Nigeria lifts ban on Halliburton over missing radioactive substances

Nigeria has lifted a ban on the local subsidiary of US multinational oil services company Halliburton, after the recovery of high-risk radioactive substances stolen from the country, Nigerian newspapers reported Tuesday.

Nigeria imposed an indefinite ban on the award of contracts in 2003 to the Halliburton Energy Services Nigerian Ltd. (HESNL) for its negligence leading to the loss and its refusal to "cooperate with government authorities in ensuring the return" of the substances.

Shamsideen Elegba, head of the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority, however, was quoted as saying that the missing radioactive substances were not stolen by Halliburton but "was stolen from Halliburton and exported out of the country as scrap metal."

Those who stole the radioactive materials had been "tracked down" and the materials had been brought back to the country, Elegba noted.

Therefore, "the ban we placed on Halliburton in March 2003 was lifted last month," he added.

The materials, which contained Caesium-137, reported missing while in transit between the Nigerian oil cities of Warri and Port Harcourt by the HESNL on December 3, 2002.

And eventually, they were found in a Germany steel recycling plant. But the German government refused Nigeria's request to repatriate the materials and instead returned them to Halliburton, which moved them to the United States in January in 2004, further incurring the anger of the Nigerian government.

Halliburton, founded in 1919, is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industries.

Source: Xinhua