

Igbuku said most of the spills were acts of sabotage on the pipes by some persons and that the saboteurs engage in a practice called “hot tapping”, while some construct illegal refineries around the pipelines, even as the company struggles to restore impacted environments to their natural state.

He said, “Most times, it takes  up to one year to successfully clean up and remediate a major spill, many of which had been traced to deliberate acts of undisclosed persons.

“The company is sometimes prevented by youths of host communities from gaining access to spill sites,” he added
Recalling the many travails of the company,  Igbuku said more than 70 percent of all oil spills from its facilities between 2005 and 2009 were traceable to the activities of oil bandits,  who cut pipelines with hard saw or other objects and open well-heads to steal oil or gas.

Although he acknowledged that there were occasional operational errors, due to human error, equipment failure and corroded pipes, he said these were very minimal, as  it does take up to three or four months to clean up spills of such operational errors, against the over 12 months it takes to clean-up sabotaged spills.