By RestCo Principal Christopher Ives
Shell Nigeria recovers 95% spilled oil (Aug 20, 2018)
My colleague Darry MacMahon wrote – Pardon my skepticism, but how would they know? I’m making some assumptions here, based on typical oil industry and pipeline operation practice.
If you come up with a ratio number, like 95%, you need two underlying numbers: the amount recovered and the amount actually spilled.
The people doing the clean-up might have a reasonable number on how much they picked up. That number will likely be a little inflated, as they will also likely have picked up some water and small debris as part of the clean-up. Big vacuum units are not good at discriminating between oil and other things in and around the oil. So, the numerator is likely overstated.