Akwa Ibom residents raise fresh alarm as abandoned oil wells wreak havoc

The radical of Ikono and Ibiono Ibom Local Government Areas of Akwa Ibom State person again raised caller concerns implicit the hazards of lipid spills successful their communities from the abandoned wells.

Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, successful the 1950s was said to person drilled and capped the lipid wells aft declaring them commercially unviable.

Speaking with Friday John, the Village Council Chairman of Ntan Mbat successful Ibiono Ibom during a one-day Monitoring and Evidence Gathering Training astatine Ikono organized by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, connected Friday, helium said nary lipid institution has returned to the tract since the wells were capped, adding that a caller seepage constituent present discharges crude successful ample quantities everywhere.

‎His words: "Oil has been coming retired from determination for a agelong clip earlier I was born. The radical who came, we called them Mbakara USA successful those days. They came, they built a precise large location successful my assemblage and lived there. They planted stones arsenic markers and wrote that this is wherever they recovered oil.

‎"There is nary pipeline, cipher has drilled thing there, and galore of america are acrophobic to spell to that spot to farm. That is the trouble we are going through."

John said the community, until HOMEF's intervention, did not cognize however to respond to the spill.

"When lipid contamination occurs, erstwhile lipid comes retired from the ground, it is thing we did not understand. This instauration came and enlightened us," helium said, adding that the vill...