Nigeria: Oil giant Shell facing new pollution suits

Tens of thousands of Nigerian fishermen and farmers are suing multinational oil giant Shell in 2 new lawsuits filed Wednesday in a London High Court, alleging that decades of uncleaned oil spills have destroyed their lives.

London law firm Leigh Day & Co. is representing them after winning an unprecedented US$83.5 million in damages from Shell in a landmark ruling by the same court last year. Shell had originally offered the villagers US$50,000.

In a statement Wednesday before the trial opened, Shell blamed sabotage and oil theft for the ongoing pollution and noted it had halted oil production in 1993 in Ogoniland, the area where the 2 communities are located in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern Niger Delta.

The Ogoni are among the most affected of the millions of Nigerians suffering oil pollution since the late 1950s on a level that human rights activists say would never be allowed in the home countries of the multinationals that operate in Nigeria.

A 2011 report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) found that decades of oil pollution in Ogoniland region, may require the world’s biggest ever clean-up.

Leigh Day & Co. says that Shell, historically Nigeria’s largest producer, has failed to act on the report despite its promises – a claim that was also leveled last year by the new Buhari administration and Amnesty International.

The lawyers argued in a press statement that the Ogoni community continues to live with “chronic levels” of land and water pollution, which has had a devastating impact on its farming and fishing. In hearings expected to take place later this year, Shell will argue that the 2 cases should be heard in Nigeria, not in Britain, according to a spokesman for the company’s Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC.

Lawyers representing Shell have argued that the Ogoniland area is “heavily impacted” by oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining, activities which the oil company has long argued are the main causes of pollution in the Niger Delta.

Chima Williams, of Environmental Rights Action (ERA)/Friends of the Environment, a Nigerian environmental rights lobby group, said the response to the UN report did not address the issue of compensation. “This is why the London suit is very important at this point. It will bridge the gap in terms of helping the people of Ogoniland to get off the ground and have their lives back,” he told reporters.

Shell agreed in January 2015 to pay more than US$80 million to the Nigerian fishing community of Bodo for 2 serious oil spills in 2008, following a 3-year legal battle.

A Dutch court also ruled in December that 4 Nigerian farmers demanding compensation and a clean-up in four heavily-polluted Niger Delta villages can bring a case against the energy giant in the Netherlands.