Friends of the Earth NL has started a legal case against Shell, jointly with four residents of the Niger Delta, with the aim of restoration of the damage done to the area’s nature, fish ponds and agricultural lands, and to provide compensation. Answers to many questions on the case can be found here.
1. Who are the victims of the oil pollution?
2. Why is there so much oil pollution in Nigeria?
3. Why is the spilled oil not cleaned up properly?
4. Why is the pollution Shell’s responsibility?
5. Why Shell and not the other oil companies in Nigeria?
6. Isn’t corruption in Nigeria the real reason for the problems?
7. Why are only four farmers involved in the legal case?
8. Why haven’t the plaintiffs brought their cases to the Nigerian court?
9. Could all Nigerians who have suffered damages start legal cases in The Hague in the future?
10. What did the legal case achieve for the villagers?
Frequently asked questions about the compensation (december 2022):
Following a lawsuit that lasted 15 years, Nigerian farmers and their communities are to receive compensation from Shell. The payment is compensation for the contamination in their villages by oil. But how was the payment determined? And has the problem of oil pollution been resolved? We answer these and other questions below.
11. How was size of the compensation payment determined?
12. Is 15 million euros enough?
13. How many people will receive compensation?
14. Will the verdict in this case prevent new spills?
15. Will the leak warning system prevent new spills?
16. Has the issue of oil pollution now been resolved?
17. Will Milieudefensie be starting a new lawsuit on oil spills in Nigeria?
18. Who paid the legal costs?
19. You have another lawsuit against Shell, how is that going?
20. Was the result a cause for celebration?
More than 30 million people live in the Niger Delta, the region in Nigeria with the most oil reserves. Although the oil under their feet is worth many billions, the majority of the region’s residents live in poverty.
Many of these 30 million people have become poorer and unhealthier as a result of oil pollution. Most people are dependent on crops from their fields or orchards, their fishing ponds or gathering forest products. Widespread oil pollution has made this difficult or impossible for millions of people.
In many places, oil pollution has led to severely polluted ground and surface water, the main water source for many. Drinking this water makes people sick, but bottled water is too expensive for many people.
So far, eleven million of barrels of oil have been spilled in the Delta, twice the amount that was spilled during the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. New spills still occur weekly.
Both theft and poor maintenance are major reasons for the spills. It cannot be said for certain how much damage is caused by theft and how much by wear, because no reliable records are kept on the causes.
However, it has been established that Shell trivializes cases of poor maintenance while it inflates cases of sabotage and theft. During a legal case in England, it was revealed that Shell had withheld for years information about a pipeline that was in critical need of replacement, resulting in two major spills in 2008 and 2009 in the village of Bodo.
Furthermore, Shell has the legal obligation to adequately protect its pipelines from sabotage. Evidence is available, however, which shows that Shell often does not provide protection or does so inadequately.
In regions where Shell personnel are not allowed to go because it is unsafe for them, Shell pumps oil through old, worn-out pipelines with no consideration of the serious risks for area residents.
Shell hires non-qualified people to clean up the oil, with improper instructions. UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Program, concluded after a thorough investigation that Shell’s clean-up methods are completely inadequate.
This investigation also showed that leaked oil often has penetrated to a depth of five metres into the ground and leaks into the groundwater – whereas Shell’s clean-up methods consist of digging up the top layer of earth, piling it up and setting it on fire.
Thus, most of the spilled oil remains for decades in the land and in the water of the Niger Delta.
In the lawsuit that Milieudefensie and the 4 Nigerian farmers have brought against Shell, according to our lawyers, the spills are the result of wear – deterioration of the pipelines. Shell is legally responsible for this kind of spill, because it is obliged to prevent or repair the deterioration.
Spills also occur that are beyond Shell’s legal liability, mostly as the result of sabotage or theft. In those cases Shell has the obligation to clean up the spilled oil, but by law the company is not required to compensate victims financially. However, Shell could also prevent sabotage in most cases, with proper security and by building up a good relationship with the local people, something that Shell often neglects to do.
In 2021 we won the lawsuit. Shell was found liable.
We called on Shell to take its responsibility in the first place because it is (was until recently) a Dutch company. Furthermore, Shell is the largest foreign oil company in the joint venture producing oil in the Niger Delta, in which Total and Agip among others are also represented. As operator of the joint venture, Shell is responsible for the day-to-day oil production operations, maintenance, etc.
Corruption is a major problem for Nigerians. The government earns billions on oil production but local residents of the Niger Delta hardly receive any benefits from this at all.
