UPDATE - Oil experts briefly blocked after capping Nigeria spill
Date: 08-May-01
Country: NIGERIA
Author: D'Arcy Doran
The villagers had blocked the access road leading from the spill site in the Ogoniland town of Yorla to Nigeria's oil centre Port Harcourt. Shell called in local officials to talk to the locals.
"The government officials managed to negotiate their passage back to Port Harcourt," Shell local spokesman Donald Boham told Reuters by telephone.
Earlier Boham said there were indications the spill was caused by sabotage, a charge denied by Ogoni leaders.
Shell abandoned the well in 1993 after being forced out in a violent campaign by Ogonis who said oil exploitation was ruining the environment and doing nothing to raise them out of poverty.
The well capping ended a tense week when locals feared the smallest spark could turn the whole area into an inferno. The thick cloud of gas released into the air by the spill had also caused breathing problems among the villagers.
Boham said villagers stopped the convoy carrying the three experts from the Houston-based company Boots & Coots International Well Control and a dozen Shell logistics, medical and well services staff just before 4 p.m. on Sunday.
The local officials negotiated for the release of the team in three stages - the first group was released within 90 minutes and the last was allowed to go as darkness fell almost three hours later.
Boham said he had not heard what the local Ogonis had demanded or if concessions had been offered.
Oil workers are regularly taken hostage by youths trying to extort high ransoms in Nigeria's oil-rich south. Last summer 165 Shell workers were held captive on a rig for six days. Security analysts say most small-scale hostage cases are not publicised.
"It could have been pretty traumatic," Boham said. "Especially for the Americans who are not used to this environment."
EVIDENCE OF SABOTAGE CITED
Boham said the well-control experts, who waded knee-deep through the spill, had found fresh evidence that it was caused by sabotage. Two parts of the well were sawn through and 11 of the 12 bolts that held the wellhead in place had been removed.
"This current evidence of tampering with the wellhead strongly suggests it was a deliberate act," Boham said.
Scores of people have been killed in recent oil pipeline fires in Nigeria, some of which have been blamed on people puncturing pipes to steal fuel.
But the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) insisted the spill was not caused by vandalism.
"If they were removing bolts, then why did they leave just one?" asked MOSOP member Friday Gawa. "If it was really vandalism then they would have finished the job."
"This happened because of the negligence of Shell in properly maintaining their well," Gawa said.
A Shell spokesman in Lagos said the Ogonis had denied Shell requests for access to its abandoned wells in the region.
"I don't think they can accuse of us being negligent when they have not allowed us to secure the facilities," the spokesman said. "We do not want to start production again. We just want to ensure these wells are safe."
Shell will begin cleaning up the oil yesterday.
The spill revived a dispute between Ogonis and Shell which attracted world attention in 1995 when the MOSOP leader, writer Ken Saro Wiwa, was hanged with eight other activists on murder charges by Nigeria's then-military junta.
