BBC Saturday, 5 May, 2001, 03:02 GMT 04:02 UK

Action to prevent Nigeria oil fire

Nigeria has been plagued by disastrous oil fires

Experts in southern Nigeria are preparing to spray foam on an oil spill in the Ogoni region to cut the risk of fire before they try to cap a broken well-head.

Oil and acrid gas fumes have been leaking from the well-head for five days.

A local official, Batom Mittee, said just a spark could make the whole area "erupt like a volcano".

He said people had been advised to leave the area, which lies in the Niger Delta. But thousands were still there as they had nowhere to go.

Earlier, a spokesman for the Royal Dutch Shell oil company said local people had turned back a convoy of engineers and government officials.

But Reuters news agency reported that three US experts had now arrived to start trying to stop the oil flow.

Shell was forced to abandon production in Ogoniland in 1993 as a result of the campaign by the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, who accused it of responsibility for widespread pollution.

The company says that only two wells were properly sealed.

Ogoni people blame Shell for widespread pollution and for colluding in political repression - charges the company denies.

'Potential time bombs'

According to Shell's Port Harcourt spokesman, Donald Boham, 14 abandoned wells in the region are "potential time bombs".

Shell officials told the BBC that initial evidence suggested the latest spill may have been the result of sabotage. But Ogoni activists said they were shocked by such suggestions.

Fuel shortages - caused by a combination of smuggling and creaking refineries - have forced the Nigerian Government to pay world prices to import refined products.

Hundreds have died in catastrophic oil fires triggered by people who tapped pipelines in their hunger for fuel.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2001

Answers

ET Oil experts rush to stem huge spill in Nigeria
By Christina Lamb

AMERICAN oilmen have been rushed to a huge spill in south-east Nigeria that is polluting an area inhabited by up to 100,000 people and threatening to engulf the district in a devastating fireball.

"The area is a powder keg which could blow at any moment. The only source of drinking water is already polluted and thousands are at risk," said Ledum Mittee, the leader of the Ogoni community on whose land the spill is spreading.

Ogoni community leaders said that although many people were complaining that their nostrils were burning and their eyes turning red, most did not know that they should leave the area.

"They are advised to go," said Batom Mittee, the secretary for the Ogoni Development Committee. "But most of them don't understand and unfortunately there are no government arrangements. Any spark and the whole place will erupt like a volcano."

The spill was caused by a damaged well abandoned by Royal/Dutch Shell in 1993 after it was forced out in a violent campaign by the Ogonis, who said that oil exploitation was damaging the environment and leaving them impoverished.

The site of the wellhead was yesterday wrapped in white fog. Even a mile away the continuous hiss of rushing gas was so loud that people within arm's length had to shout to each other.

The spill has reignited hostilities between Shell and the Ogoni, whose campaign against the Anglo-Dutch company became an international cause celebre in 1995 when their leader, the writer Ken Saro Wiwa, was hanged with eight activists by Nigeria's then ruling military junta.

Three specialists from the Houston-based company Boots & Coots International Well Control, sent in by Shell, arrived at the scene on Friday to begin efforts to stop the oil flow. "We are doing everything possible to clean-up this spill and make sure no lives are at risk," the company said.

The specialists said yesterday that all but one of the bolts meant to hold the wellhead in place were missing. Richard Hatteberg, a member of the team, added: "We're going to try to put it back in place. If we do the oil will shoot straight up into the air. If that doesn't work we're in trouble and we could be here for two weeks."

Video footage of the spill, which occurred when a well burst last Sunday, shows thatched roofs in surrounding villages turning black as thick white fog induces coughing fits and streaming eyes among villagers. A deepening pool of black crude oil is gushing with such force that the surface appears to be boiling.

Youths were dispatched to patrol the area to make sure no one lit a match. Villagers who depend on fishing and farming say their livelihood has been destroyed.

Shell rejected accusations that it had been negligent or had taken too long to send in a team. It said it had been paying royalties to the Nigerian government and it was the government's responsibility to use these funds to improve the welfare of the people.

Nigeria is the world's sixth largest oil producer, yielding two billion barrels per day. The Ogonis make up 500,000 of the 6,000,000 people of the Delta region where 90 per cent of the oil is produced.

The spill is seen as a test case for Shell, which has been lobbying to return to Ogoniland. The company said that because it had been forced to abandon the area so hastily in 1993, only two of the 16 wells in the area had been properly secured.

"Fourteen are still potential time-bombs," said Donald Boham, a company spokesman in nearby Port Harcourt. "We withdrew from Ogoni without being allowed to carry out proper evacuation procedures."

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2001