Today’s instalment takes a separate documentary thread from the first investigation: what happened after Shell replaced the old Nembe Creek Trunk Line, but allegedly left roughly 80 kilometres of the retired line containing crude because decommissioning funding was unavailable. The central evidence is the 27 June 2014 internal email identified in the report as D2_00092484 (HB/1103) and cited in Matthew Renshaw’s Tenth Witness Statement, paragraph 96

THE SHELL NIGERIA FILES

Shell’s “Basket” Pipeline: 80km of Stagnant Crude, Six Operational Spills — and “Budget Constraints”

Internal records raise disturbing questions about why a retired Niger Delta pipeline remained full of crude years after replacement

There is a particular phrase buried in the newly disclosed Shell material that deserves to follow the company for a very long time.

“It’s a basket.”

That was how an internal Shell communication described the condition of the old Nembe Creek Trunk Line — the NCTL — according to evidence cited in the newly published Nigeria: Lifting the Lid report.

This was not an environmental campaigner describing Shell infrastructure.

It was an assessment circulating within Shell.

And the surrounding facts are considerably more disturbing than the phrase itself.

According to the documentary record, Shell had replaced the old NCTL in 2010. Yet four years later, an internal email recorded that approximately 80 kilometres of the old pipeline between Tora and Bonny remained filled with stagnant crude. The same communication recorded six operational spills since 2010, three of them in 2014 alone, and said the decommissioning team had been unable to proceed because of “budget constraints.”

The authors of the report identify the underlying Shell document as D2_00092484 (HB/1103), cited in paragraph 96 of the Tenth Witness Statement of solicitor Matthew Renshaw in the Bille and Ogale litigation.

Strip away the corporate terminology and the allegation is stark.

A pipeline Shell personnel regarded as badly degraded had ceased to be the principal operating line.

It nevertheless remained full of oil.

It was spilling.

More spills were expected.

And money was apparently the obstacle to dealing with it.

That requires explanation.

The pipeline had been replaced — the crude had not been removed

The distinction between an operational pipeline and an abandoned or superseded pipeline is crucial.

The report states that Shell took steps to replace the old NCTL in 2010 but did not at that point secure the funding required for proper decommissioning. By June 2014, the old line was still awaiting that process.

According to the internal correspondence cited by the claimants’ lawyers, the Tora-to-Bonny section — around 80 kilometres — was still holding stagnant crude described as containing 50% BS&W.

The internal account did not portray this as a hypothetical environmental concern.

It recorded six operational spills from the old NCTL after 2010.

Three, it said, had occurred during 2014 alone.

The assessment was equally clear about the future.

The poor condition of the pipeline meant further operational spills were anticipated if decommissioning did not happen soon. The memorable internal description was brutally concise:

“It’s a basket.”

The question is obvious.

Why was an obsolete pipeline known to be in such poor condition still holding crude oil four years after its replacement?

The answer in the documents appears to be money

The internal correspondence does not require outsiders to invent a financial motive.

The email itself reportedly said the decommissioning team could not proceed because of “budget constraints.”

A response to that communication is just as important.

According to the report, another Shell communication acknowledged that the decommissioning needed funding both to reduce environmental harm and to reduce Shell’s liability. It nevertheless said finding money from the base budget had proved difficult.

That is an extraordinary sequence.

The company appears to have had, internally:

knowledge of the pipeline’s condition;

knowledge of operational spills;

an expectation of more spills;

recognition of environmental consequences;

recognition of potential liability;

and an identified solution — decommissioning.

What it apparently did not have was an approved budget sufficient to carry that solution out promptly.

If that interpretation is correct, this was not principally a failure of scientific knowledge.

It was a failure to convert known risk into funded action.

“Budget constraints” do not absorb crude oil

Corporate budgeting language can make an environmental decision sound almost bloodless.

A project is deferred.

An allocation is unavailable.

Capital is prioritised elsewhere.

A base budget cannot accommodate the expenditure.

But a deteriorating oil pipeline does not understand accounting.

Nor does a creek.

Nor does mangrove forest.

Nor does a fishing community.

If oil remains inside compromised infrastructure, the physical risk remains regardless of whether the financial system has approved a project code for removing it.

That is what makes these internal records so significant.

They potentially expose the point where corporate financial management and environmental risk collided — and environmental risk appears to have been left waiting.

Six spills internally — but what reached the regulator?

The documents raise another issue requiring careful treatment.

The report says the internal correspondence referred to six operational spills from the old NCTL between 2010 and 2014.

The report’s authors then compared that internal account with Shell spill records and say they found only twocorresponding operational spills reported publicly to the regulator for the period in question. They identify those records as JIV ID 1033784 from 2013 and JIV ID 1141611 from 2014.

That comparison is an allegation made by the report’s authors, not a finding by a court, and it must be treated accordingly.

But it is sufficiently serious to require a direct answer.

Were all six incidents reportable spills?

Were some recorded elsewhere?

Were some later reclassified?

Did the internal email use “operational spill” differently from the regulatory reporting system?

Or were incidents known inside the company that did not appear in the public record?

Those are factual questions capable of factual answers.

The discrepancy should not simply disappear into litigation paperwork.

Why classification matters

The argument over spill causation in the Niger Delta has never been merely semantic.

Shell has consistently maintained that the vast majority of pollution in the region resulted from large-scale theft, sabotage and illegal refining carried out by third parties. Shell currently says it is not liable for the criminal acts of those third parties, while also stating that its former Nigerian subsidiary cleaned spills from joint-venture facilities regardless of cause, as Nigerian law required.

