The Supreme Court of Britain on Tuesday heard an appeal from more than 40,000 Nigerians from the Ogale and Bille Communities in the Niger Delta seeking to pursue claims against the oil multinational, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) over record spills in the region, rich in black gold.
Worried that the case may drag on for years in Nigerian courts, members of the two communities largely comprised of farmers and fishermen filed a mega suit against Shell at the British apex court.
The communities took their case to the English courts on the basis that RDS headquartered in London, is legally responsible for the environmental failures of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), a subsidiary of RDS. Leigh Day is representing the two Nigerian communities in claims against RDS and SPDC.
The Tuesday’s appeal re-opens the possibility of British multinationals being held liable at home for their subsidiaries’ actions abroad. It comes after a setback in 2018 when a London court ruled that the claims could not be pursued in England.
A judgement is expected later this year or in early 2021, an official of the court said.
The Ogale and Bille communities allege Shell’s oil operations have polluted their land and waters.
Leigh Day, the law firm representing the farmers and fishermen, said the communities were seeking justice through British courts because cases heard in Nigeria can take decades to resolve.
The main question for British courts is whether they have jurisdiction over claims against Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company, which is jointly operated with the Nigerian government.
Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary has said “claims by Nigerian communities against a Nigerian company about events in Nigeria should be heard in Nigeria and not the UK”.
The subsidiary claims the spills are chiefly due to oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining.
The UK Supreme Court ruled last year that Zambian villagers had the right to sue Indian-listed mining company Vedanta in England. The Vedanta decision was frequently cited in Tuesday’s hearing, as lawyers for the Nigerian communities and Shell contested whether the cases were similar.
The court proceedings to date have focused on the question of whether the parent company–Royal Dutch Shell can be sued in the English courts for damage caused by its Nigerian subsidiary.
In 2020 alone, Shell has been facing series of court battles in European nations over the conduct of its business operations in Africa’s largest oil producing nation — Nigeria.
Oil spills and pollution from Shell’s operations and their devastating effect on Niger Delta citizens over many decades have been widely documented, including by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in 2011, which recommended an urgent Clean-Up of the ravaged sites.
In related development, recall The New Diplomat had last week reported that 10 years after UNEP recommended measures for the clean-up of Ogoniland and other contaminated areas in the Niger Delta, a new report has unveiled the failures of successive administrations at the federal level since 2010 to properly implement the Clean-up program.
The report also condemned the involvement of shell in the clean-up as conflict of interest continues to dog the $1billion Clean-up project.
Nigerian administrations over the years had failed to decontaminate the devastated sites amid many empty claims by political leaders.
The report by three International NGOs revealed that despite government’s claims, work has only begun in about 11% of the planned sites while the vast areas remaining are still heavily contaminated.
