Finnish Neste Oil launches renewable diesel plant in Rotterdam

English.news.cn   2011-09-21

HELSINKI, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- Finnish Neste Oil Corporation has started up Europe's largest renewable diesel plant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, according to a press release of the company on Tuesday.

With its current capacity of 800,000 tons per year (t/a), the Rotterdam plant will help increase Neste Oil's total renewable diesel capacity to 2 million.

"We are very proud of the new plant in Rotterdam," said the Nest Oil's President and CEO Matti Lievonen in the statement. "It will help us meet demand in the European market, the world's largest for renewable diesel."

According to the press release, the plant can make use of almost any vegetable oil or waste fat in the production of premium-quality renewable diesel utilizing Neste Oil's proprietary NExBTL technology.

The plant employs approximately 150 people, with 110 Neste Oil employees and 40 service provider personnel.

Editor: yan

Harvesting 'limitless' hydrogen from self-powered cells

BBC News, by Mark Kinver, Environment reporter, 20 September 2011

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An example of a microbial fuel cell has gone
on display at London's Science Museum

US researchers say they have demonstrated how cells fuelled by bacteria can be "self-powered" and produce a limitless supply of hydrogen.

Until now, they explained, an external source of electricity was required in order to power the process.

However, the team added, the current cost of operating the new technology is too high to be used commercially.

Details of the findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"There are bacteria that occur naturally in the environment that are able to release electrons outside of the cell, so they can actually produce electricity as they are breaking down organic matter," explained co-author Bruce Logan, from Pennsylvania State University, US.

"We use those microbes, particularly inside something called a microbial fuel cell (MFC), to generate electrical power.

"We can also use them in this device, where they need a little extra power to make hydrogen gas.

"What that means is that they produce this electrical current, which are electrons, they release protons in the water and these combine with electrons."

Prof Logan said that the technology to utilise this process to produce hydrogen was called microbial electrolysis cell (MEC).

"The breakthrough here is that we do not need to use an electrical power source anymore to provide a little energy into the system. 

Hydrogen has long been hailed a transport fuel
of the future but has yet to fulfil its potential

"All we need to do is add some fresh water and some salt water and some membranes, and the electrical potential that is there can provide that power."

The MECs use something called "reverse electrodialysis" (RED), which refers to the energy gathered from the difference in salinity, or salt content, between saltwater and freshwater.

In their paper, Prof Logan and colleague Younggy Kim explained how an envisioned RED system would use alternating stacks of membranes that harvest this energy; the movement of charged atoms move from the saltwater to freshwater creates a small voltage that can be put to work.

"This is the crucial element of the latest research," Prof Logan told BBC News, explaining the process of their system, known as a microbial reverse-electrodialysis electrolysis cell (MREC).

"If you think about desalinating water, it takes energy. If you have a freshwater and saltwater interface, that can add energy. We realised that just a little bit of that energy could make this process go on its own."

Early days

He said that the technology was still in its infancy, which was one of the reasons why it was not being exploited commercially.

"Right now, it is such a new technology," he explained.

"In a way it is a little like solar power. We know we can convert solar energy into electricity but it has taken many years to lower the cost.

"This is a similar thing: it is a new technology and it could be used, but right now it is probably a little expensive. So the question is, can we bring down the cost?"

The next step, Prof Logan explained, was to develop larger-scale cells: "Then it will easier to evaluate the costs and investment needed to use the technology.

The authors acknowledged that hydrogen had "significant potential as an efficient energy carrier", but it had been dogged with high production costs and environmental concerns, because it is most often produced using fossil fuels.

Prof Logan observed: "We use hydrogen for many, many things. It is used in making [petrol], it is used in foods etc. Whether we use it in transportation... remains to be seen."

But, the authors wrote that their findings offered hope for the future: "This unique type of integrated system has significant potential to treat wastewater and simultaneously produce [hydrogen] gas without any consumption of electrical grid energy."

