Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Shell to pay $111 million for 1970 Niger Delta oil spills
The energy giant has agreed to compensate communities in the oil-producing Ogoniland part of Nigeria for the pollution. Shell still denies responsibility but the people who took the company to court feel vindicated.
A Dutch court had ruled in January that Shell had polluted the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria and ordered the Anglo-Dutch energy giant to pay compensation.
Lawyers for company and the affected communities on August 11 confirmed the decision by the Nigerian subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell Plc on compensation of $111 million (€94,9 million), news agency AFP reported. The company however maintained that the spills were caused by third parties during the civil war in Nigeria.
Lucius Nwosu, a lawyer for the Ejama-Ebubu community in Ogoniland, Rivers State told AFP: "They ran out of tricks and decided to come to terms."
The communities have been caught up in the court case against Shell since 1991. "The decision is a vindication of the resoluteness of the community for justice," Nwosu said..
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) said it saw the offer of compensation as “confirmation of the issues we have raised about Shell’s environmental devastion of Ogoni and the need for proper remediation of the land.”
Ogoni environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey told DW lauded the people affected by the oil spills for being "very persistent" in their case against Shell. "The extent of pollution in the Niger Delta is massive and having to
wait for 30 years before the case is ended has tried the patience of the people. We really have to applaud the people for this."
Niger Delta environmental rights campaigner Kentebe Eberiado said he saw the outcome of the case as a "wake up call" for multinationals. "It has opened the floodgate for more communities in the Niger Delta to seek redress for the environmental monstrosity that has devastated them in the past 50 years," he told DW.
A ruling earlier this year by an appeals court in the Netherlands — in favor of Milieudefensie/ Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four Nigerian farmers — was heralded by some as justice.
The court delivered its judgment at the end of a long-running civil case. The farmers were seeking financial compensation and a cleanup by Shell for pollution caused by pipelines leaking oil into the Niger Delta.
'Finally justice'
"Shell Nigeria is sentenced to compensate farmers for damages," the court said. The bench added that parent company Royal Dutch Shell was also liable to install detection equipment that could prevent future damage on the Oruma pipeline, the site of a significant number of the spills.
"After years of litigation there is finally justice for many of my clients," said Channa Samkalden, the lawyer for Milieudefensie and the Nigerian farmers.
This is a sentiment also shared by Eric Dooh, one of the farmers.
""Finally, there is some justice for the Nigerian people suffering the consequences of Shell's oil," Dooh told DW.
For Donald Pols, Milieudefensie director, it was "fantastic news for the affected farmers. It is enormous that Shell has to compensate for the damage."
It may well be that justice has indeed been served, based on the argument by Pols, who said it was "also a warning for all Dutch transnational corporations in
volved in injustice worldwide. Victims of environmental pollution, land grabbing or exploitation now have a better chance to win a legal battle against the companies involved."
The question that remains unanswered, however, is whether implementation of the court's ruling will be enough for the afflicted population.
Discontent over implementation
Since a United Nations recommendation in 2011 that operations be put in place to clean up the oil spills, the feeling among the Ogoni Indigenous people is that little has been done.
A popular sentiment remains that the Dutch court ruling would not translate into concrete action.
"The Ogonis are not satisfied with the level of environmental remediation so far," said environmentalist Fyneface Dumnamene.
While the Nigerian government has acknowledged that the cleanup exercise was not going according to plan, due to the COVID pandemic, it insisted that the process was going on smoothly. This position has been vehemently challenged by some of the Ogoni residents.
"I am not satisfied with the cleanup exercise," said Bemene Tanem, an Ogoniland resident who insisted that reports of a smooth cleanup were "fake news."
"President Muhammadu Buhari actually meant well for the Ogoni people, but for those that are executing the project, they are not doing what they
ought to do."
This refers to an ongoing plan to clean up the heart of the country's oil industry, which came after Buhari asked the UN Environment Program to assess the level of oil contamination in 2016.
But some five years later, the UN reported shocking pollution levels.
