SHEL Shell Plc

By Sarah Kent 

Royal Dutch Shell PLC oil spills that haven't been cleaned up for over eight years have contributed to "astonishingly high" levels of pollution in a Nigerian community, according to a consultant who helped produce a confidential damage assessment for Shell and its partners in the cleanup.

Shell admitted liability for two large oil spills from a broken pipeline in 2008 in Bodo, a Niger Delta fishing community that, according to U.K. court claims, was inundated with over 500,000 barrels of oil -- roughly twice the amount when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989. Shell disputed the volume of the spills but reached an out-of-court settlement with the community for GBP55 million in 2015 -- or around $80 million at the time -- after facing a lawsuit in London.

An environmental damage study was also conducted that year as part of efforts to clean up the area under the Bodo Mediation Initiative, which included Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, civil society groups, and members of the local community and government.

The study found that "astonishingly high" levels of pollution remained in Bodo's mangroves and creeks years after the spill, endangering the community, wrote Kay Holtzmann, the former director of the cleanup project, in a Jan. 26 letter to the Bodo Mediation Initiative, which was seen by The Wall Street Journal.

"The soil in the mangroves is literally soaked with hydrocarbons," wrote Mr. Holtzmann, who oversaw the study but no longer works for the initiative. "Whoever is walking in the creeks cannot avoid contact with toxic substances."

Mr. Holtzmann wrote that the study dictated a need for health screenings and should be widely publicized. He wrote that Shell has denied him permission to publish the study's results in a scientific journal and exposed Bodo, an expanse of Niger Delta swamp and mangroves, to dangerous levels of toxins.

"SPDC has no right to conceal data important for the public although they might be unpleasant," the letter said, referring to Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria, the Anglo-Dutch company's Nigerian subsidiary.

Shell said the analysis didn't reveal any information that hadn't been previously established by a United Nations Environment Program report on pollution levels in Ogoniland, the part of the Niger Delta where Bodo is located.

The 2011 report revealed high levels of contamination that could take as long as 30 years to fully clean up. In an interview, UNEP's executive director Erik Solheim described the current situation in Ogoniland as "one of the biggest environmental scandals and catastrophes anywhere in the world."

According to people familiar with the matter, complex disputes between the company and the local community have stalled cleanup efforts in Bodo and attempts to communicate findings from the assessment, though they were shared with local representatives and government agencies. The environmental damage caused by the 2008 spills has also been compounded by illegal refining in the area, the people said.

The oil-rich Niger Delta has been a center for Shell's oil production for decades, but aging infrastructure and widespread sabotage and theft have resulted in regular oil spills that ravaged the local environment. Shell maintains that the bulk of the oil spills in the Niger Delta are caused by sabotage, theft and illegal refining.

Efforts to improve the situation in Bodo have been plagued by mistrust, local power struggles, and disputes over how money for the work would be distributed, according to Inemo Samiama, chairman of the Bodo Mediation Initiative. In late 2015, the camp where cleanup contractors were staying was attacked, effectively halting work until now, the people said.

In response to the concerns raised in Mr. Holtzmann's letter, Mr. Samiama said: "The number one solution to dealing with the health consequences is to start the cleanup."

Leigh Day, the law firm that represented the Bodo community, wrote to Shell in January to request clarification after receiving a copy of Mr. Holtzmann's letter. The law firm said it had yet to receive a response.

"We're extremely concerned," said Daniel Leader, a partner at Leigh Day who worked on the Bodo case. "We have been asking for health testing and to check the water supply for many years and they have simply not done it."

Write to Sarah Kent at sarah.kent@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 23, 2017 15:12 ET (19:12 GMT)

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