ABUJA A year after the U.N.

. Environment Programreported Ogoniland, Nigeria, should be the site of the biggest oil spill clean-up in history, activists say it is still not clear who will pay for it or when it will happen. While the oil company and the government argue about money, people say they are getting sick and dying. Oil was first discovered in Nigeria in the 1950s in Ogoniland, a part of the Niger Delta. In the 1990s, after nearly 40 years of oil spills destroying peoples livelihoods and health, the people forced oil-giant Shell out of Ogoniland. But today, oil still flows into the land from pipes that criss-cross the region. Citizens' concerns At a community center in Oleh, a town in neighboring Delta State, Lizzy Ologe, a primary school teacher, says oil pollution is still literally killing people. "Our water is polluted. Our health is in hazard form. In fact, we have high mortality rates, especially our little children. We no longer live to old age," said Ologe. Early this week, Ogoni leaders met with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to urge the government implement the recommendations of the U.N. study, which showed the damage to be worse than anyone had thought. The study found families drinking water with 900 times the carcinogens considered safe by the World Health Organization and as much as eight centimeters of oil floating in groundwater associated with six-year-old spills. Who would pay? The study called for a 25- to 30-year clean up funded initially with $1 billion, but it did not say who should pay. This problem has thwarted efforts to clean up oil spills in the Niger delta for decades. The government says the oil companies should do it. The oil companies agree, but say they need government help, blaming sabotage and regional insecurity for most of the spills. Shell accepted liability for two major oils spills that devastated a community of nearly 70,000 people in Ogoniland last year, but locals say the area is still drenched in oil. On its website, Shell admits that maybe, some of their spill assessments have not gone deep enough, so spill areas they have restored are not really cleaned up. In his office in the oil city of Warri, lawyer Onyinye Gandhi says both Shell and the government are responsible The government is responsible for making sure the oil companies compensate spill victims and pay for environmental recovery.

"I think the only thing that has to be done is to attract government attention to the point that government will begin to hit a level of loss to hold these oil companies to account for the environmental degradation and devastation they have visited on the Niger Delta and its people over time," said Gandhi. At the beginning of August, the U.N. Environmental Program praised the Nigerian government for again announcing it plans to implement the clean-up the report recommended. But Ogoni leaders this week said nothing yet appears to be happening.
Source: http://www.voanews.com/content/nigerians-demand-oil-spill-clean-up/1507316.html

Two Nigerian government agencies say the multinational oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell must pay Nigeria $11.5 billion in compensation for an oil spill in December 2011.

The agencies, in charge of environmental protection affairs, told a parliamentary hearing on Thursday that Shell should compensate for damage caused by an oil spill at its offshore Bonga field. Shell has taken responsibility for the spill, but it says there is no legal basis for the Nigerian demand. The oil company has also said it is ready to carry out a post-impact assessment to determine the environmental effects of the spill. The giant oil and gas company argues that on-shore damage was the result of a different spill, and that Shell was not responsible for that incident. We are going to do post-impact assessment to determine the effect on the environment. By May the contractor would get to the site and by the third quarter of the year the job would be concluded, said Chike Onyejekwe, managing director of Shells offshore Nigeria unit. We cannot do or say anything now until we do the post-impact assessment study. We have received over 300 letters of claims and we are replying to them. The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) told Nigerias national assembly that Shell should pay $5 billion as a fine for environmental damage. The oil leak in 2011, which was one of the biggest in the history of Nigeria, caused roughly 40,000 barrels to spill into the Gulf of Guinea.

