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ABUJA, March 27 (Reuters) - Two Nigerian government agenciestold a parliamentary hearing on Thursday that Royal Dutch Shell should pay a total of $11.5 billion in compensation fordamage caused by an oil spill at its offshore Bonga field inDecember 2011.
Shell has said that there is no legal basis for the proposedfines and the Nigerian government has never publicly chargedforeign oil companies large sums for oil spills.
The national assembly can recommend fines the governmentshould impose on oil companies but it has no power to enforcethem.
The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency(NOSDRA) told the national assembly Shell should pay $5 billionas a fine for environmental damage caused from a 40,000 barrelspill on Dec. 20, 2011 at the Bonga offshore rig.
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency(NIMASA) sought $6.5 billion as compensation for 100 communitiesit says were affected onshore by the oil spill, which was one ofthe biggest in the history of Africa's largest energy industry.
Shell has taken responsibility for the Bonga offshore oilspill but says onshore damage was the result of a differentspill a few days later that wasn't its fault. It said it hascleaned up areas affected by both spills.
"We are going to do post-impact assessment to determine theeffect on the environment. By May the contractor would get tothe site and by the third quarter of the year the job would beconcluded," Chike Onyejekwe, managing director of Shell'soffshore Nigeria unit told lawmakers.
"We cannot do or say anything now until we do thepost-impact assessment study. We have received over 300 lettersof claims and we are replying to them."
The national assembly told Shell to submit its clean-upplans and assessments to lawmakers next week when a date for afuture hearing would be set.
NOSDRA and NIMASA are asking Shell for compensation whichwould equate to around $287,500 per barrel for the 40,000 barrelBonga spill.
In comparison, BP has total provisions of $42.2billion for compensation for the 4 million barrels spilled inthe spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, which amounts to around$10,550 per barrel.
Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil are spilled in themangrove creeks onshore Nigeria every year, destroying theenvironment and livelihoods.
Many are caused by sabotage or oil theft, but a UnitedNations report in 2011 said oil firms don't do enough to cleanup spills and maintenance of infrastructure was inadequate.
