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Court sentences Shell Nigeria to pay damages for environmental degradation
Ritsema said it was also new that an oil company was being held responsible for failing to prevent sabotage.
There were 198 oil spills at Shell facilities in the Niger Delta last year, releasing around 26,000 barrels of oil, according to data from the company. The firm says 161 of these spills were caused by sabotage or theft, while 37 incidents were caused by operational failure. Local communities say Shell under reports the amount of barrels spilled.
People who live in the Niger Delta say their land, water and fisheries have been blighted for years by oil pollution and activists have called for oil companies in Nigeria to be held to the same standard as elsewhere in the world.
Shell is facing ongoing legal action brought in a UK court on behalf of 11,000 members of the Niger Delta Bodo community, who say the company is responsible for spilling 500,000 barrels in 2008. Shell has admitted liability for two spills in the Bodo region but estimates the amount spilled is far lower. Bodo’s case could be heard in the High Court in London next year.
A United Nations report in 2011 on the Ogoniland region in the Niger Delta criticized Shell and other multinationals, and the Nigerian government, for 50 years of oil pollution.
It said Ogoniland, where Shell no longer operates, needed the world’s biggest-ever oil clean-up, which would take 25 years and cost an initial US$1 billion.
A decade of militancy by armed groups in the Niger Delta, which had its origins in local anger over oil pollution, shut down nearly half of Nigeria’s oil output until an amnesty in 2009. The Niger Delta is home to about 31 million people.
