Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday that the volume of crude oil spills caused by sabotage in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta dropped by 40 per cent in 2020.
The total number of major spills caused by theft and sabotage also dropped to 122 incidents in 2020 from 156 incidents the previous year, Shell said in its annual report.
Shell is the operator of Nigeria main onshore oil and gas joint venture SPDC which has struggled for years to contain spills in the Delta caused due to operational incidents, theft and sabotage.
It will be recalled that in a historic ruling against the oil giant Shell, a Netherlands court had ruled in favor of four Nigerian farmers along with environmental activists in an oil spill case that was first filed in 2008.
In the verdict delivered Friday at the Court of Appeal in The Hague, the appeals judge sided with the farmers in finding Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary responsible for four out of six pipeline leaks covered by the lawsuit, as well as declaring that the parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, had violated its duty of care.
Shell will pay an unspecified amount in damages to the farmers, who claimed the spills had ruined the livelihoods of villagers in the area. The company was also ordered to install leak detection equipment in its pipelines.
One of the Nigerian plaintiffs, Eric Dooh from the village of Goi, told the media: “Finally, there is some justice for the Nigerian people suffering the consequences of Shell’s oil. It is a bittersweet victory, since two of the plaintiffs, including my father, did not live to see the end of this trial. But this verdict brings hope for the future of the people in the Niger Delta.”
