Amnesty International on Friday accused international oil majors Shell and Eni of negligence when addressing spills in Nigeria. Describing their actions as “serious negligence”, Amnesty said the companies were “taking weeks to respond to reports of spills and publishing misleading information about the cause and severity of spills, which may result in communities not receiving compensation”. A Shell spokesman said Amnesty’s allegations “are false, without merit and fail to recognise the complex environment in which the company operates”. An ENI spokeswoman said the rights group’s statements “are not correct and, in some cases, not acceptable,” adding it had provided a detailed response to Amnesty’s allegations.
Shell and Eni have for decades been two of the most active oil majors operating in the Niger Delta region. Nigeria’s crude-producing heartland is an ecological disaster zone, scarred by decades of spills that have tainted the water and killed swathes of trees and other plants. Yet clean-ups, and the associated compensation, are highly contentious, with some local communities even blocking teams’ access to spill sites, allowing the damage to worsen, in the hope of extracting a bigger pay-out.