Prof Logan added that a working example of a microbial fuel cell was currently on display at London's Science Museum, as part of the Water Wars exhibition.

Observations of Climate Change from Indigenous Alaskans

USGS Newsroom, 9/13/2011

Personal interviews with Alaska Natives in the Yukon River Basin provide unique insights on climate change and its impacts, helping develop adaptation strategies for these local communities.

The village of St. Mary's, Alaska where USGS scientists
conducted  interviews with hunters and elders to document
 their observations of climate change. The village lies in the
 Yukon River Basin on the banks of the Andreafsky River,
a tributary of the Yukon River. Photo Credit: School District
of St. Mary’s, Alaska. 

The USGS coordinated interviews with Yup'ik hunters and elders in the villages of St. Mary's and Pitka's Point, Alaska, to document their observations of climate change. They expressed concerns ranging from safety, such as unpredictable weather patterns and dangerous ice conditions, to changes in plants and animals as well as decreased availability of firewood.

"Many climate change studies are conducted on a large scale, and there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding how climate change will impact specific regions," said USGS social scientist Nicole Herman-Mercer. "This study helps address that uncertainty and really understand climate change as a socioeconomic issue by talking directly to those with traditional and personal environmental knowledge."

By integrating scientific studies with indigenous observation, these multiple forms of knowledge allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the complex challenges posed by climate change. The indigenous knowledge encompasses observations, lessons and stories about the environment that have been handed down for generations, providing a long history of environmental knowledge. These observations can also help uncover new areas for scientists to study.

The Arctic and Subarctic are of particular interest because these high latitudes are among the world’s first locations to begin experiencing climate change.

The most common statement by interview participants was about warmer temperature in recent years. It was observed to be warmer in all seasons, though most notably in the winter months. In previous generations, winter temperatures dropped to 40 degrees Celsius below freezing, while in present times temperatures only reach 25 C or 30 C below freezing. Moreover, in the rare case that temperatures did drop as low as they had in the past, it was a brief cold spell, in contrast to historic month-long cold spells.

The considerable thinning of ice on the Yukon and Andreafsky Rivers in recent years was the topic of several interviews. Thin river ice is a significant issue because winter travel is mainly achieved by using the frozen rivers as a transportation route via snow machines or sled dogs. Thinning ice shortens the winter travel season, making it more difficult to trade goods between villages, visit friends and relatives, or reach traditional hunting grounds. One interview participant also discussed how the Andreafsky River, on whose banks their village lies, no longer freezes in certain spots, and  several people have drowned after falling through the resulting holes in the ice.

The unpredictability of weather conditions was another issue of concern, especially since these communities rely on activities such as hunting, fishing and gathering wild foods for their way of life. One does not want to "get caught out in the country" when the weather suddenly changes.

Vegetation patterns were also observed to be shifting due to the changes in seasonal weather patterns, and this leads to increased difficulty in subsistence activities. Interviews showed the unpredictability from year to year on whether vegetation, particularly salmonberries, could be relied upon. Those interviewed spoke of a change in the range of species of mammals (moose and beaver) as well as a decrease in the number of some bird species (ptarmigan). This is of special concern because of the important role these animals play in the subsistence diets of Alaska Natives. Many also rely on hunting or trapping for their livelihoods.

Participants also discussed lower spring snowmelt flows on the Andreafsky and Yukon Rivers, meaning less logs are flowing down the river. This hampers people's ability to collect logs for firewood and building materials, placing a strain on an already economically depressed region through increased heating costs and reliance on expensive fossil fuels.

An article on this topic was published in the journal, Human Organization. The full article with additional quotes and observations from indigenous people is available online.

Contact Information:

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey

Office of Communications and Publishing

12201 Sunrise Valley Dr, MS 119

Reston, VA 20192       

Nicole Herman-Mercer  

Phone: 303-541-3012

Jessica Robertson  

Phone: 703-648-6624

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"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.) - New !

