Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, ERA/FoE, yesterday, accused Nigerian Agip Oil Company of alleged negligence in its operations with an alarming rate of leakages from its pipeline on the Taylor Creek area of Ikarama community in Yenagoa Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.
Agip, Monday, shut down its activities in the swamp area oil fields in the state, from which it produced about 40,000 barrels of crude oil daily, citing a growing wave of illegal oil bunkering.
The oil firm, in a statement, claimed that it was losing about 7,000 barrels of its crude production daily to oil thieves in Bayelsa, a development it described as unsustainable.
But Field Monitors of ERA/FoE, led by the Bayelsa State Coordinator, Alagoa Morris, in the report, yesterday, at the end of the tour of spill sites in Ikarama community, said, though high incidence of oil spill in Bayelsa State involved two major oil companies, Shell Petroleum Development Company and Agip, the recent cases of oil spillages in the communities, including Ikarama, occurred from Agip’s Taylor Creek Wellhead A on the company’s pipeline.
The report said: “The recent spillages are disturbing as the incidents lead to further degradation of the environment and may even point to the existence of conflict.
On the recent oil spill recorded in Ikarama community, the group said that its investigation into the reported spillage showed that it occurred at two points close to Agip’s Taylor Creek Well A.
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