Delay tactics?
Environmentalists and activists had questioned whether Shell's actions are simply a stalling technique, while they continue to exploit the resources of the region to the detriment of the people and the surrounding environment.
These allegations a re founded on the basis of an 2009 decision by Shell Corporation to settle out of court with a group of Ogoni people.
The 2009 settlement of $15.5 million (€13 million) — which some people described as insufficient to redress the devastating pollution, human rights abuses and misery suffered by millions of Ogoni people over several generations — may have stalled the agitation for a while but did not successfully stop it.
For some people, such as Bemene Tanem, even this year's court ruling ordering Shell to clean up the damage fell short of the demands of the Ogoni people.
"What the Ogoni people are demanding for basically is political emancipation, we have been deprived of our economic rights, despite the huge economic and natural resources God had endowed in our land, we have not benefited from it economically," said Tanem.
The importance of the people benefiting economically from any projects being carried out is further articulated by Legborsi Yaamabana, a journalist and Ogoni resident.
"What we just want to see in Ogoni is an improvement in the socioeconomic and environmental life of the Ogoni people ... that even the present attempt to clean the area have to march with a socioeconomic recovery," he told DW.
These sentiments are not shared by Sunny Zorva, a former MOSOP spokesman, who sees the current steps being taken as huge milestones in the right direction.
"Individuals will benefit, the community will benefit, the government will benefit, and, in fact, the companies that will later come to do some work in the area will also benefit … after the cleanup, the water will be restored, the aquatic life will be restored, farmland will be restored for farmers to continue their fishing and farming," said Zorva.
Allegations of corruption
The optimism shared by some of the people is dampened by growing allegations that, while Shell claims to have done significant work in cleaning up the Ogoni environment, the governing council and board of trustees — known as HYPREP — set up by the Nigerian government to oversee the cleanup process has been mired in allegations of corruption.
"The project started without the implementation of the emergency measures recommended by the UN Environment Program. These measures include the provision of potable drinking water for the people and of course the provision of issues around livelihood, including the building of a contaminated soil management center," said environmentalist Fyneface Dumnamene.
Some feel that such allegations will not go down well with the people. For those who have been involved in the ongoing campaign for better living conditions, any actions by HYPREP that do not conform
with people's expectations will be opposed.
"Any report of corruption in HYPREP will be seriously resisted," said Zorva. "The people are not happy about it, because it's about their life, it's about their environment."
Hope on the horizon
There is, however, a high degree of optimism among experts and Ogoni residents.
After Buhari's administration apologized for the delay in the cleanup, the work resumed in earnest and 17 sites were certified as having being cleaned.
There was a sense that keeping their promise would also work to the government's advantage, as it would also benefit from a clean Ogoniland environment.
"They said Ogoni people are volatile or violent — it's because they do not have jobs, they do not have enough to eat," said Zorva. "But when these things are back, there will be security in the place, even the government will benefit."
The UN has estimated that the entire effort to reverse the shocking levels of pollution caused by oil spills could take as long as 30 years.
Such a long time frame is to be expected, given the extent of damage wrought by decades of Shell's destruction of the environment.
Shell has faced other legal action linked to its operations in Nigeria in Dutch court. The widows of four Nigerian activists executed by the military regime of General Sani Abacha in the 1990s have accused Shell of complicity in their deaths. Those men were ultimately hanged by Nigeria's former military regime in 1995, along with activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, for fighting for the rights of the Ogoni.
countries making net-zero emissions pledges for the coming decades.
"This gap between rhetoric and action needs to close if we are to have a fighting chance of reaching net zero by 2050," said Fatih Birol, IEA executive director. "Doing so requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies."
Part of that transformation will come from investors seeking to protect the future value of their assets. Sarah Brown, an electricity transition analyst at UK-based energy think tank Ember, told DW that investors and insurers are increasingly facing risk — from extreme weather events, the energy transition or changing regulations.
