Shell kept Niger Delta pipeline running for years despite internal warnings, BBC reports

Shell continued to operate a major pipeline in Nigeria's Niger Delta for years despite repeated warnings from its own staff about the environmental risks, according to internal documents obtained by the BBC. The reporting casts fresh light on the operating decisions behind decades of pollution in a region whose creeks and farmland have borne the cost of the oil industry.

According to the documents, employees flagged dangers tied to oil theft, sabotage and ageing or failing infrastructure along the line, hazards that in the Delta routinely translate into spills when pipelines are tapped illegally or rupture. The warnings, the BBC reported, were raised over an extended period as the company kept the pipeline in service.

The Niger Delta has long been one of the most heavily polluted oil-producing regions in the world, where leaks have contaminated water sources, destroyed fishing grounds and damaged the livelihoods of communities that depend on the land. Disentangling the causes of any given spill, between corporate maintenance failures and the widespread theft and sabotage that plague the network, has been a persistent point of dispute.

Shell has historically attributed the bulk of spills in the Delta to sabotage and crude-oil theft rather than operational lapses, an argument that has shaped years of litigation and compensation claims brought by affected communities. The company has been winding down parts of its onshore presence in Nigeria, transferring assets as it restructures its footprint in the country.

Campaigners and Delta communities have for years pressed for fuller accountability and clean-up, pointing to studies documenting the scale of contamination and the slow pace of remediation. The latest documents are likely to feed into that long-running argument over who bears responsibility for the environmental damage.

Neither the full contents of the documents nor a detailed company response were immediately available beyond the BBC's account. The reporting nonetheless adds to a body of evidence that has kept the conduct of multinational oil firms in the Niger Delta under international scrutiny.