Clipping of news on Brazilian Culture, Law and Citizenship
18/07/2012
This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.
Accident occurred in Nigeria in December 2011, 40,000 barrels leaked.
Sanction the company was released by the government this week.
Nigeria has fined a subsidiary of Shell Oil Company in South Africa at U.S.$ 5 billion because of the oil spill occurred in the Niger Delta in December 2011.
The director general of the Nigerian Agency Response and Oil Leak Detection (Nosdra, its acronym in English), Peter Idabor announced on Monday (16) to fine the Company Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production (SNEPCo) before a parliamentary committee, said on Tuesday (17), the newspaper "Vanguard".
Idabor said he considers the fine as an "administrative sanction", taking into account the amount of oil leaked by SNEPCo in the region and the impact of this raw material in the water and the marine ecosystem.
However, the director general of Nosdra specified that the penalty is not compensation, since the latter could only be requested after an environmental impact analysis.
"We do not believe there is legal basis for such penalty. Nor do we think that SNEPCo has committed a violation of Nigerian law that would justify such a penalty," said company spokesman Tony Okonedo.
According Okonedo, the "SNEPCo responded to the incident with professionalism and served all the time with the consent of the authorities to prevent environmental impact."
The accident occurred on December 20, 2011, when the equivalent of 40,000 barrels of oil from contaminated Bonga platform 950 km ² of sea surface. The accident affected the flora and fauna, as well as the local population, whose livelihood depends largely on fishing.
Historical
Nigeria has a long history of environmental problems because of oil exploration. In August, a report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said the region inhabited by the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta, has been polluted by oil for 50 years and need the most cleaning oil ever undertaken in history , at a cost of US$ 1 billion, and that can take up to 30 years to run.
Shell Oil Company was the largest operator in Ogoniland until forced out by local communities in 1993. Its pipelines and other infrastructure, however, remain and continue to cause suffering strokes and sabotage attacks. At the time of release of the report, Shell claimed responsibility for two spills in the region occurred in 2008 and 2009.
UNEP said that drinking water in some areas was so badly contaminated that need immediate emergency action. The survey was done over a period of 14 months, with visits to 122 km of pipelines and review of more than 5000 medical records, involving more than 23,000 people in local meetings.
The report, funded by Shell itself, was the most comprehensive scientific study ever made of any area of the Niger Delta, the heart of the oil industry in Africa.
The delta is the third largest area of wetlands in the world, and has great biodiversity in their wetlands and waterways. But the oil industry to become one of the areas worst oil pollution in the world. There are more than 6800 leaks registered up to 13 million barrels of oil spills, in accordance with environmental.
Shell has said that oil spills in the Niger Delta are mostly caused by oil theft and sabotage attacks, but promises to clean up the area, whatever the cause.
Source: Environment Brazil
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This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.