Death in the Delta: Shell Must Pay for Its Destruction
By Amanda Campos
It is no news that the fossil fuel industry is deliberately fueling the climate crisis. When your house’s insurance costs rise or your city becomes clouded with wildfire smoke, make sure to send a thank-you note to Exxon. Yet, its impact goes far beyond climate change’s devastation. The Global North’s fossil fuel industry, using the legacies of colonialism to its favor, has wreaked havoc in various developing countries, knowingly decimating forests (Ratcliffe), disrupting sustainable local economies, and inciting health calamities.
One of the most notorious of such cases is that of the Niger Delta, the most oil-rich region in Nigeria. Plagued by oil leakages and spills to this day, historical petroleum extraction shaped the reality of the various ethnic groups. We will focus on the most infamous corporation in the Delta: Shell. The consequences of its profitable yet destructive practices remain unaddressed — in 2022, Shell paid $15.9 million to four Nigerian farmers like Eric Dooh for disastrous oil spills from 2004 to 2007, an insufficient response brought by sixteen years of litigation by Nigerian lawyers (Meijer). This is far from enough. Shell must provide significant monetary compensation directly to the communities and local organizations of the Niger Delta to avoid corporate interests and government corruption. It is hard to put a price on ravaged mangroves and noxious air pollution; however, it is the bare minimum for Shell to immediately provide sizeable reparations.
How did Shell come to have such a stronghold in the region? It started in 1958 when British colonial officials provided the first official drilling license to the then Royal Dutch Shell Group (Fletcher). As described by Ken Henshaw, the Executive director of the Nigerian nonprofit We The People, it was a blank check that led to the “‘unprecedented penetration of every nook and cranny of the Niger Delta’” and, too often, residents’ displacement (Fletcher). In 1971, today’s Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was formed and became deeply intertwined with oil corruption as profits were concentrated in the hands of government officials and multinational corporations (NNPC; Mohammed; Amnesty International), making them largely unbeneficial to the economy (Mohammed; Amnesty International). Through joint venture collaborations, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) of Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of Shell, grew to be the largest fossil fuel company in the region and the country (Shell). The “resource curse” phenomenon explains why a profitable resource like oil brings poverty and corruption instead of prosperity to various countries (Mohammed); however, it is important to identify its specific culprits — in the Delta, most of the oily footprints belong to Shell.
Instead of benefitting economically, communities have suffered from never-ending oil spills primarily caused by Shell’s visibly aging and poorly maintained pipelines (Craig). The whopping 40 million liters of oil spilled annually contaminate waterways, harm biodiverse mangroves, and seep through soil (Ratcliffe). Inevitably, farming and fishing practices have been severely affected. In the state of Bayelsa, 1.5 million people out of 2 million depend on subsistence agriculture and fishing, which has put their survival at risk (Ratcliffe). Not coincidentally, Bayelsa’s life expectancy is only 45 years (Ratcliffe). A study published in the National Library of Medicine by authors from Nigerian universities found that household food security in the Niger Delta decreased by 60% (Ordinioha and Brisibe). The data goes on, painting an unambiguous picture: oil is destroying their livelihoods.
Shell’s response has been unacceptable at best. Following a UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) report on Ogoniland in 2011, SPDC finally took action to fulfill UNEP demands by contributing $900 million to a trust fund co-founded with the Nigerian government and $10 million to aid the set up of the Hydrocarbon Pollution and Remediation Project (HYPREP) in 2017 (Shell). Although these numbers sound impressive, they failed — the provision of clean water to communities was inadequate, cleanups were slow, and corruption was rampant (Igwe; Amnesty International). UNEP itself announced that HYPREP is ineffective (Igwe). To put this into perspective, if the same spills occurred in, say, North America or Europe, Shell’s response would likely have been drastic and efficient (Amnesty International). Yet, as Bayelsa resident Udengs Eraditri pointed out in 2019, nearly every day his community was informed of an oil spill, yet little to nothing was done in response (Ratcliffe).
There is a final factor in my case for reparations: Shell’s complicity in crimes of murder, torture, and rape of Ogoni people. Calling for environmental protection and democratic power, the non-violent Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has organized protests against Shell’s pollution (ESCR). In the 1990s, they were met with violence by the Nigerian government, and evidence indicates that Shell encouraged the military to handle the protests despite knowing the methods to be used, even providing material and financial support to units on some occasions (Amnesty International). Shell Nigeria representatives deny this. Whether actions speak louder than words, I will let the courts of law decide.
Ultimately, Shell has been responsible for the deterioration of environmental, health, and economic well-being in the Niger Delta. Bolder, enforced, and urgent action is required to bring justice to the hundreds of communities impacted. As of now, a series of court cases demanding justice are in place, including an appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court by 13,000 farmers and fishers from Ogale and Bille communities (Amnesty International; Laville). As previously mentioned, Shell’s measly compensation in 2022 was mainly intended to settle and silence the legal case once and for all, given that the oil giant did not admit liability (Meijer). It is long overdue to make polluters pay up — in doing so, it is crucial to give substantial financial power directly to communities and local organizations. Eraditri best summed this up: “If you want to resolve the issues in the Niger Delta…you must involve communities in the contractual agreement. That means it is not just owned by other people with other interests.” Through activism, due process, and continuous pressure, let us hope that the multinational will be forced to pay the true costs of its profits.
References
Amnesty International. Nigeria: Shell must clean up devastating oil spills in the Niger Delta. Amnesty International. (2023, February 7). https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/02/nigeria-shell-oil-spill-trial/
Amnesty International. (2020, June 18. No clean up, no justice: Shell’s oil pollution in the Niger Delta. Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/no-clean-up-no-justice-shell-oil-pollution-in-the-niger-delta/
Amnesty International. (2017, November 28). Investigate shell for complicity in murder, rape and torture. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2017/11/investigate-shell-for-complicity-in-murder-rape-and-torture/
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Craig, J. (2022, June 1). “We were eating, drinking, breathing the oil”: The villagers who stood up to big oil — and won. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/jun/01/oil-pollution-spill-nigeria-shell-lawsuit
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Campos is a Brazilian student climate activist in her second year at Stanford University. She is interested in climate policy and the role of the fossil fuel industry, hoping to use her education and positionality to foster meaningful conversations and change.
