Shell’s $1 Billion Oil Cleanup Makes Pollution Hot Spot Worse

In the more than a quarter century since Shell Plc left Ogoniland in southern Nigeria, oil has continued to ooze from dormant wellheads and active pipelines, leaving the 386-square mile kingdom’s wetlands shimmering with a greasy rainbow sheen, its once-lush mangroves coated in crude, well-water smelling of benzene and farmlands charred and barren.

Abandoned fishing boats in an estuary polluted by crude oil in Ogoniland, in 2020.

Photographer: George Osodi/Bloomberg

Fishermen in polluted waters in the Delta region of Goi, in 2020.

Photographer: George Osodi/Bloomberg

So when the $1 billion Ogoniland cleanup began in 2019, backed by Shell’s funding pledge and support from the United Nations, it was heralded as the most ambitious initiative of its kind anywhere in the world. But now, UN Environmental Programme documents seen by Bloomberg and reported for the ...