Press Release: Crude Oil Spill Alert: Oil Spill Reported in Peremabiri Community, Bayelsa State
Press Release VI, October 14, 2023
Crude Oil Spill Alert: Oil Spill Reported in Peremabiri Community, Bayelsa State
The Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria) has received a report of a crude oil spill in Peremabiri Community, Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, through its Crude Oil Spill Alert System (COSAS) and the One Million Youth Volunteers Network of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters in the Niger Delta.
The spill, which is said to have occurred on October 3, 2023, from the Diebu Creek Flow Station in the community operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) of Nigeria Limited, has affected the river and creeks in and around the community as an unknown number of barrels of crude oil are discharged into the water bodies.
With the livelihoods of fishermen and farmers around the Nun River and about 13 riverine clans who fish and use the water for rice farm irrigation, among others, destroyed, the rural dwellers are calling for the operator, SPDC, and government to come to their aid by stooping the spill, cleaning up the water body, and paying adequate compensation as the incident is alleged to be an act of equipment failure.
Members of the Peremabiri community, where oil extraction has been ongoing around the community since the late 1950s after the discovery of crude in commercial quantity in Oloibiri, present-day Bayelsa State, without meaningful development and amenities, decried the impact of the spill on the river, their source of survival, and called on the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) to live up to their responsibility on Joint Investigation Visits and invoke relevant existing laws to hold the polluter to account.
The SPDC, operator of the facility, has confirmed the occurrence of the crude oil spill in a statement signed by its spokesman, Mr. Michael Adande.