AFP – Shell on Thursday said it had launched a review of its oil and gas assets in Nigeria’s massively polluted Ogoniland region, resuming work in the area two decades after unrest forced the company to pull out.

The Anglo-Dutch oil major said the move was not part of an attempt to restart oil production in Ogoniland, describing it instead as a bid to comply with a 2011 UN report that called for one of the world’s biggest ever environmental clean-ups.

“The intention is to determine the state of our facilities since we suspended operations in the area in 1993, and determine how best to decommission them,” the head of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), Mutiu Sunmonu, said in a statement.

Spokesman Precious Okolobo told AFP the review was “a key step” in complying with the United Nations Environmental Programme report, which detailed the devastating impact that decades of oil pollution had brought to the southern region.

The report called for the oil industry and the Nigerian government to contribute $1 billion (762 million euros) to a clean-up fund for the region, adding that restoration could take up to 30 years.

Among the most condemned episodes in Ogoniland’s past was the 1995 execution of renowned environmental activist Ken Saro Wiwa under the regime of dictator Sani Abacha. Wiwa had fiercely criticised Shell before his death.

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