Shell compensates villagers for damages caused by oil spills in Niger Delta

The Anglo-Dutch oil and gas giant Shell will pay the inhabitants of a Nigerian village 70 million euros (83 million U.S. dollars) for the damage suffered by oil spills from Shell pipelines, the company announced on Wednesday.

Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), made 45 million euros available for over 15,000 people in the village Bodo in the Niger Delta who have personally filed a claim and who will accept the settlement.

The remaining 25 million euros is for the village community as a whole.

The fee will cover the damages suffered in the 2008 oil leakage in the area around the fishing village of Bodo as a result of industrial accidents.

Thousands of hectares of mangrove forest were polluted due to the leakage; fishermen had to look for another job; the drinking water was polluted and residents complained of headaches and bad eye conditions.

In 2011 Bodo villagers went to court in Britain, where Shell's headquarters is located. While earlier settlement efforts failed Shell now claims it reached a settlement with the inhabitants.

"From the outset, we've accepted responsibility for the two deeply regrettable operational spills in Bodo," said Mutiu Sunmonu, managing director of SPDC, in a Shell press release. "We've always wanted to compensate the community fairly and we are pleased to have reached agreement."

"We are fully committed to the clean-up process being overseen by the former Netherlands' Ambassador to Nigeria," he continued. "Despite delays caused by divisions within the community, we are pleased that clean-up work will soon begin now that a plan has been agreed with the community."

Neighboring Nigerian villages and the Dutch environmental organization Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) in The Netherlands demand to see documents from Shell on the overall condition of the leaking pipelines.

They want to know whether the oil company has been negligent, because Shell continues to claim that the leaks are caused by sabotage.

The judge rejected the claim in 2011 and the case is now in the appeal phase, with the pleas scheduled for March 12 this year in The Hague.

"Unless real action is taken to end the scourge of oil theft and illegal refining, which remains the main cause of environmental pollution and is the real tragedy of the Niger Delta, areas that are cleaned up will simply become re-impacted through these illegal activities," SPDC director Sunmonu said.

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