Nigerian farmers, fishermen sue Shell in UK over pollution

Britain's High Court will begin hearing lawsuits on Tuesday filed by the Ogale and Bille people alleging that decades of oil spills have fouled the water and destroyed the lives of thousands of fishermen and farmers in the Niger River Delta, where a Shell subsidiary has operated since the 1950s.

The area is heavily affected by crude oil theft, pipeline sabotage and illegal refining.

SPDC, the operator of a joint venture between the Nigerian government, Shell and two other oil companies, said it will challenge the jurisdiction of the U.K. courts in this case — arguing that it concerned Nigerian plaintiffs, in dispute with a Nigerian company over issues in Nigeria.

"If the Claimants' lawyers are correct as to the existence of this novel duty of care, (Shell) and many other parents of multinational groups will be liable to the many hundreds of millions of people around the world with whom their subsidiaries come into contact in the ordinary course of their various operations," the company said in its court argument.

The Ogale and Bille communities account for only a small portion of the millions of Nigerians that human rights activists say have been injured by contamination they say would never have been allowed in the home countries of the multinational oil companies that operate in partnership with the Nigerian government.

In the 1990s, the military government sent armed troops to put down protests by the Ogoni people, turning the oil-producing south into a war zone.

It recently bought BG Group Plc for $52.4 billion, increasing its proven reserves of oil and gas by 25 percent.

[...] like other oil companies, it is also slashing jobs and postponing investments to adjust to lower oil prices.