How our cloud does more with less: Google

Google Blog, 9/08/2011

We’ve worked hard to reduce the amount of energy our services use. In fact, to provide you with Google products for a month—not just search, but Google+, Gmail, YouTube and everything else we have to offer—our servers use less energy per user than a light left on for three hours. And, because we’ve been a carbon-neutral company since 2007, even that small amount of energy is offset completely, so the carbon footprint of your life on Google is zero.

We’ve learned a lot in the process of reducing our environmental impact, so we’ve added a new section called “The Big Picture” to our Google Green site with numbers on our annual energy use and carbon footprint.

We started the process of getting to zero by making sure our operations use as little energy as possible. For the last decade, energy use has been an obsession. We’ve designed and built some of the most efficient servers and data centers in the world—using half the electricity of a typical data center. Our newest facility in Hamina, Finland, opening this weekend, uses a unique seawater cooling system that requires very little electricity.

Whenever possible, we use renewable energy. We have a large solar panel installation at our Mountain View campus, and we’ve purchased the output of two wind farms to power our data centers. For the greenhouse gas emissions we can’t eliminate, we purchase high-quality carbon offsets.

But we’re not stopping there. By investing hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy projects and companies, we’re helping to create 1.7 GW of renewable power. That’s the same amount of energy used to power over 350,000 homes, and far more than what our operations consume.

Finally, our products can help people reduce their own carbon footprints. The study (PDF) we released yesterday on Gmail is just one example of how cloud-based services can be much more energy efficient than locally hosted services helping businesses cut their electricity bills.

Visit our Google Green site to find out more.

Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Technical Infrastructure

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Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. The internet
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Japan just beginning to tap into high potential for geothermal power generation

Mainichi Japan,  September 3, 2011

Kuju Kanko Hotel President Yoshiaki Koike stands next to the Kuju
 Geothermal Power Plant, with the hotel in the background, in the Oita
Prefecture town of Kokonoe. (Mainichi)

The president of Kuju Kanko Hotel, Yoshiaki Koike, is also the manager of the Kuju Geothermal Power Plant.

Located at the foot of Mt. Kuroiwa in Aso-Kuju National Park in Oita Prefecture, the plant has a power output of 990 kilowatts, producing enough electricity to power the hotel and have some left over to sell to a private electrical supply company.

Koike took an interest in the geothermal power business in the early 1990s when he saw the amount of steam pouring out of a well for hot springs that were drilled in the area. Two wells -- 350 and 405 meters deep respectively -- were dug up for the power station, into which Koike invested 200 million yen in equipment including generators and cooling towers. Plant operations began in 1998.

Although Koike had hoped the plant would "kill two birds with one stone" by saving electricity costs and increasing hotel publicity, he had not expected the selling price of electricity to be so low. The electricity produced at Kuju would have to be sold at 16 yen per 1 kilowatt per hour of electricity to be profitable, but the going rate is a mere several yen. Koike would not be able to turn a profit if the plant hadn't given the hotel the reputation of being eco-friendly. Needless to say, he's eager to see what will happen to electricity prices once a feed-in tariff is adopted next July.

About a 15-minute drive west from Mt. Kuroiwa is the Hacchobaru Geothermal Power Plant. It is the biggest plant of its kind, costing 37 billion yen to build and generating 110,000 kilowatts of electrical power with its two generators. Hot water and steam retrieved from a well that has been dug about 2,000 to 2,500 meters underground to a geothermal reservoir heated by magma power the plant's turbines.

Located adjacent to the main geothermal power plant is Japan's only geothermal binary power plant. Standard geothermal plants require steam and water at temperatures of 150 degrees Celsius or higher to function. However, because binary plants use pentane, an organic solvent that evaporates more easily than water with a boiling point of 36 degrees Celsius, they can be used in locations where extremely hot water and steam are unavailable. Japan's sole binary plant, which began its operations in 2006, has a relatively small power output of 2,000 kilowatts, but Kyushu Electric Power Co. officials anticipate that such plants will make the local production and consumption of energy possible.

