A three-week civil hearing began this morning at the Royal Courts of Justice, with oil giant Shell plc accused of the devastation of two Niger Delta communities due to hundreds of oil spills. Tens of thousands of people comprising the Ogale and Bille communities have been left with hazardous drinking water, and contaminated fishing and farming areas, caused they say by Shell’s infrastructure.
This will be a ‘preliminary issues trial’, which will determine the scope of a further trial set for late 2026, but it is a key moment in a long legal battle which began a decade ago. UK-based Shell plc and its Nigerian subsidiary SPDC are being pursued for proper clean-up and compensation (in accordance with existing international standards) to bring an end to chronic pollution and environmental destruction in the Delta. A win would be a first against a UK multinational accused of breaching a community’s human rights due to environmental pollution.
This preliminary hearing will decide whether a private company can be sued for human rights violations under the Nigerian Constitution and the African Charter On Human And People’s Rights. It would also determine whether there is any time constraint on such claims.
Shell blame much of the pollution on local oil theft (known as ‘bunkering’), but the court will decide whether they have done enough to combat this, and to what extent they remain liable. Community representatives say that Shell makes no effort to protect their equipment, using old technology, that often fails, while in Western countries they install modern safety and security.
The multinational also wants to extricate itself from any legal responsibility by passing the buck onto the Nigerian subsidiary SPDC, refusing to offer any remedy or compensation to the Niger Delta communities.
In 2021 a Supreme Court decision ruled that there is “a good arguable case” that Shell should be liable for the actions of its Nigerian subsidiary. All this is in the context of Shell’s 70-year history of oil extraction in the area which has earnt them billions of pounds of profit. The oil giant is continuing to make unprecedented global profits ($40 billion in 2021) despite warnings from climate scientists, the International Energy Agency, the United Nations, and very many representatives of the Global South.
Ogale community leader King Okpabi attended the court today and held up a bottle of their contaminated drinking water, daring people to smell it. Studies have found carcinogenic benzene in water at levels 900 times the World Health Organisation limit. He spoke about how as a young boy, he would pick the plentiful fruit on his way to school, and how Shell was welcomed into the community before anyone realised they would be slowly poisoning them and destroying their way of life for ever. Now, there is no fruit for his children.
“To be at the High Court in London to finally see Shell face a trial after the years of pollution we believe it has caused in our community is a very significant moment for myself and for all the people of Ogale. However, back home in Ogale, the spills have destroyed our land and our livelihoods and continue to affect our lives every day.”
Chief Bennett Okpoki from the Bille community said that:
“For years, Shell has tried to delay this case and to evade responsibility for the damage we believe it has caused in our community. We hope this trial will be a big step forward in our long fight for justice for the oil pollution which we believe Shell is responsible for.”
Amnesty International have described the potential for this case “to spell the end of a long chapter of impunity for Shell and other multinationals who commit human rights abuses overseas.”
The Niger Delta communities are represented by Leigh Day, who describe the trial as a key moment in the battle for justice for the long-suffering communities of the Niger Delta “in the face of Shell’s repeated attempts to block and delay the legal process”.
