How Much Does an Oil Spill Cost in Nigeria? For Shell, Perhaps $5 Billion

The Wall Street Journal reported that Shell faces up to $5 Billion in fines from the Nigerian government after having an offshore spill of about 40,000 barrels of crude. That’s a fine of about $125,000 a barrel – as compared to the fines of $1,000-$3000 a barrel fine that BP faces after the Deepwater Horizon accident and the $8,000-$$10,000 a barrel fine that Chevron faces in Brazil after an off-shore spill.

It seems the cost of spills is going way up – thus the cost of preventing them by using advanced root cause analysis (TapRooT®) is becoming a better investment every day.