Shell cannot end corruption in Nigeria, but Shell could improve its own conduct. Frequently, the company does not adhere to Nigerian law, international environmental standards or even its own environmental standards and business principles. If it did, most of the spills would be prevented and Shell would clean up the pollution properly. Corruption or not, the Niger Delta would be a lot better off.
Because in the Dutch legal system, individuals can only start a lawsuit if they have suffered concrete damage through the ‘culpable actions’ of another. Culpable action means that the party could have acted properly but neglected to do so.
The four Nigerian farmers who undertook the lawsuit with us have suffered demonstrable damage from Shell. That is why we were taking legal action with these four individuals. Now they have won their case, it will become easier for other people in the affected villages to bring claims for damages against Shell as well.
Two of them did bring their cases to a Nigerian court but the legal processes in their own country are lengthy and not transparent, so Shell Nigeria is able to constantly intervene in the process.
In Nigeria, there are many options for multinationals with sufficient funds to hire expensive lawyers to delay legal proceedings indefinitely. Moreover, our plaintiffs have more faith in the independence of the courts in the Netherlands and therefore in a fair trial.
Now these farmers have won their cases, it is expected to lead to more cases. But a flood of cases is not likely. It is extremely time-consuming and very expensive to take a large oil company to court. We especially hope that Shell and other oil companies will become more careful and make more of an effort to prevent damage to people and the environment, because they know that they could be taken to court in Europe.
People in the villages want to live a good and healthy life without the threat of sickness and poverty caused by oil pollution. That’s why the key demands in the legal case were for better maintenance and better security of the oil installations. This was achieved.
Oil pollution has robbed the Nigerian plaintiffs of a good, healthy and safe life. Nothing can live in their fishing ponds, their orchards have died and nothing can grow on their agricultural lands any longer. That is why they wanted compensation. This also was achieved.
Following a lawsuit that lasted 15 years, Nigerian farmers and their communities are to receive compensation from Shell. The payment is compensation for the contamination in their villages by oil. But how was the payment determined? And has the problem of oil pollution been resolved? We answer these and other questions below.
At the request of the communities, we negotiated the settlement with Shell. The Nigerian farmers and their communities agreed to the settlement.
You can always ask yourself if a monetary payment is enough. At the request of the communities, we negotiated the settlement with Shell. The Nigerian farmers and their communities agreed to the settlement.
The village communities have chosen to allow everyone to benefit from the settlement. That is around 7,000 people. A sizeable portion of the payment will be used for community projects.
The verdict sets a precedent. From now on, other people in similar situations will be able to invoke this verdict and demand the same treatment. Consequently, Shell and other companies feel the threat of new lawsuits. They sense that it will be increasingly difficult for them to get away with pollution, human rights violations and climate damage. Besides a financial settlement for the victims in this case, that is what this case has achieved.
In addition to this, the leak warning system that the court ordered Shell to install will limit the consequences of future spills. You can imagine that other villages are now also keen to have such a system.
Shell installed a leak warning system by order of the court. This system detects spills far more quickly, mitigating the effects of any such spill.
This lawsuit covered four spills at three villages. Here a settlement has been reached and a leak warning system installed. However, there are thousands of other villages in Nigeria which are in the same situation, and sadly this lawsuit will not bring any immediate change for them. Because of oil pollution, women in the Niger Delta are twice as likely to suffer a miscarriage as women elsewhere in the country, and infant mortality is also twice as high. Farmers and fishermen who were once able to earn a decent living are left empty handed after years of contamination. Yet in the long term, this lawsuit will certainly be of benefit to more people.
>Read more about oil pollution and its consequences
We have no plans at the moment.
Milieudefensie invested a lot of its own funds in the case, money it received from its members, donors and benefactors. Legal costs were part of the settlement. At the end of the day, almost 15 million euros will go to the communities.
That’s right, in May 2021 Milieudefensie won in the Climate Case against Shell. The court ordered Shell to reduce its carbon emissions in 2030 by 45% (compared to 2019). That was a historic verdict. Shell is now appealing the court ruling. This appeal will probably come up for hearing in 2023 or early 2024.
>Read more about the Climate Case
We are happy that the case has finally been concluded and that the villagers in Oruma, Goi and Ikot Ada Udo have received a kind of justice. We look back with pride on a period of 15 years in which the farmers, their communities and Milieudefensie never faltered in their commitment to each other. This is something we will certainly be celebrating.
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