giant of causing widespread pollution.After 13 years of legal wrangling, an appeals court in The Hague ruled
that Shell’s Nigerian branch must pay out for oil spills on land in two
villages.
It also held the Anglo-Dutch parent company Royal Dutch Shell liable for
installing new pipeline equipment to prevent further devastating spills
in the Niger Delta region.
The case, backed by the Netherlands arm of environment group Friends of
the Earth, has dragged on so long that two of the Nigerian farmers have
died since it was first filed in 2008.
“The court ruled that Shell Nigeria is liable for the damage caused by
the spills. Shell Nigeria is sentenced to compensate farmers for
damages,” judge Sierd Schaafsma said.
The amount of damages would be determined later, the court said. It did
not specify how many of the four farmers would receive compensation.
The farmers first sued Shell in 2008 over pollution in their villages
Goi, Oruma and Ikot Ada Udo, in southeastern Nigeria.
A lower court in the Netherlands found in 2013 that Shell should pay
compensation for one leak but that Shell’s parent company could not be
held liable in a Dutch court for the actions of its Nigerian subsidiary.
But in 2015 the Hague appeals court ruled that Dutch courts did indeed
have jurisdiction in the case.
On Friday, the court ruled that Shell Nigeria must pay compensation for
the leaks at Goi and Oruma.
“In the Uruma cases, Shell Nigeria and… Royal Dutch Shell are ordered to
equip the pipeline with a leak detection system so that environmental
damage can be limited in the future,” the court said.
Shell Nigeria should have shut down oil supplies on the day of the spill
in the cases in Goi, it said.
The court said it needed more time to resolve the case of Ikot Ada Udo,
saying that the leak was due to sabotage but it was not clear whether
Shell could still be held liable for it, and for cleaning up.
“For the inhabitants of the Niger Delta it is crucial that their land is
cleaned up and their lost crops and livelihoods are compensated by the
guilty party: Shell,” Donald Pols of Friends of the Earth Netherlands
said in a statement ahead of the case.
Shell has always blamed all of the spills on sabotage and said it has
cleaned up with due care where pollution has occurred.
At a hearing last year lawyers for the farmers showed gushing and
burning oil spills as well as villagers dragging their hands through
water sources, their hands streaked with the substance afterward.
Nigeria was the world’s ninth-largest oil producer in 2018, pumping out
volumes valued at some $43.6 billion (37 billion euros), or 3.8 percent
of total global production.
In a separate case in the Netherlands, the widows of four Nigerian
activists executed by the military regime in the 1990s have accused
Shell of complicity in their deaths.
Shell also faces a landmark legal bid to force it to meet emissions
targets in the Paris climate accords, brought by several environmental
groups in the Netherlands led by Friends of the Earth in 2019.