By Samuel Oyadongha

Yenagoa— Environ-mental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria, ERA/FoEN, has slammed Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, for its poor response to the oil leak within its oil fields in Bayelsa State.

ERA/FoEN, an environmental rights group in its field report on the incident regretted that Shell was yet to take steps to stop the leak from its Seibou Deep facility and save the environment from further despoliation.

The leak, it was learned, was noticed sometime in January and has been discharging crude into Ogboinbiri River in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of the state till date.

According to the field report by Mr Alagoa Morris, Head of Field operations, ERA/FoEN in Yenagoa, the spill site has remained unattended to since January 2015.

The group observed that ‘booms,’ plastic materials used to contain flow of oil on water surface by officials of SPDC had failed to trap the oil as it leaked into the flowing water.

“The movement of canoes in and out of the canal that caused the booms placed by Shell to contain the spill has failed. The booms were tied across the canal. It was confirmed at Ogboinbiri that the spill had occurred for almost two months now, but only contained on the canal with booms,” ERA said.