Against that background, an internal document expressly referring to spills as operational is significant.

It does not prove the cause of every spill from the old NCTL.

It does not prove that every incident identified internally should have resulted in compensation.

And it does not by itself establish legal liability.

But it makes the documentary trail important.

If Shell personnel internally regarded particular incidents as operational failures rather than third-party sabotage, the regulatory record ought to be capable of being reconciled with that internal assessment.

That is not activism.

It is basic accountability.

This was not an unknown piece of infrastructure

There is another reason the “basket” email deserves particular attention.

The old NCTL was not some forgotten fragment of pipe discovered unexpectedly beneath vegetation.

Shell had already replaced the pipeline.

The company therefore knew that it had an obsolete asset requiring retirement.

By 2014, according to the disclosed material, Shell personnel knew a substantial section still contained crude; knew spills had occurred; knew the condition of the pipe was poor; and knew decommissioning was needed.

That makes the chronology uncomfortable.

Replacement did not equal removal of risk.

The new pipeline may have taken over the transportation function, but the old infrastructure apparently remained an environmental liability precisely because oil had been left inside it.

There is a world of difference between inheriting an unforeseen defect and postponing action on a known deteriorating asset.

The documents appear to describe the latter.

Shell says the wider portrayal is misleading

Shell strongly rejects the overall characterisation advanced in the Lifting the Lid report.

In its formal response to Amnesty International, reproduced in the report, Shell said the campaign organisations had selectively referred to documents in a way that created a misleading impression. It said the analysis did not properly reflect the exceptionally difficult operating environment in the Niger Delta, including large-scale oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining by organised criminal gangs.

Shell also says its former Nigerian subsidiary worked with Nigerian authorities, its government-owned partner and communities to deal with those problems and cleaned spills from joint-venture facilities regardless of cause.

On its current website, Shell says its former subsidiary invested heavily to reduce spill risks, replaced key infrastructure, monitored pipelines, maintained spill-response teams and adapted its measures as theft and interference increased. It says the Bille claims will be vigorously defended at trial in 2027.

Those points deserve to be reported.

But they do not answer the narrow question presented by the 2014 correspondence:

Why was roughly 80 kilometres of an old pipeline, internally described as being in extremely poor condition and associated with repeated operational spills, still full of crude years after it had been replaced?

Nor does the general problem of sabotage explain an internal statement that decommissioning could not proceed because of budget constraints.

Those are different issues.

Shell should publish the full history

The simplest way to resolve the factual questions surrounding the old NCTL would be radical transparency.

Publish the complete decommissioning record.

Publish the funding requests.

Publish the approvals and refusals.

Publish the inspection history.

Publish the incident register.

Publish the regulatory notifications.

Publish the eventual decommissioning date and evidence of how the crude was removed.

And reconcile the internal reference to six operational spills with the public spill record identified by the report’s authors.

If contextual material changes the interpretation of the disclosed emails, Shell should publish that context too.

The documents are now part of the public record. HEDA’s archive identifies the disclosed Shell bundles released through the UK proceedings, while the Lifting the Lid report links the old-NCTL evidence to the court materials and the document reference D2_00092484 (HB/1103).

There is no persuasive reason for uncertainty to remain where records can settle it.

A retired pipeline can still pollute

The broader lesson from this episode is painfully simple.

Decommissioning is not administrative housekeeping.

It is part of operating an oil field responsibly.

Replacing a pipeline does not eliminate its environmental risk if the old line is left containing crude.

Declaring infrastructure obsolete does not stop corrosion.

And transferring or selling assets does not make historic pollution vanish.

The 2014 correspondence, as presented in the court record and the new report, portrays people inside Shell recognising precisely that problem.

They understood that environmental impact would continue.

They understood liability would remain.

They understood decommissioning was necessary.

Yet the work was apparently stalled over money.

That is the point requiring public scrutiny.

Not because every allegation against Shell has been proved.

It has not.

Not because oil theft and sabotage were imaginary.

They were not.

But because a multinational oil company with immense technical expertise appears, on its own internal documentary record, to have known that an obsolete pipeline was in terrible condition, knew it was still holding crude, knew it had produced operational spills, anticipated more — and still had not secured the money to remove the danger four years after replacement.

“It’s a basket.”

Five words from inside the company.

The people of the Niger Delta deserve to know why that basket was still full of oil.

Documentary record

The principal source is Nigeria: Lifting the Lid — Internal Documents Expose Shell’s Negligent Oil Operations, section 4.5. The report attributes the 27 June 2014 internal correspondence to material cited in Renshaw, Tenth Witness Statement, paragraph 96, and identifies the underlying document as D2_00092484 (HB/1103).

HEDA Resource Centre publishes the catalogue of Shell documents released in the UK legal proceedings and states that the material was made public following applications by campaigning organisations on public-interest grounds.

Shell’s current position on the Bille and Ogale litigation is that the majority of Niger Delta pollution was caused by large-scale oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining; that its former subsidiary responded to spills and invested in spill prevention and remediation; and that the claims remain contested and will be defended at the forthcoming trial.

Editorial note

The Bille and Ogale proceedings remain unresolved. Statements from the claimants, their lawyers, HEDA, Amnesty International and other report publishers are allegations or interpretations unless independently established or judicially determined. The description of the old NCTL, the references to operational spills and the budget discussion are reported from the disclosed/cited documentary record. Shell disputes the campaigners’ broader characterisation and says selective quotation creates a misleading impression.

Site wide disclaimer also applies.

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