The small fishing community of Bodo in Nigeria recently won a 83 million dollar
settlement from the Shell Oil Company due to two oil spills in the region back in 2008.
As The Guardian reported in 2010,1 Shell neglected the problem at first and when they finally
did acknowledge it, it was grossly underestimated and the company only offered to pay $6,000
in compensation. While the million-dollar payout is a victory for the Nigerian people,
it does bring up the question: with such a large oil spill almost swept under the rug,
how many more go unreported?
When BP’s Deepwater Horizon leaked in 2010, the incident hit world headlines. But the
myriad of oil spills in Nigeria since the 1990s hasn’t had nearly as much coverage
despite reports that more oil is spilled in the Nigeria Delta every year than has been
lost in the Deepwater Horizon incident.And the oil spills in Nigeria represent just a
fraction of the problem.
In 2011, a tanker produced an oil slick the size of London in China’s Bohai Sea. It
took a month before news of the spill was made public. In 2014, two hikers in Utah stumbled
across an oil spill within the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument that spanned an
area of four-miles.Despite the size of the spill, the oil company, who owned the pipeline,
had not been aware that there was a leak.
And the list goes on and on. Over the years, innumerable unreported spills have been discovered
within North Dakota, across the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.
According to an analysis by the environmental agency Energy Wire, ‘There were at least
7,662 spills, blowouts, leaks and other mishaps in 2013 in the US. Or about 20 oil spills
a day. The report goes on to say that ‘their combined volume totaled more than 26 million
gallons of oil, hydraulic fracturing fluid, "fracking" wastewater and other substances.’
Plus, this figure isn’t completely representative, as a few large oil producing states, like
Louisiana, chose not to disclose their spills for the Energy Wire report.
So how are oil and gas companies able to get away with it?
Well, according to whistleblowers working within the oil industry, accidents are kept
quiet because workers fear for their jobs. The Guardian reports they maintain an informal
code of silence to keep the pumps running and the company’s profits up.
Industry experts have also questioned whether the relationship between government regulators
and the oil industry have become too close. In Nigeria for example, it is believed that
the Nigerian government, which owns 55 percent of Shell Nigeria, played a part in keeping
the Bodo spill quiet.
However, the Bodo ruling has offered significant hope to affected communities who wish to seek
remuneration from the oil and gas giants. Representatives for Bodo believe that if more
groups successfully win compensation, the industry as a whole might be forced to take
more responsibility for oil spills and their clean up.