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Court sentences Shell Nigeria to pay damages for environmental degradation
“We will pay compensation. We didn’t lose the case. It was not operational failure. The leak was the consequence of sabotage,” Royal Dutch Shell’s vice president for environment, Allard Castelein, said in comments after the verdict was read.
“Shell Nigeria should and could have prevented this sabotage in an easy way,” the court ruling said. “This is why the district court has sentenced Shell Nigeria to pay damages to the Nigerian plaintiff.”
Castelein said Shell would negotiate the amount of damages with the farmer, but that an appeal could postpone the outcome of those talks.
The Nigerians – fishermen and farmers – said they could no longer feed their families because the region had been polluted by oil from Shell’s pipelines and production facilities.
The pollution is a result of oil spills in 2004, 2005 and 2007, they said.
It is the first time a Dutch-registered company has been sued in a domestic court for offences alleged to have been carried out by a foreign subsidiary.
The suit targeted Shell’s parent company in the Netherlands and its Nigerian subsidiary, which operates a joint venture between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Shell, Total E&P Nigeria Limited and Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited.
