‘Ray of light' Shell liable for Nigerian oil spills in legal fi rst

A landmark ruling in London may allow communities to sue corporations for damage caused by their subsidiaries

- Maggie Andresen

Chief Patricia Ogbonnaya walks through her Nigerian farm on a July afternoon, a light drizzle coating her umbrella while she examines what should have been ripe fruit trees and thriving fish ponds. She points to dark stains on tree trunks that stop abruptly at the same level across her land. “That’s how high the oil reached during the flood,” she said, touching the bark, her hand coming away with sticky residue.

Last autumn, a Shell pipeline burst and saturated the surrounding area with crude oil. A heavy downpour swept the oil over Ekpeye land , drenching farms and swampland.

Ogbonnaya points to a massive hole in the ground, a fish pond drained of water, where a rainbow sheen at the clay bottom reflects the palm trees above, showing how deep the oil sank. “Nothing is now safe for human consumption … not the air we breathe, the water we use for cooking … nor crops … meat from cows and goats … that feed on these polluted vegetations,” Ogbonnaya wrote to one of the national agencies involved in oil spill investigations, late last year.

If she could, Ogbonnaya might file a lawsuit against Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, responsible for more than half of the oil extraction in the Niger delta.

But she can’t. The subsidiary, named the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), won’t acknowledge responsibility for the oil spill, so it’s nearly impossible to hold them accountable in Nigerian courts.