The estimated geothermal power-generation capacity of volcano-dotted Japan is about 23.47 million kilowatts, the world's third highest behind the U.S. and Indonesia. Furthermore, Fuji Electric Co., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., and Toshiba Corp. comprise 70 percent of the world's share in geothermal power generators. Compared to solar-power and wind-power generation, which are easily affected by the weather, geothermal power plants have a consistently high operation ratio of around 70 percent.

Of the areas in Japan with abundant geothermal resources, 80 percent were designated as national parks or quasi-national parks prohibiting development, and many are located adjacent to hot spring resorts. A power industry insider says that local businesses strongly oppose the construction of geothermal power plants, citing fears that their hot springs will dry up. This explains why, despite favorable conditions for geothermal power generation in Japan, the country's 17 geothermal plants produce a mere 535,000 kilowatts total per year, or just 0.3 percent of all the electricity produced nationwide every year.

To address this conundrum, the government last June eased restrictions on development in national and quasi-national parks. Developers are now permitted to tap into geothermal resources underground if they drill diagonally into the ground from outside national and quasi-national parks, or take other steps to preserve the parks' landscapes.

Using diagonal-digging technology, Mitsubishi Materials Corp. and Tohoku Electric Power Co. in July began probing for geothermal resources below Towada-Hachimantai National Park, located next to Sumikawa Geothermal Power Plant in the Akita Prefecture city of Kazuno. According to a senior official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, there is growing momentum among private companies in the renewable energy business to create an "All-Japan" company dedicated to the development of geothermal power.

Click here for the original Japanese story

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ConocoPhillips admits discovery of nine new oil spill sources

English.news.cn   2011-08-21

BEIJING, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- ConocoPhillips China, a subsidiary of the U.S-based oil company ConocoPhillips, admitted Saturday that nine new oil spill sources have been found from its Penglai 19-3 oilfield Platform C.

The company reported to the North China Sea branch of the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) that it has discovered nine new oil spill sources from the areas within 15 meters north of the Platform C in China's Bohai Bay.

The SOA has asked the company to make a thorough investigation of the cause of oil spills to prevent similar cases.

The oil giant on Friday extended an apology for conduct that led to oil leaks in the Bohai Bay, pledging to accelerate its clean-up efforts and take measures to ensure that similar accidents will not happen in the future.

The company reported to authorities two oil spills in its Penglai 19-3oilfield in June. It admitted another two oil leaks earlier this month, with one from Platform C and the other from Platform B.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

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German 'guzzler' sets new record for electric cars

Deutsche Welle, 18 Aug 2011                                                   

The "Schluckspecht" has set a new
 record for distance on a single charge

As Germany drives forward on electric car promotion, one vehicle developed by German researchers has set a new world record for distance traveled on single battery charge.

In Germany, the new experimental car, "Schluckspecht," broke previous world records earlier this month when it traveled 1,631.5 kilometers (994 miles) on a single battery charge.

Developed by researchers at the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, the drive took just more than 36 hours, with four drivers taking shifts and traveling at about 45 kph.

Schluckspecht is a slang word meaning "guzzler," or "heavy drinker" in German.

"The first car we built was really a heavy drinker, we ran out of fuel before the finish line," Ulrich Hochberg, one of the project's leaders, told Deutsche Welle.

Shattering distance records

The electric car set a record in
South Africa in 2010

The team had considered changing the name – but after setting several world records, including by traveling 626.6 km on public roads in South Africa last year, "it's really become now a brand name," Hochberg chuckled.

The Offenburg team has been working on the "guzzler" since 1998.

The previous record for electric car travel on a single charge, on a circuit track, was 1,003 kilometers, set by the Japan Electric Vehicle Club in May last year.