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has also sought $6.5 billion as compensation for 100 communities it says were affected onshore. Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/03/28/295515/shell-must-pay-nigeria-115bn-for-spill/

Nigerian farmers have asked a court in the Netherlands to rule that the oil company Shell is liable for poisoning their fish ponds and farmland with leaking oil pipelines. The case could set a precedent for holding multinationals responsible for their actions overseas. Shell has argued that the case, which began in 2008, should be heard inNigeria. Lawyers for the Nigerians argue that policy decisions by Shell are made at its headquarters in The Hague and that means The Hague civil court can rule in the case. Just hHow much Shell would face in compensation and clean-up costs would be addressed at a separate hearing if the court rules in favour of the farmers. Villagers and Friends of the Earth say leaks from Shell's pipeline fouled fish ponds, farmland and forests in three villages in the Niger Delta: Goi, Oruma and Ikot Ada Udo. "If you are drinking water you are drinking crude, if you are eating fish, you are eating crude, if you are breathing, you are breathing crude," one of the farmers, Eric Dooh, told reporters outside the court. "What I expect today is justice," he added. "I expect that judges are going to tell Shell to apply international standards where they are operating in Nigeria." Villagers blame the leaks on the corrosion of pressurised underground pipes. Shell claims they were caused by sabotage and says its local subsidiary cleaned up the damage. An earlier Dutch court ruling accepted Shell's assertion that the leaks were caused by sabotage, but lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that the pipe was seriously corroded. "Shell did not do enough to prevent the oil spreading and damaging the plaintiffs' land," the villagers' lawyer, Channa Samkalden, told the court. "Shell did not act as a careful oil company." Shell's lawyer Jan de Bie Leuveling Tjeenk said Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC, cleans up oil spills including those caused by sabotage in the Niger Delta even though it is not legally bound to do so and invests in replacing ageing pipelines. Shell's local subsidiary remains the top foreign oil producer in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta, a region of mangroves and swamps about the size of Portugal. Its production forms the backbone of crude production in Nigeria, a top supplier to the gasoline-thirsty US. Shell, which discovered and started the country's oil well in the late 1950s, remains demonised by activists and local communities over oil spills and close ties to government security forces. Some Shell pipelines in the delta are decades old. Shell, however, began effort in the last decade to build clinics, roads and even natural gas power plants for the region. The company blames most spills now on thieves who tap into crude oil pipelines to steal oil.A judgment in the case is expected late this year or early in 2013.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/11/nigerian-farmers-sue-shell-dutch

Shell was acquitted in a Dutch court on Wednesday morning of most of the charges against it for pollution in Nigeria, where disputed oil spills have been a long-running source of contention between the oil company, local people and environmental campaigners. The case involved five allegations of spills in Nigeria, and four of these were quashed by the court. On the fifth count, Shell was ordered to pay compensation, of an amount yet to be decided. The case was brought in the Netherlands because of Shell's dual headquartership, being both Dutch and British, and was brought by four Nigerian farmers co-sponsored by the international green campaigning group Friends of the Earth. In a statement, Friends of the Earth Netherlands said: "This verdict is great news for the people in lkot Ada Udo who started this case together with Milieudefensie [Friends of the Earth Netherlands]. But the verdict also offers hope to other victims of environmental pollution caused by multinationals. At the same time, the verdict is a bitter disappointment for the people in the villages of Oruma and Goi where the court did not rule to hold Shell liable for the damage. Fortunately, this can still change in an appeal." Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty International's Africa programme director, said: "Clearly it's good news that one of the plaintiffs in this case managed to clamber over all the obstacles to something approaching justice. However, the fact that the other plaintiffs' claims were dismissed underscores the very serious obstacles people from the Niger Delta face in accessing justice when their lives have been destroyed by oil pollution." Shell's subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, said the main cause of oil spills in the country was from people taking oil for illegal refineries. Mutiu Sunmonu, managing director of SPDC said: "We welcome the court's ruling that all spill cases were caused by criminal activity. Oil pollution is a problem in Nigeria, affecting the daily lives of people in the Niger Delta. However, the vast majority of oil pollution is caused by oil thieves and illegal refiners. This causes major environmental and economic damage, and is the real tragedy of the Niger Delta." He added: "SPDC has made great efforts to raise awareness of the issue with the government of Nigeria, international bodies like the UN, the media and NGOs. We will continue to be at the forefront of discussions to find solutions. For SPDC no oil spill is acceptable and we are working hard to improve our performance on operational spills. In the past years we have seen a decline in operational spill volumes. These spills, however, were caused by sabotage and the court has, quite rightly, largely dismissed the claims." The case turned on whether Shell was responsible for the spills, through negligence and a failure to invest in proper safety systems of the kind that are required in developed countries, as the campaigners alleged, or whether as Shell argued the spills were mainly the result of local people attempting to steal oil from pipelines. It is understood that the court took the view that four of the spills were caused by sabotage, as people tried to extract oil for their own purposes. In the case of the fifth, the finding was that Shell had been negligent in failing to prevent such sabotage. But the farmers and green campaigners are expected to appeal against the verdict to a higher court. Shell is accused of widespread spills across the regions of Nigeria where it operates, but the allegations in question concerned incidents in Goi, Ogoniland, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom.

