Oil giant Shell has agreed to pay a Nigerian fishing community ￡55 million (US$83.5 million) for the worst oil spill ever suffered in Nigeria.
Yesterday’s agreement ends a three-year legal battle in the UK over two spills in 2008 that destroyed thousands of hectares of mangroves, and the fish and shellfish that sustained villagers of the Bodo community in Nigeria’s southern Niger Delta.
It “is thought to be one of the largest payouts to an entire community following environmental damage,” the claimants’ London lawyers Leigh Day said.
Shell said it is paying ￡35 million to 15,600 fishermen and farmers, and ￡20 million to the Bodo community.
“We’ve always wanted to compensate the community fairly,” Shell Nigeria managing director Mutiu Sunmonu said.
Shell Nigeria is 55 percent owned by the Nigerian government.
Shell originally offered ￡4,000 to the entire community, Leigh Day said.
Sunmonu said Shell has also agreed and is “fully committed” to a cleanup.
Bodo Council of Chiefs and Elders chairman Sylvester Kogbara said he hoped “that Shell will take their host communities seriously now” and embark on a cleanup of all of Ogoniland.
A UN Environment Program report has estimated it could take up to 30 years to fully rehabilitate Ogoniland, an area where villagers have been in conflict with Shell for decades.
Kogbara said the community money would be used to provide needed basic services.
“We have no health facilities, our schools are very basic, there’s no clean water supply,” he said.
Individually, he said villagers are discussing setting up as petty traders and other small businesses until their environment is restored. Each person gets ￡2,200 in a country where the minimum monthly wage is less than US$100.
Sunmonu insisted that oil theft and illegal refining remain “the real tragedy of the Niger Delta” and “areas that are cleaned up will simply become reimpacted.”
Amnesty International said Shell continues to blame oil theft for spills — which means it does not have to pay compensation — when the company’s own documents state its aging oil pipelines present a “major risk and hazard.”
Shell said that only 4,000 barrels of oil were spilled in Bodo, while Amnesty International used an independent assessor which put it at more than 100,000 barrels — considered the largest-ever oil spill in mangroves.
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