UPDATED: UK court rules against Shell over Nigerian oil spill

A United Kingdom High Court on Friday ruled that Shell plc and its former Nigerian subsidiary can be held legally responsible for decades of oil pollution which devastated the environments of two communities in Nigeria.

“The judgement means that Shell, and its former Nigerian subsidiary, can be held liable for oil spills and leaks going back many years,” Leigh Day, the law firm representing the communities, said.

The communities, Bille and Ogale, both in Rivers State in the Niger Delta, southern Nigeria, commenced the legal action in 2015 at a High Court in the United Kingdom to hold Shell accountable for decades of environmental devastation caused by oil spills.

The communities had accused Shell of widespread pollution, claiming that repeated oil spills from the company’s infrastructure contaminated their lands, waterways, and drinking water.

The spills, they alleged, have rendered the land infertile and wiped out fish populations, leaving them unable to farm or fish—their primary sources of income.

Shell tried to prevent these claims from getting to trial with a range of technical, legal arguments that have now been firmly rejected by the court.

After a four-week High Court preliminary issues trial from 13 February to Friday 7 March 2025, Mrs Justice May ruled on 20 Friday June that Shell’s attempts to restrict the scope of the upcoming full trial, to be held in 2027, had failed.

She made several findings that are important for environmental claims generally, according to Leigh Day.

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Shell had argued that there was a strict five-year limitation period and that the communities were barred from claiming in relation to any oil spills that took place more than five years ago, even if they had not cleaned up the pollution.

The judge rejected this and left it open to the communities to claim for oil spills which occurred more than five years ago, including if Shell has failed to clean them up properly.

The judge found that a failure to clean up could be an ongoing breach of Shell’s legal obligation to clean up and could create a fresh right to make a legal claim for every day that the pollution remained.

The judge also considered that an oil spill could be a trespass and, where that was the case, “a new cause of action will arise each day that oil remains on a claimant’s land.”

This, according to the statement, is a very significant development in these claims and more broadly for legacy environmental pollution caused by multinational corporations around the world.

The legal position following the UK Supreme Court case of Jalla v Shell International Trading and Shipping Vo Ltd [2024] AC 595 appeared to be that corporations could not be held liable for legacy pollution if the claimants failed to file their claim within the relevant limitation period.

However, the Judge distinguished this claim from Jalla and made it clear that the claimants are not prevented from bringing claims if a polluter has left contamination on their land, even if a spill happened many years ago.

The communities also argued that Shell’s pollution breached their constitutional rights under the Nigerian constitution and African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

The Judge found that oil pollution can engage the right to life under the Nigerian Constitution, finding that “knowledge about the impact of environmental harm has moved on such that there is now a greater readiness to see polluting activities as capable of engaging the right to life.”

The Judge noted that the “direction of travel” of the Nigerian Supreme Court was to recognise the relevance of fundamental human rights in cases of pollution. However, she did not allow the constitutional claims to proceed against Shell since as an English judge she felt that such a legal development about the interpretation of the Nigerian Constitution should be left to the Nigerian courts.

The statement said the onus is now therefore on the Nigerian courts to clarify this point about whether an oil company such as Shell can be liable for breaches of fundamental constitutional rights arising from serious pollution.

Reacting to the High Court judgement, the leader of the Ogale community, King Bebe Okpabi said: “It has been 10 years now since we started this case, we hope that now Shell will stop these shenanigans and sit down with us to sort this out. People in Ogale are dying; Shell needs to bring a remedy. We thank the judicial system of the UK for this judgment.”

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Leigh Day international department partner, Matthew Renshaw said: “Shell’s attempts to knock out or restrict these claims through a preliminary trial of Nigerian law issues have been comprehensively rebuffed. This outcome opens the door to Shell being held responsible for their legacy pollution as well as their negligence in failing to take reasonable steps to prevent pollution from oil theft or local refining. This sets an important new legal precedent in environmental claims against multinational corporations.

“The trial against Shell and its former Nigerian subsidiary, including in relation to the complicity of their staff in illegal activities that caused pollution, will now take place in early 2027. Our clients reiterate, as they have repeatedly for 10 years, that they simply want Shell to clean up their pollution and compensate them for their loss of livelihood. It is high time that Shell stops their legal filibuster and do the right thing.”

Background

The legal journey for the Bille and Ogale communities began nearly 10 years ago, but progress has been slow. Many residents have died during the prolonged litigation process. The communities’ initial victory came in 2021 when the UK Supreme Court ruled that Shell’s parent company could potentially be held liable for environmental damage caused by its Nigerian subsidiary. Despite that ruling, the case has remained bogged down in legal technicalities.

The scale of the damage in the Niger Delta has been immense. The Bille and Ogale communities alleged that over 100 oil spills have devastated their farmlands and rivers, destroying ecosystems and contaminating drinking water. The environmental degradation has been so severe that entire areas of the Niger Delta have become uninhabitable.

Shell has long faced criticism for its operations in the Niger Delta, where frequent oil spills have sparked protests, lawsuits, and international condemnation.

The company has maintained that it is not solely responsible for the pollution in the region, pointing to illegal oil tapping by local actors as a contributing factor. However, critics argue that Shell has failed to adequately maintain its infrastructure and respond to environmental disasters.