The Schluckspecht record was made at the German industrial company Bosch's circuit track in Boxberg, southwestern Germany.

In October 2010, a German team drove an Audi A2 from Munich to Berlin on a single charge, setting a new long-distance record on actual roads.

Promoting electrical cars

The new electrical vehicle distance record comes at a time when the German government is pouring billions of euros into research and considering tax breaks for electrical car owners.

In May 2011, at a summit hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Berlin announced that it was aiming for one million electric vehicles on German roads by 2020, and would be doubling government spending on electric vehicle research to a total of 2 billion euros ($2.87 billion) by 2013. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has
 been pushing for more research into
electric cars

With this new distance record, it seems possible that overcoming one of the major hurdles to widespread adoption of electric cars – their small range of 200-300 kilometers – may now attract Germans who are used to driving great distances on the autobahn at high speed before filling up again.

Earlier this year, both BMW and Volkswagen announced that they intend to sell their first electric cars in 2013. Meanwhile, eight regions around Germany are working on building 2,500 charging stations to support the 2,800 test vehicles.

Mass production

Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, an automobile economist at the University of Duisburg-Essen, told Deutsche Welle that he doesn't see the new world record as a great breakthrough.

"These are individual items, prototypes," he said of such research projects. "What we need is mass production, economies of scale," Dudenhöffer said, adding that big steps have been made in this regard, including by companies such as Nissan and Mitsubishi.

However, despite what he sees as the limited usefulness of such research projects, he thinks they could act as a stimulus.

Environmentalists criticize electric cars as still requiring a charge from energy sources that may involve the burning of fossil fuels.

Liquid fuel will always give a longer ride than a battery-powered car, Hochberg explains, since it takes oxygen from the air for combustion, returning it to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

To him, "the only sense is to use energy from renewable fuel sources" if Germany wants to fulfil its goal of putting one million electric cars on the road by 2020.

"This is a political figure, used to promote investment," he added.

Super light and aerodynamic

The Schluckspecht chassis is based
on the bowstring concept

The Schluckspecht's success largely lies in its ultralight chassis, which replaces a base plate with a frame based on the bowstring concept, developed with the Fraunhofer Institute in Freiburg.

The vehicle, with a regular car seat for one driver, has motors integrated into the wheels. Without the need for an engine or transmission, the researchers were able to develop a particularly slim and aerodynamic shape.

There's even a little extra room for equipment, or as Hochberg put it: "You can put a case of beer into it."

Author: Sonya Angelica Diehn

Editor: Cyrus Farivar

Building a healthier, greener Google

Google Blog, 8/17/2011

(Cross-posted on the Green blog)

When it comes to greening our office buildings, we apply the same focus that we use for any of our products: put the user first. We want to create the healthiest work environments possible where Googlers can thrive and innovate. From concept through design, construction and operations, we create buildings that function like living and breathing systems by optimizing access to nature, clean air and daylight.

Since I arrived at Google in 2006, I’ve been part of a team working to create life-sustaining buildings that support the health and productivity of Googlers. We avoid materials that contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other known toxins that may harm human health, so Googlers don’t have to worry about the air they’re breathing or the toxicity of the furniture, carpet or other materials in their workspaces. We also use dual stage air filtration systems to eliminate particulates and remaining VOCs, which further improves indoor air quality.

Since building materials don’t have ingredient labels, we’re pushing the industry to adopt product transparency practices that will lead to real market transformation. In North America, we purchase materials free of the Living Building Challenge Red List Materials and EPA Chemicals of Concern, and through the Pharos Project we ask our suppliers to meet strict transparency requirements.

We also strive to shrink our environmental footprint by investing in the most efficient heating, cooling and lighting systems. Throughout many of our offices, we’ve performed energy and water audits and implemented conservation measures to develop best practices that are applied to our offices worldwide. To the extent possible, we seek out renewable sources for the energy that we do use. One of the earliest projects I worked on at Google involved installing the first solar panels on campus back in 2007. They have the capacity to produce 1.6 megawatts of clean, renewable electricity for us, which supplies about 30 percent of our peak energy use on the buildings they cover.

