Shell says Nigeria payments and oil theft climb in 2017

Shell’s has said its payments to the federal government of Nigeria rose to $4.32 billion in 2017 about 19 per cent from $3.64 billion in 2016, according to its annual sustainability report released in London. The bulk of the payments, $3.197 billion, went to state oil company NNPC for production entitlement

According to the report crude oil theft from pipelines of Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary SPDC increased by some 50 per cent, rising to roughly 9,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2017 from 6,000 bpd in 2016. It said the shutdown of the Forcados export terminal for much of 2016 “reduced opportunities for third-party interference”

It further said that sabotage-related oil spill incidents rose to 62, from 48 in 2016, though the volume spilled fell to 1,400 tonnes, from 3,900 tonnes in 2016. It said that operational spills in Nigeria rose by one to nine in 2017, but said the volume of oil spilled fell to 100 tonnes from 300 tonnes in 2016

The company said that theft and sabotage account for 90 per cent of Nigerian oil spills. Shell in the report said SPDC also “made $10 million available” in 2017 to help set up the Hydrocarbon Pollution and Remediation Project (HYPREP), a government-led body to clean up contaminated sites, and that it developed with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) a new framework for remediation of soil and groundwater that it will begin testing in 2018.