Erhioke Oil Spill:  We’ve done the needful inline with best environmental practices, says Heritage

By Ovasa Ogaga,

The Management of Heritage Energy Operational Services Limited HEOSL, operator of OML30, said it has done the needful and has taken all necessary steps in line with best environmental practices to curtail the oil spill in Erhioke community.

In a statement on Thursday, titled ”Re: Delta communities threaten to shut down oil firms over oil spill’, HEOSL also debunked the false allegation against it, noting that the publication by some persons in the community was done to mislead the public.

It said, ”On take-over of Operatorship in 2017, the Kokori bund wall had integrity issues which led hydrocarbon contained within the bund wall to leak into the environment. The affected communities brought it to the attention of both HEOSL and the National Oil Spill Detection And Regulatory Agency “NOSDRA” on 14th September 2017”.

”Consequently, NOSDRA carried out an onsite damage assessment on the 26th of July 2018 with all stakeholders in attendance. Following this visit, HEOSL assigned a dedicated engineering team to reconstruct the defective bund wall. The construction of the new bund wall commenced on 8th May 2019 and was handled by an indigenous engineering company from Erhioke community (one of the impacted communities). This construction project was completed in February 2020. However, while the construction was ongoing, HEOSL began negotiations with the impacted communities on monetary compensation for the loss suffered”.

The company further said ” HEOSL reached a full and final settlement compensation amount with the legal representatives of the affected communities for all loss suffered. On 19th July 2019, HEOSL made the agreed payment to the communities through their legal representative and this was acknowledged by the communities accordingly and a letter of the resolution written by them to NOSDRA”.

”In addition to this compensation payment and bund wall re-construction, a Clean-up/Remediation project was embarked upon. Three (3) competent vendors from these impacted communities were awarded the cleanup/remediation jobs in April 2020 with regulators involved throughout the project period. Upon completion of the exercise in August 2020, the site was acknowledged to be ‘Visually Clean’ by the regulators”

It continued   ” However, HEOSL received a report in October 2020 that some sections of the bund wall had failed, leading to some areas being re-impacted by crude oil. This incident was quickly contained by a local vendor from the community who was commissioned to deploy the containment boom on 19th October 2020). HEOSL’s Projects Team has thus recalled the bund wall construction vendor back to the site to repair the failed sections while a Joint Investigation Visit by all stakeholders is being planned”.

”From the foregoing, it is obvious that the allegations contained in the publication such as “every time we meet them, they continue to post us here and there and at the end of the day, they give frivolous excuses because they feel they can go to the land and do anything they like” are lacking in truth”.