With a little healthy competition, we’ve gotten Google’s offices around the world involved in greening our operations. Our internal Sustainable Pursuit program allows teams to earn points based on their office’s green performance—whether it’s through green cleaning programs, water efficiency or innovative waste management strategies. We use Google Apps to help us track progress toward our goals—which meet or exceed the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards—and share what we’ve learned among our global facilities teams.

We’re proud of our latest LEED Platinum achievement for the interior renovation of an office building at the Googleplex. While we have other LEED Platinum buildings in our portfolio, it’s a first for our headquarters and a first for the City of Mountain View. The interior renovation was designed by Boora Architects and built by XL Construction, using healthy building materials and practices. In fact, we now have more than 4.5 million square feet of building space around the world on deck to earn LEED Certification.

Looking ahead, our team will have many more opportunities to redefine how we green our buildings and workspaces. It’s a win for Googlers, our business and the environment.

Posted by Anthony Ravitz, Green Team Lead, Real Estate & Workplace Services

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White House launches initiative to boost biofuel industry

English.news.cn   2011-08-17

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- The White House announced Tuesday that the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Energy and Navy will invest up to 510 million U.S. dollars in partnership with the private sector to facilitate the country's biofuel industry development.

"Biofuels are an important part of reducing America's dependence on foreign oil and creating jobs here at home," U.S. President Barack Obama said in a White House statement.

The initiative is a response to a directive from Obama issued in March as part of the Blueprint for A Secure Energy Future, the administration's framework for reducing dependence on foreign oil.

"But supporting biofuels cannot be the role of government alone. That's why we're partnering with the private sector to speed development of next-generation biofuels that will help us continue to take steps towards energy independence and strengthen communities across our country," Obama added.

The joint plan calls for the three departments to invest up to 510 million dollars in the next three years, which will require substantial cost share from private industry, in a bid to reduce U. S. reliance on foreign oil and create jobs at home.

"By building a national biofuels industry, we are creating construction jobs, refinery jobs and economic opportunity in rural communities throughout the country," said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

White House figures revealed that the world's largest economy spends more than 300 billion dollars on imported crude oil every year.

With a slackening economic recovery and the government's approval rate at a record low level, the Obama administration is rolling out a string of measures in recent days to accelerate economic growth and job creation.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

Shell fights North Sea oil spill

BBC News, 12 August 2011

Oil giant Shell is battling an oil leak in a North Sea pipeline off
the British coast (AFP/File, Shaun Curry)

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has said it is working to stop a leak at one of its North Sea oil platforms.

The company would not say how much oil may have been spilt from the Gannet Alpha platform though it said it had "stemmed the leak significantly".

One of the wells at the Gannet oilfield has been closed, but the company would not say if production was reduced.

Royal Dutch Shell is working to repair
a leak on a North Sea oil platform

The company says it has sent a clean-up vessel to the location and has a plane monitoring the surface.

The leak was found in a flow line connecting an oil well to the platform.

"We can confirm we are managing an oil leak in a flow line that serves the Shell-operated Gannet Alpha platform. We deployed a remote-operated vehicle to check for a subsea leak after a light sheen was noticed in the area," said a Shell spokesman.

"We have stemmed the leak significantly and we are taking further measures to isolate it. The subsea well has been shut in, and the flow line is being de-pressurised," he added.

'Finite amount'

The company confirmed the leak was continuing but said it was being significantly reduced.

A spokesperson for the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "We are aware of the incident and we are contact with Shell and we investigating it in the usual way but what we understand from Shell, the spill is limited.

"There is a finite amount of oil that can be released."

The entire Gannet field reportedly produced around 13,500 barrels of oil between January and April of this year.

The field is co-owned by US oil firm Exxon.

