According to the corporation and an organization in charge of finding oil spills, a well at a location run by the local Nigerian company Eroton Exploration and Production Limited has been leaking gas and oil into the Niger Delta for more than a week.
Through the Nembe Creek Trunkline, Eroton produces and exports crude from its Oil Mining Lease 18 block.
Before it was effectively stopped last year, a nearby well operated by Aiteo Eastern E&P spewed oil for more than a month and contaminated the Delta waterways.
The National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency’s Idris Musa announced on Sunday that Eroton had reported the spill to the authorities, attributing it to a wellhead leak.
In an undated statement, Eroton claimed that the event began on June 15 and that preliminary investigations indicated vandalism was the root cause.
It went on to say that because the wellhead platform had been taken down, getting to the well was challenging.
The business stated that its team of well experts is consulting with contractors to determine the safest method for bringing the well under control.
The amount of oil produced by the well, which is a component of the assets that Eroton acquired from the oil firm Shell in 2015 as it sold its onshore holdings to focus on deep-water drilling, was not immediately known.
In the Niger Delta, a large network of waterways and mangrove swamps linked by pipelines and plagued by poverty, pollution, oil-fuelled corruption, and violence, oil spills—occasionally caused by vandalism or corrosion—are frequent.
