Leaked files raise fears over safety of Shell oil production fleet, years after devastating spill

[hellsbelle@sh.itjust.works]

Off the coast of Nigeria, one of the world’s largest oil production ships, called the Bonga, was taking oil from a field on the ocean floor and transferring it to a tanker ship. Such transfers are routine in the offshore oil industry, but something went wrong on the Bonga, owned by energy giant Shell.

A major leak began in one of the lines that connected the two vessels. Over the next three hours, the crew detected that more oil was being pumped from the ship than the tanker was receiving. Another hour passed before an oily sheen was spotted on the water. An hour after that, the crew member in charge of the fueling shut off the flow.

By then, about 40,000 barrels of oil had escaped into the Atlantic Ocean, according to an English High Court evaluation, making the December 2011 incident one of Nigeria’s worst spills in a decade. At the height of the spill, an oil slick spread over 685 square miles (1,776 square kilometers), twice the size of New York City. Nigerian regulators later fined the subsidiary Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo) $3.6 billion, an amount being appealed today.