IOCs move to divest from Nigeria’s oil sector
International Oil Companies (IOCs) are planning to divest from Nigeria, concerns are beginning to mount over growing cases of oil spillage in the Niger Delta region and the N800 billion court judgment between Shell Nigeria and some communities in the region.
In less than three years, weak infrastructure, especially pipelines, according to stakeholders, has led to the spillage of 14 million litres of crude oil, worth N2.8 billion coupled with cascading environmental dangers and health burden, leading to increase in cases of infant mortality and cancers.
In fact, fresh intrigues are beginning to emerge ahead January, when the court would decide the fate of Shell Nigeria in an N800 billion damages earlier awarded by the Federal High Court in Owerri for the 2019 spillage in Eleme communities of River State.
The jury is nearly out in the biggest dispute award ever in Nigeria’s volatile oil industry.
But whether Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Limited, along with its two parent companies in the United Kingdom and The Hague, Netherlands, can come clean of culpability in a historic dispute debt awarded against it in a spill that occurred on swamp farmlands in Egbalor, Ebubu in Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State, is what industry watchers are waiting to see next month.
Shell, using all its legal resources, is seeking to convince the judge at the Court of Appeal to obviate payment of damages to some 88 persons, who got judgment in November 2020 from a Federal High Court in Owerri over spillage on their fishing facilities in Ejalawa community, Oken-Ogogu swamp farmlands.
The judge of the Federal High Court, Owerri, Imo State, T.G. Ringim, had in the judgment last year, held that Shell Nigeria, Shell International Exploration and Production BV (SIE&P) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) were liable for the spill.