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Shell accepts liability for two oil spills in Nigeria
'No more excuses from Shell after UN report'

The impact of an oil spill near Ikarama in the Niger delta.
Photograph: Amnesty International UK

Shell accepts liability for two oil spills in Nigeria

Oil giant faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars following class action suit brought on behalf of communities in Bodo, Ogoniland

guardian.co.uk, John Vidal in Bodo, Wednesday 3 August 2011

The impact of an oil spill near Ikarama in the Niger delta.
Photograph: Amnesty International UK

Shell faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars after accepting full liability for two massive oil spills that devastated a Nigerian community of 69,000 people and may take at least 20 years to clean up.

Experts who studied video footage of the spills at Bodo in Ogoniland say they could together be as large as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, when 10m gallons of oil destroyed the remote coastline.

Until now, Shell has claimed that less than 40,000 gallons were spilt in Nigeria.

Papers seen by the Guardian show that following a class action suit in London over the past four months, the company has accepted responsibility for the 2008 double rupture of the Bodo-Bonny trans-Niger pipeline that pumps 120,000 barrels of oil a day though the community.

Ogoniland is a small region of the Niger delta which threw out Shell in 1994 for its pollution but then saw eight of its leaders, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed by the government.

The crude oil that gushed unchecked from the two Bodo spills, which occurred within months of each other, in 2008 has clearly devastated the 20 sq km network of creeks and inlets on which Bodo and as many as 30 other smaller settlements depend for food, water and fuel.

No attempt has been made to clean up the oil, which has collected on the creek sides, washes in and out on the tides and has seeped deep into the water table and farmland.

According to the communities in Bodo, in two years the company has only offered £3,500 together with 50 bags of rice, 50 bags of beans and a few cartons of sugar, tomatoes and groundnut oil. The offers were rejected as "insulting, provocative and beggarly" by the chiefs of Bodo, but later accepted on legal advice.

Shell's acceptance of full liability for the spills follows a class action suit bought on behalf of communities by London law firm Leigh Day and Co, which represented the Ivory Coast community that suffered health damage following the dumping of toxic waste by a ship leased to multinational oil company Trafigura in 2006.

Many other impoverished communities in the delta are now expected to seek damages for oil pollution against Shell in the British courts. On average, there are three oil spills a day by Shell and other companies working in the delta. Shell consistently blames the spills on local youths who, they argue, sabotage their network of pipelines.

"The news that Shell has accepted liability in Britain will be greeted with joy in the delta. The British courts may now be inundated with legitimate complaints," said Patrick Naagbartonm, coordinator for the Centre of Environment and Human Rights in Port Harcourt.

Later this week the company will be heavily implicated by the UN for the environmental disaster in the Niger delta which has seen more than 7,000 oil spills in the low lying swamps and farmland since 1989. Shell first discovered oil in the Niger delta in 1956. According to Amnesty International, more than 13m barrels of oil have been spilt in the delta, twice as much as by BP in last year's Gulf of Mexico spill.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report, funded by Shell, will be presented to president Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday and is expected to be released on Friday in London.

UNEP's report, the first peer-reviewed scientific study of more than 60 spills, is expected to say that oil pollution in Ogoniland is much worse than previously believed, having sunk deep into the water table. Many spills have not been cleared up since 1970 and the effects on the local economy, health and development have been severe. The report will not apportion blame for individual spills.

International oil spill assessment experts who have seen the Bodo spill believe that it could cost the company more than $100m to clean up properly and restore the devastated mangrove forests that used to line the creeks and rivers but which have been killed by the oil.

Proceedings against Royal Dutch Shell and Shell petroleum development company (SPDC) Nigeria began in the high court on 6 April 2011. Last week Shell Nigeria said: "SPDC accepts responsibility under the Oil Pipelines Act for the two oil spills both of which were due to equipment failure. SPDC acknowledges that it is liable to pay compensation - to those who are entitled to receive such compensation."

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