"The recent findings of the IEA and IPCC reports should not have come as a surprise, and there are multiple existing national policies and global commitments that mean investment in new fossil fuel assets does not make economic sense and has not for quite some time," she said.
Brown highlighted several planned coal power plant projects across Europe which have been canceled just in the last few months, including in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey. "Utilities, financial institutions, engineering companies and governments are all seeing there is no future for coal-fired electricity generation," she said.
'Fossil fuels aren't going to disappear overnight'
But Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the US research group Brookings Institution, doesn't think investors will be so quick to drop fossil fuels. She pointed out that despite advances in renewable energy, the world still hasn't found a reliable substitute for oil and natural gas, which she has called the "lifeblood of the modern economy."
"We're definitely seeing pressure from a lot of different camps to move away from fossil fuel investments," she told DW. "And I don't disagree with the sentiment. The challenge will be that fossil fuels aren't going to disappear overnight."
Gross said oil and gas have more energy per weight than other fuel sources, making them crucial for industrial processes that need very high heat, or for sectors like aviation, shipping and long-haul trucking, where electric vehicles aren't yet up to the task. Not to mention the fact that more than three-quarters of the world's electricity is still produced by fossil fuels, according to the latest analysis by oil giant BP.
"You're not going to see a sudden halt in all investments in fossil fuels. But I think what you'll see is that more expensive and more risky investments will start to go away first. And I think that process is certainly beginning," said Gross.
She believes the industry is nearing a "tipping point" on carbon-intensive processes like oil sands development or fracking, with some investors now shifting instead to inexpensive renewables with good rates of return.
"[This is] something that investors are doing because there's money to be made in it. That's how things really get done. Seems a little crass, but it's true," she said.
Climate changes at Exxon, Chevron
While the trend to make greener investments has been more visible in Europe, with retirement funds in countries like the UK, Sweden and Norway taking steps to limit climaterelated exposure, there's been some movement in the US as well — and not just with pensions.
On May 26, 61% of Chevron shareholders backed a proposal asking the oil company to cut its total greenhouse gas emissions. That same day, small activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 took three seats on the board of Exxon Mobil after a monthslong campaign that stressed the oil giant's fossil fuel focus represented an "existential risk."
Speaking with investors in July, CEO Darren Woods said
Exxon Mobil was aiming to play "a key role in the energy transition while continuing to grow shareholder value," highlighting developing markets for carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and biofuels. However, Woods — who had campaigned against Engine No. 1 — warned they shouldn't expect "huge shifts in strategy."
Nevertheless, said Gross, "it's quite stunning what they were able to do," underlining the significance that it was the investors who had pushed for change, rather than external pressure. "Nothing against NGOs, but when the investors start talking, they listen."
Fight to stay relevant
But some companies are still fighting to delay the inevitable fossil fuel phaseout and profit losses. German utilities RWE and Uniper, for example, announced in April their intention to sue the Dutch government over its plan to end coal-fired power generation by 2030, citing billions in damages.
Fossil fuel messaging is also playing its part. InfluenceMap, a think tank which studies how corporate lobbying impacts climate policy, revealed in 2019 that the five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies — Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP and Total — have spent more than $1 billion (€853 million) to campaign against climate policies or buy misleading ads since the 2015 Paris Agreement. The aim is to promote oil and gas as part of the solution to the climate crisis, along with new technologies, to keep them in the energy mix as long as possible.
"Many big energy companies look to be very focused on transition pathways that only modestly adapt their current business models, relying heavily on carbon capture and storage [CCS] to mitigate their emissions or produce blue hydrogen from natural gas," said Brown, adding that these approaches also have significant climate and financial risks.
While acknowledging the potential for greenwashing, Gross said companies using these transitional technologies could potentially have skills that would help further develop renewable energy like geothermal power or offshore wind farms.
"Certainly, some companies understand that this is the way the future is going. They want to continue to be relevant in the energy industry, and so they're focusing on how they can be relevant in an industry that has a different shape than the one we have now," said Gross. "They understand which way the wind is blowing and are trying to move accordingly."