Shell
Shell Nigeria’s Managing Director discusses oil spills on CNN:
Environmental Lawsuit Against Shell in the Netherlands for Niger Delta Pollution
On December 30, 2009 a civil court judge in the Hague ruled that Royal Dutch Shell can be sued in the Netherlands—its corporate headquarters—for pollution it caused in Nigeria.
Four Nigerian villagers and Friends of the Earth Netherlands (Milieudefensie) brought the claim, forcing Shell to face up to charges of environmental and social damage it has caused in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Estimated damage from pipeline spills and gas flaring caused by the oil industry as a whole amounts to up to $20 billion, according to a variety of independent organizations. Royal Dutch Shell is the largest oil company operating in Nigeria.
The case charges Shell with environmental degradation arising from its oil operations in the village of Oruma, where a high-pressure wellhead spewing oil and gas ran uncontained for 12 days, polluting land and drinking water in nearby communities, with “clean-up”—comprised of dumping toxic waste into pits and burning them—beginning four months later. Shell also faces claims for damage in Goi, where in 2005, Shell’s Trans-Niger pipeline caught fire and destroyed farmland and homes and polluted fisheries, with the mess remaining for 33 months, as well as for an enforcement action of a court order against Shell to stop the illegal practice of gas flaring, which the federal high court of Nigeria declared a violation of human rights in 2005.
The first substantive hearing, which pertains to the Oruma oil spill, is slated to begin in the Hague Civil Court tentatively in spring 2010.
Royal Dutch Shell continues to deny responsibility for, and contest jurisdiction abroad over, its actions in Nigeria.
Read more here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/30/shell-oruma-alleged-pollution-claim
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8434736.stm
Wiwa vs. Royal Dutch Shell
Case Settled on June 8, 2009 for $15.5 Million to be paid out to 10 plaintiffs and cover their legal costs. $5 million will be used to create the Kiisi Trust to benefit the Ogoni people
Read Press Release and statements from the plaintiffs Attorney’s
Read Press Release from Shell Guilty Campaign
The Campaign to End Gas Flaring Continues – Take Action Now
On November 10, 1995 internationally recognized peace activist Ken Saro Wiwa along with 8 of his colleagues from Ogoniland – a small ethnic community in the Niger Delta – were hanged by a military tribunal after they were convicted on trumped up charges. Wiwa was fighting for the Ogoni peoples’ rights regarding the environmental and economic destruction of their land due to Shell’s oil extraction in the region.
Watch this video that detailed the case against Shell.
Wiwa v Shell was settled on June 8, 2009 for the sum of $15.5 million. This is considered a victory for the plaintiffs, the Ogoni people and those working to hold the extractive industry accountable for their role in human rights abuses throughout the world.
Go to ShellGuilty.com to learn about Shell’s atrocities and climate crimes
Go to WiwavShell.org for more information on the cases.
Learn about Shell’s Gas Flaring and Take Action to stop it
For a good summary of the situation surrounding Ken Saro Wiwa’s death click here. This account was written in 1997 by staff from Project Underground, a group that worked on holding the extractive industry accountable in the 1990’s and early 2000’s and who traveled to Nigeria.
Download the full report written by Project Underground staff
View a fact sheet about the case.
View a fact sheet about Shell’s environmental abuses in the Delta
For additional resources on Ken Saro Wiwa and the attention his death received worldwide go to:
Shell
Royal Dutch Shell, the 3rd largest company in the world, is a Dutch company with their headquarters in London. Last year Shell earned record profits of over $31 billion.
Shell was the first oil company to extract oil from the Niger Delta in 1956 and operates in Nigeria under the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) – the largest private sector oil and gas company in the country.
Shell extracts between 700,000 and 1 million barrels of oil per day from Nigeria depending on levels of instability in the region equating to nearly half of Nigeria’s daily oil extraction.
Shell boasted their ’success’ in Nigeria in a briefing note issued in 2008 to ‘celebrate’ 50 years of extracting oil in Nigeria. According to the briefing, SPDC’s operations in the Niger Delta are spread over some 30,000 square kilometers and include a network of over 6,000 kilometers of flowlines and pipelines, 90 oil fields, 1,000 producing wells, 73 flowstations, eight gas plants and two major oil export terminals at Bonny and Forcados.
What they do not say is that most of the 6,000 kilometers of pipeline snake through local communities throughout the Delta above ground, and are old, rusted and constantly break, leaking oil into drinking water and the creeks where villagers fish, wash their clothes and fetch water for cooking. Shell does not reveal that those communities were never asked if the company could operate on its land nor were they compensated. And throughout the region Shell is burning gas flares some of which have burned 24 hours a day, seven days a week for over 40 years causing major respiratory problems, cancer and acid rain that has corroded roofs of houses and destroyed crops.