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Nigeria: Villagers reject Shell oil spill compensation offer
Environmental Damage caused by oil spill. PHOTO/File
(Reuters) – Nigerian villagers on Friday rejected an offer of compensation from Royal Dutch Shell for damage done to their livelihoods by oil spills from pipelines operated by the company, their lawyers said.
Failure to reach a settlement means the Anglo-Dutch oil major and around 15,000 members of the Bodo fishing communities in southeastern Nigeria remain locked in litigation.
Their lawyers said they will now go back to court to request a trial timetable.
The legal action is being closely watched by the oil industry and by environmentalists for precedents that could have an impact on other big pollution claims against majors.
“We haven’t reached agreement on compensation, which is disappointing,” a spokesman for Shell’s Nigeria unit said. “Nonetheless, we’re pleased to have made progress in relation to cleanup,” he added, saying measures had been put in place to get remediation work done as soon as possible.
A source close to Shell and another source involved in the negotiations told reporters, that the company offered total compensation of 7.5 billion naira (US$46.3 million).
Leigh Day, the law firm representing the villagers, said the compensation offer amounted to approximately US$1,700 per individual impacted, without giving the number of people it says were affected. “The whole week has been deeply disappointing,” said Martyn Day a partner in the law firm, who has been in talks with Shell since Monday in Nigeria’s oil hub Port Harcourt.
