[JURIST] Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) [corporate website] on Wednesday reached a settlement in a lawsuit concerning the Niger Delta oil spills of 2008. The settlement, totaling USD $84 million, will be divided between 15,600 individuals who will receive $3,300 each as compensation for losses caused by the spills. The remaining $30 million will be disbursed throughout the community, which also suffered significant damage from the spills. Rights group Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] noted [press release] that that this settlement is “an important victory for the victims of corporate negligence,” they express disappointment that it took six years for the victims to be compensated. They argue that Shell knew that the oil spills were a distinct possibility since 2002 and took no “effective” action to prevent them from occurring. However, the managing director of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited [corporate website], Mutiu Sunmonu, contends that they have taken responsibility for the spills [press release] from the beginning and maintains that the spills were due to operational pipe failure. AI also accused Shell of making false claims about the impact of the oil spills [JURIST report] in court documents [text, PDF] presented to a UK court last November. They state that Shell claimed that only 4,000 barrels of oil spilled for both spills but AI believes the number is closer to 100,000 barrels for the first spill alone.

Shell has previously faced legal action in the UK, Netherlands and Nigeria for these oil spills [JURIST news archive] and other cases. In 2012 35 Nigerian villages brought a suit against Shell in a London court alleging [JURIST report] Shell’s slow response in cleaning up two oil spills in a neighboring river. The villages claimed there was continued contamination due to the inadequate clean-up process following the spill. In 2009 a USD $15.5 million settlement [JURIST report] was reached in 2009 between Shell and the families of nine Nigerian activists who were killed in 1995. In 2006 a Nigerian court in the southern city of Port Harcourt ordered [JURIST report] Shell to pay $1.5 billion to compensate local communities for environmental pollution caused by the company’s activities in the southern Niger Delta region.