Shell sued over oil spill in Niger Delta

Telegraph (UK)

2 May 2011

Shell sued over oil spill in Niger Delta

Royal Dutch Shell has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in London by the Bodo community of Nigeria, which suffered a "devastating" oil spill when a key pipeline burst in the summer of 2008.

The new lawsuit against Shell has been sparked by a leak allegedly coming from the Trans-Niger pipeline, which the community says started flowing into the Bodo creek in August 2008.  By Rowena Mason

The community filed a lawsuit last month at the High Court against both Royal Dutch Shell and Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, raising the possibility of a drawn-out legal battle for compensation.

More than 69,000 people live in Bodo in the Niger Delta, which has seen 9m to 13m barrels of oil spilt from the pipelines of various companies over the years – more than double the volume of BP's Gulf of Mexico leak. UN figures show more than 6,800 spills between 1976 and 2001.

Much of those spills has not been cleared up because oil companies face regular attacks on their staff and pipelines by militants who have targeted the industry since 2006. The militants claim Nigerian people do not see enough profit from their natural resources.

The new lawsuit against Shell has been sparked by a leak allegedly coming from the Trans-Niger pipeline, which the community says started flowing into the Bodo creek in August 2008 and continued for four months. Shell claimed it was only made aware of the problem on October 5 that year but the pipeline was not fixed until a month later. There were later reports of a second leak on the pipeline in February 2009.