Most Oil Spills in Niger Delta Not Caused By Shell, UN Said to Conclude

A three-year investigation by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) will conclude that 90 percent of the massive amount of oil spilled in the Niger Delta in recent decades has come not from Shell’s operations but from local people sabotaging company pipelines and stealing oil, according to the Guardian. The newspaper said that the $10 million investigation will largely exonerate shell for hundreds of oil spills that have dumped 9 billion barrels of oil into the Delta, nearly twice as much as the 5 million barrels spilled in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmental activists harshly criticized UNEP’s reported findings, saying that the study — paid for by Shell — relied on bogus figures from the oil company and incomplete government records. Spilled oil has done extensive environmental damage in the Delta, prompting years of protests by activists such as Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was hanged by the Nigerian government in 1995 after leading peaceful protests against Shell.