Three years after the official release of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report of 2011 which recommended the immediate clean-up of the crude oil-polluted Ogoniland, a High Court in the United Kingdom (UK) recently ruled that Shell could be held responsible for the entire oil pollution including the oil spills caused by the criminal act of illegal oil bunkering, owing to its failure to adequately maintain and secure its oil pipelines.
In a legal action filed by a London law firm, Leigh Day, on behalf of 15,000 Nigerian fishermen and the Bodo Community in Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State which was devastated by the oil spills of 2008 and 2009, it was argued that Shell had a legal responsibility to protect its pipeline infrastructure given the foreseeable risk of pipeline vandalism and illegal oil bunkering.
Shell had always maintained that although there has been a colossal loss of crude oil through spillage in Ogoniland and some other oil-producing communities, it was only liable for a small percentage of the spills. Shell claimed that a larger percentage of the oil spillage was not caused by its equipment failure or operational activities during oil extraction, but by the criminal practices of illegal pipeline hacking, oil theft and artisanal refining, which it refused to accept responsibility for.
In the judgement delivered on Friday, June 20, 2014, the President of the Technological and Construction Court, London, Justice Robert Akenhead, declared that Shell could be legally liable for the environmental degradation caused by oil spillage, owing to its failure to take reasonable steps in maintaining and protecting its pipelines from vandalism. While emphasising the reasonable extent to which Shell should have gone at securing its pipelines, he stated that, the “protection could well usually involve informing the police of this and possibly facilitating access for the police if requested. Other examples may also fall within the maintenance requirement such as renewing protective coatings on the pipeline or, with the advent of new and reliable technology, the provision of updated anti-tamper equipment which might give early and actionable warning of tampering with the pipeline”.
The judgement which makes Shell liable for the mass oil spill that has occurred for decades in several communities across the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, clearly vindicates the activists, environmentalists and civil society groups such as the Social Development Integrated Centre (Social Action), who have consistently lamented the failure of Shell to adequately protect its pipeline infrastructure from being vandalised. Social Action has frequently partnered with community members in the region, on ways to legally and peacefully resist environmental rights abuses by oil-producing corporations. We at Social Action, believe that the standard of international best practice must be maintained in all oil-related activities carried out in Nigeria.
We therefore make an urgent call on the President of Nigeria, His Excellency, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, to take every necessary step needed to ensure that the UNEP Report is implemented and the clean-up process of the oil-ravaged areas, commences immediately. So far, the response of the Jonathan-led government to the UNEP Report has been unsatisfactory, in view of Shell’s reluctance to embark on a professional clean-up exercise and pay adequate compensation to the indigenes of the polluted oil-producing areas such as the fishermen and the farmers, who as a result of the environmental disaster, lost their means of livelihood.
We also call on the International Community which includes notable organisations like the UN and the African Union (AU) to, in the interest of protecting environmental rights and promoting environmental justice, put significant pressure on the Nigerian government to do the needful by ensuring that the prolonged issue of non-compliance with the UNEP Report, becomes a thing of the past.
Lillian Akhigbe, is Communications Officer of Social Action.
For further enquiries, please contact Social Action on: [email protected]; [email protected]
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