Nigerian Government to Request for Compensation on Bonga Spill from Shell
Nigeria is about to ask for Compensation from Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA), for the major hydocarbon (oil) spill at Bonga, River state that ocurred December 21st, 2011. This was reported by Vincent Nwanma of Bloomberg News Network according to the statement e-mailed from African Union (AU) headquarter at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
President Jonathan of Nigeria was quoted in a meeting with Ban Ki-Moon at AU headquarter that the request will be "soon" and that will come “with a view to reaching an amicable solution to the problem.” Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary- general was in Ethiopian capital at Addis Ababa to attend 18th African Union (AU) Ordinary Session of the African heads of state and governments.
"A spill last month from the 200,000 barrel-a-day Bonga field off Nigeria, which produces nearly 10 percent of Nigeria’s crude, led Shell to stop production from the facility, the company said on Dec. 21. The export line at Bonga leaked almost 40,000 barrels of crude during a tanker loading, according to Shell estimates, making it Nigeria’s worst offshore spill in more than a decade," reported Bloomberg.
"It's comparable to what happened in 1998 with the Exxon Mobil spill, in terms of the quantity that has been spilled, it's the biggest since then," Peter Idabor, director of Nigeria's National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), told Reuters last year when the spill occured by telephone from the capital Abuja.
