Shell agrees €95m payment over Nigeria crude spills

Oil giant Shell has agreed to pay around 95 million euros to communities in southern Nigeria over crude spills in 1970, the company and the community’s lawyer said on Wednesday.

The decision is the latest involving OPEC-member Nigeria’s oil-producing south where local communities have long fought legal battles over oil spills and environmental damage.

“The order for the payment of 45.9 billion naira ($111 million, 94.9 million euros) to the claimants is for full and final satisfaction of the judgement,” a local spokesman for Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria said.

Lawyer Lucius Nwosa, representing the Ejama-Ebubu community in Rivers State, confirmed the decision.

“They ran out of tricks and decided to come to terms,” the lawyer said. “The decision is a vindication of the resoluteness of the community for justice.”

The company said that it maintained the spills were caused by third parties during Nigeria’s 1967-70 civil war when much damage was done to oil pipelines and infrastructure.