January 29th local time, a Dutch court ruled on two oil spills in Nigeria by Royal Dutch Shell Group in 2008, demanding compensation from the company’s Nigerian branch for the oil spill.
According to Al Jazeera on the 29th, a Dutch court said that the Nigerian branch of Shell Group must compensate for the loss of revenue caused by the pollution of land and waterways in the Niger Delta region and clean up the environmental pollution in the region.
According to the report, the specific compensation amount will be finalized in the future.
In response, Boles, head of the Dutch branch of Friends of the Earth, said that the ruling was good news for the environmental protection movement and people in developing countries, and Al Jazeera also pointed out that the ruling might pave the way for more environmental lawsuits against Shell.
The lawsuit was initiated in 2008 by Nigerian farmers and an organization called Friends of the Earth.
The Wall Street Journal quoted a report that at that time, a shell oil pipeline in Nigeria was broken and thousands of barrels of oil gushed, polluting parts of the Bodo community in the Niger Delta.
In 2015, Shell reached an out-of-court settlement with the local community, admitting responsibility for the incident and agreed to pay 55 million pounds (about 485 million yuan) as compensation.
However, the controversy surrounding the case did not disappear.
It is reported that in 2015, an assessment in preparation for the clean-up found that local soil pollution had worsened.
According to the report, the Bodo community may face toxic pollution and the environment may suffer “catastrophic” damage.
