Nigeria Ogoniland oil spillage clean-up 'could take 30 years

Nigeria's Ogoniland region could take 30 years to fully recover from the damage caused by years of oil spills, a United Nations report says.

The long-awaited study says complete restoration could entail the world's "most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up".

Communities faced a severe health risk, with some families drinking water with high levels of carcinogens, it said.

On Wednesday, oil giant Shell accepted liability for spills in 2008 and 2009.

The Bodo fishing community has said it will seek hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation

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Nigeria is one of the world's major oil producers.

'900 times recommended levels'

The UN assessment of Ogoniland, which lies in the Niger delta, said 50 years of oil operations in the region had "penetrated further and deeper than many had supposed".

"In at least 10 Ogoni communities where drinking water is contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons, public health is seriously threatened," the UN Environmental Programme (Unep) said in a statement.

Some areas which appeared unaffected were actually "severely contaminated" underground, Unep said.

In one community, the report says, families were drinking from wells which were contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, at 900 times recommended levels.

It said scientists at the site, which lay close to a Nigerian National Petroleum Company pipeline, found oil slicks eight centimetres thick floating on the water.

This was reportedly due to an oil spill more than six years ago, it said.

The report, based on examinations of some 200 locations over 14 months, said Shell had created public health and safety issues by failing to apply its own procedures in the control and maintenance of oilfield infrastructure.

But it also said local people were sabotaging pipelines in order to steal oil.

The report says that restoring the region could cost $1bn (£613m) and take 25-30 years to complete.

"The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world's most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health," Unep said.

culled from BBCNEWS