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niger delta
'Long-Overdue' Trial to Begin After Decades of Shell Polluting Nigeria
"The spills have terribly affected the Bille community," said one Nigerian plaintiff. "Our ecosystems are dead. Our livelihood depends on fishing."
Feb 10, 2025
After years of delay tactics, Shell is set to go on trial in London this week over claims that hundreds of spills caused by the fossil fuel giant have destroyed Nigerian communities and violated their residents' rights to a clean and healthy environment.
Critics say Shell has managed to avoid accountability for despoiling the environment in and around Bille and Ogale communities in the Niger Delta. Ten years ago, residents of these communities sued Shell, claiming inhabitants' livelihoods, homes, and environment had been devastated by Shell oil spills, which killed fish and vegetation and left thousands of people without access to clean drinking water.
As Bille and Ogale communities attempted to fight London-based Shell in U.K. courts, the company repeatedly delayed the case, claiming it was not legally liable for the pollution caused by its subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria. However, in 2021 the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that the High Court should hear the case, and last December, the country's Court of Appeals allowed it to be heard.
"The Bille and Ogale communities of Nigeria's Niger Delta oil-producing region have been living with the devastating impact of oil pollution for so long," Amnesty International Nigeria director Isa Sanusi said in a statement Monday. "Oil companies, particularly Shell, exposed them to multiple oil spills that have done permanent damage to farmlands, waterways, and drinking water—leaving them unable to farm or fish."
Ten years ago, residents from the Bille and Ogale communities in Nigeria claimed their livelihoods had been destroyed by hundreds of oil spills caused by Shell. The pollution caused widespread devastation to the local environment and left thousands without access to clean drinking water.
— Amnesty International (@amnesty.org) February 10, 2025 at 4:00 AM
"Water contamination and other impacts affect even babies that are in some cases born with deformities," Sanusi added. "These communities have been deprived of a good standard of living. They deserve justice and effective remediation, and I hope this long-overdue trial goes someway to providing it."
In 2023, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled in a separate but related case that it was too late for Nigerian plaintiffs to sue a pair of Shell subsidiaries over a 2011 spill of an estimated 40,000 barrels of oil.
Amnesty International has called the Niger Delta "one of the most polluted places on Earth."
Accountability has been rare, but in 2021 Shell agreed to pay $111 million for oil spills in the Niger Delta. This, in a year in which the company reported adjusted 2020 earnings of nearly $5 billion.
Last December, Nigeria's Ministry of Petroleum Resources approved Shell's sale of $2.4 billion in offshore and shallow-water assets to Renaissance Group, a Nigerian firm, marking the end of nearly a century of Shell's operations in the African nation. The Nigerian government is also currently in talks with local communities about resuming oil production in Ogoniland, which has been devastated by spills over the past half-century.
Responding to the U.K. Court of Appeals' greenlighting of the case set to be heard later this week, Bille Chief Bennett Okpoki said in December that "this has taken a very long time as Shell has been delaying for around 10 years."
"The spills have terribly affected the Bille community," he continued. "Our ecosystems are dead. Our livelihood depends on fishing. After the oil spills, we have found it very difficult to survive and people are not finding it easy. We hope it continues, so we can have a final victory over Shell, at least for them to come and do the cleanup, to put us in the place we were before."
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'People Are Dying': Nearly 14,000 Nigerians Sue Shell Over Devastating Oil Spills
"At a time when Shell is making unprecedented profits, it is high time that it addressed the ongoing pollution caused to these communities by its operations," said one attorney representing plaintiffs from the Niger Delta.
Feb 02, 2023
More than 13,650 Nigerians have filed claims against Shell for years of unremedied oil spills that are causing ecological destruction, disease, and death.
As The Intercept reported Wednesday: "Niger Delta communities have been facing pollution caused by Shell for decades, devastating their health and livelihoods. In 2011, the United Nations Environment Programme reported that the threat to public health warranted 'emergency action.' At the time, the cleanup process would have taken 30 years, if initiated immediately."
"It never happened," the investigative outlet noted. "Shell refused to cooperate, and the situation has only gotten worse, with 55 oil spills in the last 12 years. Amnesty International called the Niger Delta region 'one of the most polluted places on earth.'"
Last Friday, 11,317 residents from Ogale—a rural community in Nigeria home to roughly 40,000 people—and 17 local groups filed individual claims against Shell at the High Court of Justice in London, where the company is headquartered. They joined 2,335 of their fellow citizens from Bille—an island community of around 15,000 people where fish have virtually disappeared—who had already filed individual claims against the oil giant at the High Court in 2015.
Individual claimants are seeking compensation for loss of livelihoods. In addition, class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of Ogale and Bille inhabitants in October 2015 and December 2015, respectively, are seeking compensation for damages to communally owned property, including waterways, farmland, and public infrastructure.
British law firm Leigh Day, which is managing all four cases together, said Thursday in a statement that the communities want Shell to clean up their mess and pay up for destroying local residents' ability to farm and fish, which has left many with no source of income.
"If you don't have money, you can't drink water. It's like we are living in a desert, while we are living on the water."
"As we speak, oil is spilling in my community every day," King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi, leader of the Ogale community, told The Intercept. "People are dying."
Chief Bennett Dokubo, a community leader from Bille, told the outlet that drinking water contaminated by Shell has led to major cholera outbreaks. Avoiding disease depends on one's ability to purchase expensive bottled water from the city.
"If you don't have money, you can't drink water," he said. "It's like we are living in a desert, while we are living on the water."
Shell executives have so far managed to avoid accountability during the seven-plus years the Ogale and Bille communities have been engaged in litigation against them.
In February 2021, however, plaintiffs scored a procedural victory when the United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled unanimously that there was "a good arguable case" that Shell plc, the parent company in London, was legally responsible for the pollution generated by its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). The court ordered the case to proceed to trial to determine whether Shell and SDPC are guilty of harming the Niger Delta communities and should pay for redress.
In response, Shell argued in its November 2021 defense filing that "the company had no legal responsibility to deal with the consequences of spills," The Intercept reported. "The oil giant contended that any legal claim must be brought within five years of any specific spill, even if a cleanup never took place. Shell also claimed that only the Nigerian regulatory authorities have the power to force them to clean up; those authorities, however, are chronically under-resourced."
Leigh Day warned Thursday that Shell's legal arguments, if successful, "will have far-reaching consequences." As the law firm explained: "The implications of these legal arguments are that oil-impacted communities in Nigeria will be unable to seek cleanup of their environments. In addition, communities would be unable to claim compensation for loss of livelihoods unless they are able to prove the damage was caused by operational failure within five years of the date of issuing the claim. For most Nigerian communities living with legacy pollution, that would essentially deprive them of any legal remedy against oil companies."
Conversely, Bloomberg reported that "if the oil giant loses the upcoming trial, it could open U.K.-incorporated firms—including in the energy and mining industries—to potentially costly lawsuits in British courts from groups around the world that accuse them of harm through overseas subsidiaries."
Matthew Renshaw, a partner at Leigh Day who represents the Nigerian claimants, lamented that "instead of engaging with these communities, Shell has fought them tirelessly through the courts for the past seven years."
"At a time when Shell is making unprecedented profits, it is high time that it addressed the ongoing pollution caused to these communities by its operations," said Renshaw. "The question must be asked whether Shell simply plans to leave the Niger Delta without addressing the environmental disaster which has unfolded under its watch?"
"It appears that Shell is seeking to leave the Niger Delta free of any legal obligation to address the environmental devastation caused by oil spills from its infrastructure over many decades."
Shell reported Thursday that its profits more than doubled in 2022 to a record $40 billion.
All the money Shell has made from exploiting the Niger Delta's people and environment since it discovered oil in the area in 1956 "is blood money," Okpabi, the king of Ogale, told The Intercept. "And we are going from courthouse to courthouse."
Although cleanup would cost Shell a fraction of its annual profits—roughly $1 billion for the first five years, according to a recent U.N. estimate—Renshaw told the outlet that the company has been "incredibly resistant" to any form of public health oversight or probes, adding that it is vulnerable to much more litigation.
"There are literally hundreds of communities that have been impacted by Shell's oil pollution," he said, "and could seek to bring legal claims against Shell."
As the cases against it mount, Shell has moved toward abandoning the region. The company announced in 2021 that it plans to leave the Niger Delta and sell its onshore oil fields, leaving wrecked communities and ecosystems in its wake.
Last June, however, "Shell was forced to suspend sales, complying with a Nigerian Supreme Court ruling that said it had to wait for the outcome of an appeal over a 2019 oil spill, brought in Nigerian court, which stated the company needed to pay the Niger Delta communities nearly $2 billion in compensation," The Intercept noted.
Regarding Leigh Day's current case, the full trial in London's High Court is expected to occur in 2024.
"This case raises important questions about the responsibilities of oil and gas companies," said Leigh Day partner Daniel Leader.
"It appears that Shell is seeking to leave the Niger Delta free of any legal obligation to address the environmental devastation caused by oil spills from its infrastructure over many decades," Leader observed. "At a time when the world is focused on 'the just transition,' this raises profound questions about the responsibility of fossil fuel companies for legacy and ongoing environmental pollution."
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'Devastated Lives': Shell Sued Again over Catastrophic Spills in Nigeria
Two new lawsuits say Shell is liable for oil spills that have destroyed livelihoods, contaminated water supplies, and rendered some wetlands 'lifeless' in the fragile ecosystem
Mar 02, 2016
Royal Dutch Shell must pay for the lives and livelihoods destroyed by the decades-long deluge of oil spilled from its pipelines in the Niger Delta, two lawsuits filed in London on Tuesday charged.
"Shell has an appalling record of obfuscation and misinformation with regard to its dealings in the Niger Delta," said Peter Frankental, director of Amnesty International's UK Economic Affairs Programme.
Shell's pipelines traverse the fragile Niger Delta ecosystem--and humanitarian groups last year drew attention to the company's decades-long efforts to cover up, rather than fix, its myriad pipeline failures.
The two latest cases were filed on behalf of the Bille and Ogale communities in the Ogoniland region. The British firm behind the lawsuits, Leigh Day, charged that Shell's pipeline infrastructure is in such bad shape that continual oil spills "caused, and continue to cause, long-term contamination of the land, swamps, groundwater and waterways" in the Ogale community.
It also claimed that pipeline breakages have destroyed the livelihood of the 13,000 residents of Bille, who traditionally fish to sustain themselves, and that the spills have grown so extensive that residents "have even been forced to stack sandbags outside their homes to try to prevent oil entering their properties."
This week's lawsuits follow an unprecedented PS55 million ($77.4 million) settlement Shell paid out in 2015 to residents of the region's Bodo community for spills that occurred in 2008.
"In papers filed in the UK court prior to [the 2015] settlement," Amnesty International wrote in a recent briefing (pdf), "Shell admitted that its previous and often repeated assertions regarding the volume of oil spilled and area affected were substantially incorrect."
"Court documents also revealed that internal emails and reports showed that senior Shell employees had expressed concern as far back as in 2001 of the need to replace oil pipelines in the Niger Delta," the humanitarian group wrote, "describing some sections as containing 'major risk and hazard.'"
Amnesty International's briefing warns investors of the UN-declared "public health emergency" created in the region by decades of spills and negligence, pointing out the company's liability in claims such as the suits filed this week and laying out a case for divestment from Shell.
The Niger Delta "has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless," the New York Times reported back in 2010.
A Times editorial from 2014 details the darkest moments of Shell's 60-year presence in the region, a legacy the newspaper's editorial board characterizes as "devastating":
Shell discovered oil in Nigeria in 1956, and, ever since then, the people of Ogoniland have suffered from air, land and water pollution. The United Nations study found cancer-causing benzene present in drinking water at 900 times the World Health Organization guidelines. Shell stopped drilling in Ogoniland in 1993 after local protests, but its pipelines still cross the region. The 1995 sham trial and execution of celebrated activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others who had protested oil exploitation in Ogoniland remains one of the darkest blots on Nigeria's history.
"We hope that the Bodo case and this new lawsuit will spur Shell on to accept its responsibilities by cleaning up the oil spills," Frankental said, "and compensating those in the Niger Delta whose lives have been devastated by them."
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