Managing Director of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), Mr. Mutiu Sunmonu
A
Dutch court ruled on Wednesday that Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigerian
subsidiary was responsible for a case of oil pollution in the Niger
Delta and ordered it to pay damages in a decision that could open the
door to further litigation.
Reuters reported that the
district court in The Hague said Shell Petroleum Development Company of
Nigeria Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, must
compensate one farmer, but dismissed four other claims filed against the
parent company.
Four Nigerians and campaign group,
Friends of the Earth, filed suits in 2008 in The Hague, where Shell has
its global headquarters, seeking reparations for lost income from
contaminated land and waterways in the Niger Delta region, the heart of
the Nigerian oil industry.
The case was seen by environmental
activists as a test for holding multinationals responsible for offences
at foreign subsidiaries, and legal experts said other Nigerians affected
by pollution might now be able to sue in the Netherlands.
Shell said the case would not set a precedent because its parent company was not held responsible.
The farmer, who won compensation,
52-year-old father of 12, Friday Akpan, said he was very happy with the
judgment because it would allow him to repay his debts.
“I am not surprised at the decision
because there was divine intervention in the court. The spill damaged 47
fishing ponds, killed all the fish and rendered the ponds useless,” he
told Reuters in Port Harcourt.
“Since then, I have been living by God’s
grace and on the help of good Samaritans. I think this will be a lesson
for Shell and they will know not to damage people’s livelihoods,” he
said.
A legal expert said the ruling could
make it possible for other Nigerians, who said they also suffered losses
due to Shell’s activities, to file lawsuits in the Netherlands.
“The fact that a subsidiary has been
held responsible by a Dutch court is new and opens new avenues,” said
Menno Kamminga, professor of international law at Maastricht University.
The court did not just examine the role
of the parent company, but also looked “at abuses committed by Shell
Nigeria, where the link with the Netherlands is extremely limited,” he
said. “That’s a real breakthrough.”
Friends of the Earth spokesman, Geert
Ritsema, said the body would appeal against the acquittals “because
there is still a lot of oil lying around. These sites need to be
cleaned.”
Ritsema said hundreds of other Nigerians in the village of Icot Ada Udo, where Akpan lives, could now take similar legal action.
The court backed Shell’s argument that
the spills were caused by sabotage and not poor maintenance of its
facilities, as had been argued by the Nigerians.
Ritsema said it was also new that an oil company was being held responsible for failing to prevent sabotage.
There were 198 oil spills at Shell
facilities in the Niger Delta last year, releasing around 26,000 barrels
of oil, according to data from the company. The firm says 161 of these
spills were caused by sabotage or theft, while 37 incidents were caused
by operational failure.
Local communities say Shell under reports the amount of barrels spilled.
People who live in the Niger Delta say
their land, water and fisheries have been blighted for years by oil
pollution and activists have called for oil companies in Nigeria to be
held to the same standard as elsewhere in the world.
Shell is facing ongoing legal action
brought in a UK court on behalf of 11,000 members of the Bodo community,
also in the Niger Delta, who say the company was responsible for
spilling 500,000 barrels in 2008.
Shell has admitted liability for two
spills in the Bodo region but estimates the amount spilled is far lower.
The case could be heard in the High Court in London next year.
A United Nations report in 2011 on the
Ogoniland region criticised Shell and other multinationals, and the
Nigerian government, for 50 years of oil pollution.
It said Ogoniland, where Shell no longer
operates, needed the world’s biggest-ever oil clean-up, which would
take 25 years and cost an initial $1bn.
A decade of militancy by armed groups in
the Niger Delta, which had its origins in local anger over oil
pollution, shut down nearly half of Nigeria’s oil output until an
amnesty in 2009. The Niger Delta is home to about 31 million people.
“We will pay compensation. We didn’t
lose the case. It was not operational failure. The leak was the
consequence of sabotage,” Royal Dutch Shell’s vice president for
environment, Allard Castelein, said in comments after the verdict was
read.
“Shell Nigeria should and could have
prevented this sabotage in an easy way,” the court ruling said. “This is
why the district court has sentenced Shell Nigeria to pay damages to
the Nigerian plaintiff.”
Castelein said Shell would negotiate the
amount of damages with the farmer, but that an appeal could postpone
the outcome of those talks.
The fishermen and farmers said they
could no longer feed their families because the region had been polluted
by oil from Shell’s pipelines and production facilities.
The pollution is a result of oil spills in 2004, 2005 and 2007, they said.
It is the first time a Dutch-registered
company has been sued in a domestic court for offences alleged to have
been carried out by a foreign subsidiary.
The suit targeted Shell’s parent company
in the Netherlands and its Nigerian subsidiary, which operates a joint
venture between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Shell,
Total E&P Nigeria Limited and Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited.
Shell Nigeria is the largest oil and gas
company in the country, Africa’s top energy producer, with an output of
more than one million barrels of oil or equivalent per day.
In October, Shell lawyers said the
company had played its part in cleaning up the Delta, which accounts for
more than 50 per cent of Nigeria’s oil exports.
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