In a landmark trial brought against the Royal Dutch Shell Plc.,
Europe’s largest oil company in a Dutch court by Nigerian farmers and
campaign group Friends of the Earth, a verdict has been reached finding
Shell guilty in one case and dismissing the four others.
The suits was filed in 2008 at The Hague, where Shell has its global
headquarters, seeking damages for lost income from contaminated land and
waterways in the Niger-Delta region, where Nigeria’s oil industry is
sited.
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.
“Shell Nigeria has been sentenced to pay damages in one of the
cases,” Henk Wien, judge of the District Court of The Hague, said today.
“In the four cases as regards an oil spill in 2004 near the village of
Goi and as regards an oil spill in 2005 near the village of Oruma, Shell
Nigeria had taken sufficient precautions to prevent the sabotage from
its underground pipelines.”
The farmer who won compensation, 52-year-old father of 12 Friday
Akpan, said he was very happy with the judgment because it would allow
him to repay his debts.
“I am not surprised at the decision because there was divine
intervention in the court. The spill damaged 47 fishing ponds, killed
all the fish and rendered the ponds useless. “Since then I have been
living by God’s grace and on the help of good Samaritans. I think this
will be a lesson for Shell and they will know not to damage people’s
livelihoods,” he said in the Niger Delta city of Port Harcourt.
However, the other claimants who lost were dissatisfied with the ruling.
Friends of the Earth spokesman Geert Ritsema said they would appeal
against the acquittals “because there is still a lot of oil lying
around. These sites need to be cleaned.”
Ritsema said hundreds of other Nigerians in the village of Icot Ada
Udo, where farmer Friday Akpan lives, can now take similar legal action.
He also said it was also new that an oil company was being held
responsible for failing to prevent sabotage.
Shell, in its own reaction, said the case would not set a precedent because its parent company was not held responsible.
“We’re satisfied with the outcome, but none of this helps resolve the
local situation which is serious because of the sabotage,” Allard
Castelein, Shell’s vice-president for environment, told reporters at the
court. “It’s too early to say whether we will appeal, we will study the
ruling, but I don’t think this will give us reason to appeal.”
“We will pay compensation. We didn’t lose the case. It was not
operational failure. The leak was the consequence of sabotage,” he
added.
“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.”
It had before the judgement claimed that the oil spills were caused
by acts of sabotage which it repaired and cleaned up the spills and that
the court lacks jurisdiction to rule on the liability of a unit that is
based in Nigeria, which the court agreed with, and not poor maintenance
as argued by the claimants.
A legal expert said the ruling could make it possible for other
Nigerians who say they also suffered losses due to Shell’s activities to
file lawsuits in the Netherlands.
“The fact that a subsidiary has been held responsible by a Dutch
court is new and opens new avenues,” said Menno Kamminga, professor of
international law at Maastricht University.
The court did not just examine the role of the parent company, but
also looked “at abuses committed by Shell Nigeria, where the link with
the Netherlands is extremely limited,” he said. “That’s a real
breakthrough.”
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.
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.
Shell Nigeria is the largest oil and gas company in Nigeria, Africa’s
top energy producer, with an output of more than 1 million barrels of
oil or equivalent per day.
In October, Shell lawyers said the company has played its part in
cleaning up the Delta, which accounts for more than 50 percent of
Nigeria’s oil exports.
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