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The actual quote was "after suffering a reported theft of 60,000 barrels of oil per day from its Nembe Creek Trunkline pipeline, Shell Nigeria shuts off the pip
by shabble 14y ago
The actual quote was "after suffering a reported theft of 60,000 barrels of oil per day from its Nembe Creek Trunkline pipeline, Shell Nigeria shuts off the pipe for 9 days to repair damage."
which to me sounds like damage caused by the thefts is causing (some undefined amount) of leakage/wastage, that they're trying to fix.
If they're including the full 60k barrel as 'spillage' in their graphs then it's definitely somewhat disingenuous, as you say.
- vosper 14y agoThat's a good point. I did a little Googling for news on the matter, and it seems like the thefts were made by drilling holes in the pipeline [1], and the amount stolen accounts for almost half of the 150,000 barrels-per-day capacity of the pipeline. Shell shut the pipeline down both due to the leaks and to the monetary losses ($100m in a week) incurred. So, I'm not sure - it seems pretty clear that the 60,000 barrels a day was theft, and not a spill, but presumably there's leakage after clandestinely drilling holes in high pressure oil lines. I don't know if pipeline theft should be included in a list of oil industry screw-ups, unless you want to expand the term to include thieves and black-marketeers (not that Shell are saints in the Niger Delta, there's almost certainly blood on their hands [2]) [1] http://www.voanews.com/content/shell-to-shut-down-major-pipeline-in-nigeria/1631767.html http://www.voanews.com/content/shell-to-shut-down-major-pipe... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa