Nigerian communities file claims against Shell for devastating oil spills

Over 13,000 residents from the Ogale and Bille communities in Nigeria file claims against Shell for devastating oil spills

The group register in the Ogale claim has now been filed and 11,317 Ogale individual claims have been issued at the High Court. Together with the existing Bille individual claims, overall 13,652 people are bringing individual claims against Shell.

Shell has now filed a legal Defence in which they claim that the communities do not have the legal right to enforce clean-up against Shell.

The Ogale and Bille communities in the Niger Delta have been engaged in litigation against Shell for seven years. The severe oil pollution in the communities is ongoing and no clean-up has taken place. There have been 55 new oil spills in the Ogale community since September 2011.

The legal case against Shell on behalf of the Bille and Ogale communities from the Niger Delta has taken a significant step forward following the filing at the High Court in London of the Ogale group claim register. The group claims register confirms that 11,317 people and 17 institutions (including churches and schools) from Ogale are seeking compensation for loss of livelihoods and damage against the oil giant. These claims are in addition to the 2,335 Bille individual claims which were issued at the High Court in 2015.

In addition to the individual claims there are also two representative actions, one for each community, which seek compensation for damage to communally owned property. This remedy would benefit all members of the communities living with the chronic pollution, even where they have not sustained individual losses. In Ogale the total population is around 40,000 people and in Bille it is around 15,000 people.

The communities have had their way of life devastated by the spills and are asking for Shell to clean up their oil and compensate them for their loss of livelihoods as their ability to farm and fish has been largely destroyed.

The claims which have now been filed provide detail as to the nature of the harm the residents of Ogale and Bille have suffered and continue to suffer. In 2011, the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland reported, after a three-year detailed study, how the Ogoni people were exposed to severe oil contamination on a daily basis, impacting their water sources, air quality, and farmland. UNEP recommended that urgent steps should be taken to ensure the largest terrestrial clean-up operation in history and found that there was “an immediate danger to public health”. Shockingly, 12 years on, the communities remain polluted, no clean-up has occurred and their residents are still drinking from poisoned wells.

In Ogale, the emergency clean water system has not functioned for the past five years. The majority of the residents do not have access to clean water given that the groundwater and aquifer under the Ogale community is severely polluted.

In Bille, the community’s drinking water is also polluted and the oil has killed most of the fish and shellfish in the rivers, leaving Bille’s fishing population without a source of food or income. This has caused a fundamental shift in the way of life of the Bille community; a people who were previously heavily focused on fishing are no longer able to fish.

Now the group register has been filed at court, the next stage in the case is for a case management hearing to be set in Spring 2023, ahead of the full trial which is likely to occur the following year. Read More from original source