The Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) says the reported oil spill from its flow station at Diebu was from residual spill traced to old, sabotaged facility.

The Peremabiri Community had on Aug. 24, 2022, reported that the leakhead polluted the environment, causing untold hardship to the fishing settlements.

The Media Relations Manager of SPDC, Mrs Bola Essien-Nelson, however, said on Tuesday, September 20, that the reported leak was from an old incident.

According to Essien-Nelson, SPDC on May 4 received a report of a theft on a section of its Diebu Creek Oil Well 6 flow line, resulting in an oil leak.

“The well and Diebu Creek flow station (facility) has not been in operation since February 26, when the facility was shut due to the unavailability of the Trans Niger Pipeline.

“A Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) to the site revealed that the incident was caused by third party interference and theft of SPDCJV property.

“A cleanup of the free phase oil was immediately carried out, while assessment of the residual impact is scheduled to happen in November, when water levels are expected to be low enough to allow for the impact assessment.

“This will be followed by remediation of the site after due approval of the Remediation Action Plan by The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission.

“On August 26, SPDC received a report of an oil sheen sighted at the same site of the May 4 incident.

“The community believes that this oil sheen is the result of a new spill. This is not the case.

“A follow up JIV conducted on Sept. 6 revealed that the sheen was the residual impact from the same sabotage/vandalism of May 4,” Essien-Nelson said.

It was, however, learnt that an operational mishap from the flow station discharged crude into the company’s right of way.

A field report of the JIV by National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency indicated that the leak was due to operational mishap, which discharged crude oil within SPDC’s operational area with no impact on third party area.

JIV is a statutory step that follows every oil spill by oil firms, host community and regulators to ascertain the cause, volume and area impacted by the spill.

Mr Return Koma, who represented the Peremabiri community in the JIV, said that SPDC officials and the regulators, were unanimous that the incident being investigated was as a result of equipment failure.

He said that an operational mishap on Aug. 24 at Diebu Creek Flow Station, operated by SPDC, discharged a yet-to-be ascertained volume of crude into the environment.

Koma, who is the Peremabiri Community Development Committee Chairman, however, said that the JIV could not arrive at the quantity of spilled crude and so did not sign the JIV report.

“We have conducted the JIV, they accepted responsibility for the leak at the flow station and another one at nearby Well 6, both were due to equipment failure.

“We were unable to agree on the volume of spilled crude and so did not sign the report,” Koma said.

It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilisation itself. But today the Tigris is dying.

Human activity have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where — with its twin river the Euphrates — it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago.

Iraq may be oil-rich but the country is plagued by poverty after decades of war and by droughts and desertification.

Battered by one natural disaster after another, it is one of the five countries most exposed to climate change, according to the UN.

From April on, temperatures exceed 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and intense sandstorms often turn the sky orange, covering the country in a film of dust.

Hot summers see the mercury top a blistering 50 degrees Celsius — near the limit of human endurance — with frequent power cuts shutting down air-conditioning for millions.

The Tigris, the lifeline connecting the storied cities of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, has been choked by dams, most of them upstream in Turkey, and falling rainfall.

The Tigris’ journey through Iraq begins in the mountains of autonomous Kurdistan, near the borders of Turkey and Syria, where local people raise sheep and grow potatoes.

According to Iraqi official statistics, the level of the Tigris entering Iraq has dropped to just 35 percent of its average over the past century.

China’s government issued draft rules aimed at making it easier for some foreigners to enter China for visits to tourism sites along the Chinese border.

Travel groups organised by tour agencies in border areas in China can choose their port of entry and exit “flexibly”, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said in a statement on Monday, without giving specifics on locations and dates.

China has shut its borders to foreign tourists since the outbreak of the new coronavirus in 2020, with only specific groups of foreign nationals allowed to enter the country, such as those holding certain work visas.

In recent months, rules have gradually been relaxed, from resuming more direct flights between China and some countries to allowing foreign students with valid residence permits to enter China. Quarantine for foreign arrivals has also been reduced.

China shares a border with more than 10 countries, including Pakistan, Russia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.

A rare pair of red panda twins have made their first public appearance at Longleat.

The 10-week-old cubs were born earlier in the summer but are only now beginning to venture outside.

