Oil disaster in the Niger Delta

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River Niger

The oil spill in the Niger Delta is an ongoing oil spill in which, according to expert estimates, more than two million tons of crude oil has polluted the Niger Delta ecosystem over the past 50 years . According to government information, oil has leaked an average of 300 times a year to pipelines or drilling rigs, for example. Compared to the rest of the country, the life expectancy of the 30 million people living there fell by around ten years due to air, water and soil pollution. The environmental pollution, which destroys important livelihoods (agricultural areas, waters used for fishing) of the population, also contributes to theviolent conflict in the region .

According to a study by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) published in August 2011, the pollution is so severe that it will take 25 to 30 years to clean up the affected region and cost up to 1 billion dollars. UNEP recommended that the Nigerian government and the responsible oil companies make the money available in a special fund .

causes

Over 7,000 kilometers of oil pipelines, some of which are completely out of date, cross the Niger Delta. Due to many leaks and frequent oil thefts, oil leaks almost permanently. The Shell group blames sabotage and organized oil theft for the pollution; Environmentalists, on the other hand, see the bursting drill heads and leaking pipelines, i.e. the lack of safety standards by companies like Shell, as the main culprits.

Oil spills

2008

In 2008, oil leaked through a leak in a Shell oil pipeline in Bodo Creek near Port Harcourt . Shell put the amount at 1,640 barrels , the US company Accufacts , commissioned by Amnesty International to investigate the incident, came to the conclusion that up to 4,320 barrels of oil a day had polluted the waters for at least 72 days.

The residents of the village of Bodo in Ogoniland filed a lawsuit against the Shell group in a British court over the spillage of several hundred thousand liters of oil in their region in 2008 and 2009. In August 2011 he had to admit that a "failure of the equipment" had caused this pollution and was willing to pay compensation. The plaintiffs wanted to obtain payment of several hundred million dollars under civil law .

In June 2014 Shell initially offered 37 million euros in compensation, around 1,250 euros per inhabitant. At the beginning of 2015, Shell announced an out-of-court settlement according to which 15,600 injured residents of the Niger Delta will receive individual compensation from the company totaling 35 million pounds (the equivalent of around 44.6 million euros), and a further 20 million pounds (25 million euros ) receives the municipality of Bodo. Each of the affected residents thus receives the equivalent of around 2,800 euros, which corresponds to the payment of the Nigerian minimum wage over a period of three years. Shell Nigeria also undertook to start cleaning the polluted areas in the following three months. Nigerian environmentalists assume that it will take at least ten years to restore the state.

2010

An oil pipeline operated by an ExxonMobil joint venture oil company and the Nigerian state leaked oil for seven days in June 2010; about 27,000 to 95,500 tons of crude oil were released.

Legal processing

In February 2021, the UK Supreme Court granted Niger Delta residents the right to sue Royal Dutch Shell in UK courts for pollution.

An appeals court in The Hague , the Netherlands, had previously ruled that Shell had to compensate around 40,000 affected people in Nigeria for oil spills that occurred in 2004 and 2005. Specifically, two villages are to be compensated for the contamination of their residents' fields. The court did not want to determine the exact amount of the compensation. The group itself took the view that it was not liable for Nigerian subsidiaries in Europe. Saboteurs are responsible for the environmental pollution caused by large-scale oil leaks.

After Shell's Nigerian subsidiary (SPDC) was convicted of pollution in Nigeria in 2010, it tried unsuccessfully to challenge the verdict in the 2010s. In August 2021, the Shell subsidiary finally agreed to a settlement over a fine of almost 95 million euros. Shell insisted that the oil leaks were caused by sabotage during Nigeria's civil war from 1967 to 1970 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Contaminated Niger Delta. n-tv.de, July 14, 2010, accessed on July 23, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Sebastian Bräuer: Shell endangers oil production. ZEIT online, June 28, 2006
  3. ↑ UNEP Ogoniland Oil Assessment Reveals Extent of Environmental Contamination and Threats to Human Health , press release of the United Nations Environment Program of August 4, 2011.
  4. ↑ a b badische-zeitung.de, News, Abroad , August 6, 2011, Johannes Dieterich: Niger Delta: UNO scourges oil companies (August 7, 2011)
  5. ↑ The "forgotten oil spill" in the Niger Delta. - tagesschau.de (article from June 12, 2010). (No longer available online.) Tagesschau.de, June 12, 2010, archived from the original on June 15, 2010 ; Retrieved July 23, 2010 .
  6. ↑ Financial Times Deutschland: Ogoniland burned down ( Memento from December 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (December 2, 2010)
  7. ↑ taz.de: Serious allegations against Shell , November 8, 2013.
  8. ↑ Marcus Theurer, faz.net: Shell pays 70 million euros to fishermen in the Niger Delta . FAZ , January 7, 2015
  9. ↑ Shell compensates Nigerians after an oil spill . Badische Zeitung , January 8, 2015
  10. ↑ Dulue Mbachu: Exxon Nigerian Unit Oil Spill Caused by Corrosion. In: BusinessWeek. June 6, 2010, accessed June 11, 2010 .
  11. ↑ Joe Brock: Africa's oil spills are far from US media glare. In: Reuters. May 18, 2010, accessed on May 29, 2010 : "100,000 bpd of oil had leaked for a week from a pipeline that has since been mended"
  12. ^ John Vidal: Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it. In: The Observer. Retrieved June 1, 2010 .
  13. ↑ Adam Nossiter: Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old. June 16, 2010, accessed on July 6, 2010 : "... the company's recent offshore spill leaked only about 8,400 gallons ..."
  14. ↑ Michael Radunski: Oil pollution in the Niger Delta: Shell has to pay . In: The daily newspaper: taz . January 29, 2021, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed February 25, 2021]).
  15. ↑ Nigerians can sue Shell in England. In: time online . February 12, 2021, accessed February 13, 2021 .
  16. ↑ Shell has to pay 95 million euros for environmental damage in Nigeria. In: Der Spiegel. Retrieved August 12, 2021 .

Coordinates: 5 ° 19 ′ 0 ″  N , 6 ° 25 ′ 0 ″  E