OIL GIANT Shell faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars after accepting full liability for two massive oil spills that devastated a Nigerian community of 69,000 people and which may take at least 20 years to clean up.
Experts who studied video footage of the spills at Bodo in Ogoniland, southeastern Nigeria, say they could together be as large as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, when 10 million gallons of oil spilled across a remote coastline. Until now, Shell has claimed that less than 40,000 gallons was spilt in Nigeria.
Papers show that following a class action suit in London over the past four months, the company has accepted responsibility for the 2008 double rupture of the Bodo-Bonny trans-Niger pipeline that pumps 120,000 barrels of oil a day through the community.
Ogoniland is a small region of the Niger delta that threw Shell out in 1994 but then saw eight of its leaders, including writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed by the Nigerian government.
The crude oil that gushed unchecked from the two Bodo spills, which occurred within months of each other in 2008, has clearly devastated the 20sq km network of creeks and inlets on which Bodo and as many as 30 other smaller settlements depend for food, water and fuel. No attempt has been made to clean up the oil, which has collected on the creek banks, washes in and out on the tides and has seeped deep into the water table and farmland.
According to the communities in Bodo, in two years the company has only offered £3,500 (€4,000) together with 50 bags of rice, 50 bags of beans and a few cartons of sugar, tomatoes and groundnut oil. The offers were rejected as “insulting, provocative and beggarly” by the chiefs of Bodo, but later accepted on legal advice.
Shell’s acceptance of full liability for the spills follows a class action suit brought on behalf of communities by London law firm Leigh Day and Co, which represented the Ivory Coast community that suffered health damage following the dumping of toxic waste by a ship leased to multinational oil company Trafigura in 2006.
Many other impoverished communities in the delta are now expected to seek damages for oil pollution against Shell in the British courts. On average, there are three oil spills a day by Shell and other companies in the delta. – (Guardian service)