The pair are the first to have been born to new parents Emma and Lionel as part of a successful breeding programme for the endangered species at the Wiltshire attraction.

“Both cubs are doing really well,” said keeper Sam Allworthy.

“Emma is a great mum and she has been looking after them fantastically.

“Although we have yet to name them, we have been able to do their first health checks and can confirm they’re both females.”

These are the seventh and eighth red pandas to have been born at Longleat.

Previous cubs have gone on to collections all over Europe and have even had cubs of their own.

Red pandas are increasingly under threat due to habitat loss, deforestation and poaching. It is thought there may be as few as 2,500 living in the wild.

A new £40m onshore wind farm has been granted planning permission by South Lanarkshire Council.

Developers Banks Renewables have won approval for six large turbines at Mill Rig Wind Farm near Darvel.

The project, which straddles the South Lanarkshire and East Ayrshire border, will have a capacity of about 36MW – enough to power about 21,000 homes.

Banks Renewables said the development was “on course” to become operational within three years.

In a statement, the firm said the project would displace more than 18,000 tonnes of CO2 annually from the UK’s electricity supply grid – the equivalent of removing almost 7,000 petrol cars from the road.

The Hamilton-based company plans to set up a local community fund which it has claimed will generate up to £5.4m in revenue over the expected 30-year lifetime of the project.

It has also estimated that the local area will benefit from local contracts worth £11.7m during construction.

Robin Winstanley, sustainability manager at Banks Renewables, said: “With the next steps of detailed design and construction, Mill Rig Wind Farm is on track to help Scotland achieve its ambitious net zero targets, bolstering the UK’s energy security by producing green electricity by 2025.”

The Welsh government is pressing ahead with delayed plans to ban single-use carrier bags and plastic drinking straws in Wales.

Plastic plates, cutlery, stirrers and cotton buds would also be banned under the proposed new law.

Climate Change Minister Julie James said Wales must “avoid leaving a toxic legacy” to future generations.

The Conservatives accused Labour ministers of “dragging their heels on environmental issues”.

England and Scotland have already banned plastic straws, cotton buds and stirrers.

However nowhere in the UK has stopped the sale of single-use carrier bags.

The new Welsh law would make it an offence to supply or offer to supply what ministers call “littered and unnecessary disposable single-use plastics”.

The Welsh government said the law needed to bring in the changes was delayed by a complicated piece of post-Brexit UK legislation.

The bill, which will now begin the required scrutiny process before it can become law, would also give local councils the powers to enforce the ban on single-use plastic items including:

• Cutlery, plates and stirrers
• Drinking straws (with an exemption for medical or care needs)
• Cotton buds with plastic stems
• Balloon sticks
• Polystyrene takeaway containers, cups and lids
• Thin plastic single-use carrier bags

The list follows a consultation in 2020 and the Welsh government argues there are non-plastic or reusable alternatives to all of the products.

Hurricane Fiona is continuing to strengthen – threatening lives in parts of the Caribbean, say US forecasters.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the category two storm currently packing speeds of 115mph (185km/h) could even worsen to a category four – the second-highest designation.

Rain is lashing Puerto Rico, where at least two people have died and 90% of the island remains without power.

Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader says damage is “considerable”.

The hurricane was about 10 miles (15km) north-west of Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos Islands at 12:00 GMT on Tuesday, the NHC said.

Mr Abinader has declared three eastern provinces of Dominican Republic to be disaster zones, amid warnings from the NHC of “heavy rainfall and life-threatening flash flooding”.

Several villages were cut off in the country as floodwaters rose, while hundreds of people were forced to leave their homes and thousands were left without power.

Lexie Wilcox, who lives in the easternmost province of Altagracia, said it was the worst hurricane she had experienced and had hit her local area much harder than Hurricane Maria in 2017, which killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico.

On Monday morning there were trees down, with roads blocked and a lot of flooding.

She was unable to sleep, spending the night mopping up rainwater.

The roof has been partially blown off her shed, and a security sign blew off her house.

Ms Wilcox and her neighbours are without electricity, and believe this may take days to be fixed as the storm is still ongoing.

Connection returned for a few minutes on Monday, just long enough to allow Ms Wilcox, who is Canadian, to watch the end of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral while the hurricane raged outside.