President Muhammadu Buhari has called on the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, to visit a Bayelsa community and investigate the level of damage caused by the recent oil spillage.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday asked Timipre Sylva, to check on the state of things in the community of the oil spill.
Point News247 reports that the Minister made this known while speaking to journalists after a meeting with the President.
According to Sylva, the President had given a directive to the petroleum ministry to ascertain the level of damage done at the site.
A wellhead in the Santa Barbara South field had blown on November 5 and had since been spewing oil into the water bodies.
The field is jointly owned by Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company (AEEPCO) and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Aiteo, which acquired the oil mining lease, OML 29 in 2015, had said that it was working with oil spill regulators to contain the leak.
Responding to the Federal government’s efforts in ensuring proper curtailment of the oil spillage, the minister said; “The question which is on the spillage in OML 29, we are quite aware of it.
Sylva said the President was concerned about the flowing oil, saying that the adverse environmental impact of the spill will not be tolerated by the government.
In his words; “Mr. President is personally very interested and we have discussed it and he said we should go there and come back and report to him because environmental degradation issues are things that we are not going to condone but of course we’ll work with the operators of OML 29 to ensure that this spillage is brought under control as quickly as possible.”