"There is an atmosphere of celebration here the community feels that some justice has been done," said Ken Henshaw, a Niger Delta activist from campaign group Social Action which has closely followed the case. "A precedent has been set, it has been made known that shell can be liable for damages and loss of livelihood." "We didn't win all the cases, but we won one, and that one is a precedent," Henshaw added. "We are prepared to appeal the other ones. Shell tries to give the impression that the oil spills are caused by sabotage, but we are convincied that it was not sabotage. It is the result of equipment failure and neglect on the part of Shell." "We are emboldened by this victory, we feel confident that we will definitely succeed on appeal. This is a major threshold, now that we have crossed it, we can bring more claims. The communities who have had their lives ruined by oil companies now feel galvanized to take action." Plantiffs from Ikot Ada Udo, Akwa Ibom State, whose case was successful, said they were now looking forward to compensation for their loss of livelihood. "We were successful today, and I am happy, I know that the judgment has been divinely directed," said Elder Friday Akpan, 55, from the Ikot Abasi area of Akwa ibom state, whose 47 catfish farms were destroyed following pollution from an oil spill, a claim which the court upheld as caused by a breach of Shell Nigeria's duty of care. "The fishes died completely. I was confused because it left me completely empty," Akpan added. "I did not have some money to pay school fees for my twelve children, and nothing to allow me to earn my livelihood again. Debts I had borrowed I could not repay. There was nothing for me. I was finished." One lawyer involved in the case said that it was right to see it as a victory. "There are positives and negatives from this case," said Prince Chima Williams, head the legal affairs department at the Environmental Rights Action group. "It is positive in the sense that the court has found Shell liable for the environmental destruction in Akwa Ibom State. It is positive because it means that Nigerian citizens can now drag Shell to court in Holland for its actions and inactions in their communities." "The negative aspect is that the court refused to agree with us Shell's negligence caused the other oil spills. Because we disagree with the court on that position, and that is why our first priority now is going to be to appeal the judgment," Williams added. The case has cast a spotlight on the power which Shell wields in Nigeria, amidst allegations that the Nigerian authorities would not have enforced the judgment had the case been brought in local courts. "Shell do not admit mistakes," said Akpan. They would not obey a judgment in a Nigerian court. When they know that the judgment is in Holland it's better." "We considered all the options and the history of litigation in Nigeria before deciding to take the case to Holland," said Williams. "We could not have confidence in the judiciary in Nigeria because, coming from our experience, when the judiciary gives a judgment, the enforcement of that judgment by the executive becomes a problem."

"Shell is a very stubborn company, and in Nigeria, in some situations, it is more powerful than the Nigerian government," Williams added. Activists believe that the case will have a longer-term effect on attitudes within communities affected by oil spills in Nigeria. "In the long run a case like this will promote self-help among communities, because they know that if they know they can go to court in Holland, they can obtain a judgment that will be complied with, from which they can reap the benefits" said Williams. The level of damages is yet to be determined. "In the case itself we didn't make specific demands for an amount, so the next step will be for the community to assist the court with an assessment of the actual loss that should be compensated," said Williams

Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/30/shell-acquitted-nigeria-pollutioncharges