Nigeria Village Files $1B Suit Against Shell in U.S.

Fox News

21 October 2011

Nigeria Village Files $1B Suit Against Shell in U.S.

LAGOS, Nigeria-- A village in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta where observers found a drinking-water well polluted with benzene 900 times the international limit has sued Royal Dutch Shell PLC for $1 billion in a U.S. federal court.

The lawsuit alleges that Shell, long the dominant oil company over Nigeria's more than 50 years of production, acted willfully negligent in pursuing profits over protecting the nation's Niger Delta.

The lawsuit filed by lawyers in Detroit uses a recent United Nations report over widespread pollution in the delta's Ogoniland area for much of its evidence. However, that report implied Nigeria's state-run oil company, rather than Shell, was responsible for recent damage in village of Ogale in Nigeria's Rivers state.

"It is not isolated or accidental, but part of a culture and ongoing pattern of conduct that consistently and repeatedly ignored risks to others in favor of financial advantage," the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan reads.