Nigerian employees of the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell ordered the deliberate vandalisation of oil pipelines for personal gain, a documentary in the Netherlands has reported.


Nigerian employees of the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell ordered the deliberate vandalisation of oil pipelines for personal gain, a documentary in the Netherlands has reported.

Dutch television documentary programme Zembla, together with Dutch environmentalist organisation Milieudefensie, reported in a programme to be aired on Thursday that “multiple witnesses declared that SPDC, a subsidiary of Shell, caused the oil leaks”.


Long-term effects of oil spills in Bodo, Nigeria
“According to sources, Shell employees profit from these intentional oil leaks by pocketing money from clean up budgets,” Zembla said in a press release summarising an 18-month investigation of various leaks between 2010 and the present day.

Zembla added the SPDC, along with the Dutch embassy in Nigeria, were aware of the accusations but had failed to address them.

Oil spills in Nigeria have a decades-long history, making companies like Shell, whose headquarters is based in the Netherlands, a frequent target of criticism and protest from human rights and environmental groups.

Millions of litres of oil have leaked into the Niger Delta since Shell began oil extraction there in 1958. Zembla said the “greatest oil disaster in the world is unfolding in the Niger Delta”.

Shell says that 95 percent of leaks are as a result of sabotage. It denies responsibility for the leaks, which it blames on local criminals and organised gangs.

Accusations ‘credible’
However, residents in the Ikarama in the Nigerian state of Bayelsa told Zembla that Shell employees encourage local youths in the villages to sabotage pipelines in the area and then split funds allocated for the cleanup.

“If a clean up is necessary, these same youths are then hired to perform it,” Washington Odeibodo told Zembla.

A former Shell security guard, who claimed to have been responsible for sabotaging pipelines in the past, said Shell supervisors and employees “split the money from the clean up”.

binghammer:
Wtf! If this is true, then it's a damning report. Unfortunately, the Nigerian government is just so riddled with incompetence that they'll never get to the bottom of this, nor act on it. This is just sad on so many levels.

thebosstrevor1:
NIGERIANS ARE THE PROBLEM OF NIGERIA.

Biodun556:
Nigerian journalists don't know more than fueling political religious and ethnic crises through sensational headlines to make sales

This is a report that will assist Nigerians and the government

Biodun556:


We blame militants when professionals are the real culprit

Biodun556:
Nigerian journalists don't know more than fueling political religious and ethnic crises through sensational headlines to make sales

This is a report that will assist Nigerians and the government

Litmus:


Eh, yes, and we sometimes blame these foreign companies like Shell, expecting them to compensate communities blighted by their oil drilling activities to the sum of millions when it should be billions, not knowing that, all this times , they owe the communities nothing , since Nigerians are to blame.

This reminds me of how Africans blamed Apartheid South Africa for the deaths of Soweto school children, when all this time, it wasn’t apartheid south Africa police’s fault; no, the white police officers simply would fire their guns in warning but the black children would go throw themselves in the way of the bullets.

Gush, Africans always blaming others for their problems.

Elvictor:
[s]Wicked Yoruba oil workers, we will soon chase you guys away from our land.[/s]