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Shell to pay US$100M in 21 days to Nigerian farmers, communities affected by 1970 oil spill
Kaieteur News – According to the community lawyer for the Ejama-Ebubu people, Lucius Nwosu Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell will pay the affected people 45.7 billion Naira (US $110.9 million) in compensation to put an end to a legal case that began in 1991. “They ran out of tricks and decided to come to terms,” the lawyer said. “The decision is a vindication of the resoluteness of the community for justice.”
Shell approached a court in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, on Wednesday to disclose the development, he said. Shell will pay the agreed sum within 21 days, Nwosu added.
The payment “is for full and final satisfaction” of a court judgment issued against the company 11 years ago, a spokesman for Shell Nigeria said by email. The decision is the latest involving Nigeria’s oil-producing south where communities have long fought legal battles over oil spills and environmental damage.
extent of environmental damage caused by a Nigerian oil spill
According to energy news website Energyvoice, the origin of the community’s grievance against Shell dates back to a rupture in one of the firm’s pipelines in 1970. Shell said it maintains that the environmental damage was caused by “third parties” during a civil war that was raging at the time. While the joint venture that Shell operates “does not accept responsibility or liability for these spills, the affected sites in the Ebubu community were fully remediated,” the company said.
In 2010, a federal court ordered Shell to pay 17 billion Naira to the community. The oil major unsuccessfully challenged the decision on multiple occasions, including most recently at the Supreme Court in November. In March 2020, a judge in a related court case said that, with interest accrued, Shell’s debt stood at nearly 183 billion Naira by January 2019 – a valuation, the company vehemently contested. After a 13-year legal battle, a Dutch court in January this year ordered Shell to compensate Nigerian farmers for spills that polluted much of their land in the Niger Delta.
The court ordered Shell to compensate three out of four farmers who lodged the case in 2008. The case has dragged on so long that two of the Nigerian farmers have died since it was first filed.
In February, Shell initiated arbitration proceedings against the Nigerian government at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes following its unsuccessful attempts to overturn the 2010 ruling. Shell didn’t say in its statement if it will withdraw the claim.
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