Abandoned fishing boats sit on the ground as crude oil pollution covers the shoreline of an estuary in B-Dere, Ogoni, Nigeria, on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2020. Nigerians from the delta are now asking British judges to allow them to sue Royal Dutch Shell Plc in London over the environmental damage caused by oil spills. Photographer: George Osodi/Bloomberg
Shell ordered to pay Ogoni farmers €15m for oil spills
Damages awarded after environmental group Friends of the Earth brought the case in a Dutch court
Shell said on Friday it will pay €15million to Nigerian farmers to compensate them for damage from pipeline leaks.
A Dutch appeals court ruled last year, following 13 years of legal battles, that Shell’s Nigerian branch must pay out for a series of leaks and that the parent company must install new pipeline equipment to prevent further devastating spills.
Shell said on Friday that it had reached a deal with the Dutch environmental group Milieudefensie that has helped the affected communities.
“Under the settlement, The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC) as operator of the SPDC joint venture, will pay an amount of EUR 15 million for the benefit of the communities and the individual claimants,” it said in a statement.
The deal also confirms the installation of a leak detection system on 20 pipeline segments in accordance with the Dutch court ruling and that remediation work has been completed.
Despite acknowledging that the settlement follows up on the Dutch court ruling, the oil firm said the agreement “is on a no admission of liability basis, and settles all claims and ends all pending litigation related to the spills”.
Four Nigerian farmers and fishermen sued Shell in the Netherlands to pay for cleaning up spills from its pipelines in the Niger Delta.
They were aided by Milieudefensie, the Dutch branch of Friends of the Earth.
Shell has always attributed pollution to sabotage and said it had cleaned up affected areas.
The legal battle has lasted so long that the original farmers have now all died, but their survivors and the affected communities pushed on.
“It is a great relief to all of us that after the years of legal battle with Shell, we will soon be recipients of this money as compensation for all we have lost,” said Eric Dooh, one of the current plaintiffs.
Milieudefensie’s director Donald Pols said the settlement will allow the plaintiffs and their communities to finally get on with their lives.
But he said it also has a wider significance.
“If we look at the court case as a whole, the major gain is that a new standard has been set: companies will no longer be able to get away with pollution and with ignoring human rights,” he said.
“Now they can be called to account.”
