Related Subpoenaed Fossil Fuel Documents Reveal an Industry Stuck in the Pastĭespite the fact that the cleanup would cost Shell a fraction of its profits - the U.N. (The Nigerian government could not be reached for comment.) 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. 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. The following November, Shell filings claimed the company had no legal responsibility to deal with the consequences of spills. parent company, was legally responsible for the pollution caused by its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company, and that the case would proceed in the English courts. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that there was a “good arguable case” that Shell plc, the U.K.
In February 2021, though, the Niger Delta communities secured a procedural win: The U.K. Shell has so far managed to brush aside accountability. “It’s like we are living in a desert, while we are living on the water.” “If you don’t have money, you can’t drink water,” he said. The only way to avoid disease is buying bottled water from the city, which is expensive. In Bille, Chief Bennett Dokubo, a community leader and claimant, told The Intercept that drinking water has caused massive cholera outbreaks. In 2016, a year after the initial legal case got underway, Okpabi flew to London for a High Court hearing with plastic bottles full of contaminated water from Ogale, visibly covered in an oil sheen. It’s like we are living in a desert, while we are living on the water.” “If you don’t have money, you can’t drink water. “As we speak, oil is spilling in my community every day, people are dying,” King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi, leader of the Ogale community, told The Intercept. Infants in the Niger Delta, for instance, are twice as likely to die in their first month of life if their mothers live near an oil spill, according to a study published in 2017. The Ogale and Bille locals attribute environmental destruction, death, and diseases to the repeated spills. With the existing claims from the Bille community, this brings the total number against the oil company to over 13,650.
On January 27, over 11,300 residents from Ogale - which has a population of approximately 40,000 - and 17 local organizations, including churches and schools, filed individual claims at the High Court in London against Shell. Amnesty International called the Niger Delta region “one of the most polluted places on earth.”
Shell refused to cooperate, and the situation has only gotten worse, with 55 oil spills in the last 12 years.
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