Today’s New York Times includes a front-page story on oil spills in Nigeria.  Good investigative journalism is needed to bring attention to and increase understanding about this important environmental issue.  Unfortunately, readers don’t get it with this article.  Reporter Adam Nossiter simply gets the facts wrong.

The story, “Half a World From the Gulf, A Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old,” references an oil spill near the Qua Iboe Terminal operated by a joint venture between Mobil Producing Nigeria and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

We confirmed the spill for Nossiter and gave him the following facts: It started on May 1; we immediately found the source of the leak and stopped it the same day; and, the total spill was about 200 barrels of oil.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw Nossiter’s published interpretation of the facts, where he said the spill “lasted for weeks” and caused “fisherman [to] curse their oil-blackened nets, doubly useless in a barren sea buffeted by a spill from an offshore ExxonMobil pipe.”

Furthermore, Nossiter misreports what was a peaceful demonstration, writing that “soldiers guarding an ExxonMobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month.” This is untrue, and there is no evidence to support the accusation – but we were never asked.

Obviously, we regret this spill. Our goal is to minimize our impact on the environment wherever we operate, in addition to protecting the safety of our employees and the local community. When we don’t get it right, we say so.

But we also believe that because we are forthcoming with the facts about our operations, those reporting on the facts should get it right.