UK court to deliver judgment in Shell’s oil spill case with Bodo community on Friday
Just as the Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday said it is still maintaining the force majeure declared on Bonny Light facilities, a Court in London will deliver judgment on Friday in a case filed by lawyers for the Bodo community in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta.
Legal team for the Bodo community in Rivers State, which was devastated by two major oil spills a decade ago, had approached a London High Court to fend off what they said was an attempt by Shell to kill off their litigation.
Business Hilights gathered that the Bodo oil spills have been the subject of years of legal wrangling.
In 2015, Shell accepted liability for the spills, agreeing to pay £55m ($83m at the time) to Bodo villagers and to clean up their lands and waterways.
However, after years of delays, the clean-up in Bodo is currently underway and litigation in the London High Court is stayed, or on hold.
During the hearing, lawyers for Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, the Nigerian arm of Shell, argued on Tuesday that the litigation should be struck off in October 2018, or at the latest a year later, and that it should only be re-activated if the SPDC failed to comply with its obligation to pay for the clean-up.
But the community lawyers in their arguments said it was unacceptable, because the clean-up could go wrong for any number of reasons and that under Shell’s proposal, the villagers would be left without the recourse of going back to court.
Dan Leader, Bodo community’s lead counsel, averred that “The effect of what Shell is trying to do is to kill off the case,” adding, “It’s only because of the pressure of litigation that the clean-up is getting back on track.”
In defence, Shell’s solicitors cited an earlier judgment, compared the stayed litigation to a “gun in the cupboard” that the Bodo community’s lawyers wanted to be able to hold to Shell’s head at their convenience, for years on end.
Oil spills, sometimes due to vandalism, sometimes due to corrosion, are common in the Niger Delta, a vast maze of creeks and mangrove swamps criss-crossed by pipelines and blighted by poverty, pollution, oil-fuelled corruption and violence.
The spills have had a catastrophic impact on many communities where people have no other water supply than the creeks and rely on farming and fishing for survival.
After years of delays, the clean-up in Bodo is currently underway and litigation in the London High Court is stayed, or on hold.
Lawyers for the Bodo community said that was unacceptable, because the clean-up could go wrong for any number of reasons and that under Shell’s proposal the villagers would be left without the recourse of going back to court.
Experts say Friday’s verdict will set a standard on how best to handle issues of spills in producing community going forward.
