"Group Drags Shell To London Court Over 2011 Nigeria Oil Spill In The Niger Delta", 12 Oct 2017

A Non-Governmental Organization has filed a suit in a London court against Shell Nigeria Exploration & Production Company, SNEPCO, over a 2011 oil spill in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. The NGO, the Oil Spills Victims Vanguard, filed the case on September 21 at the TTC High Court of Justice, London, on behalf of the victims of the Bonga oil spill. The spill, said to have been caused by an operational error on the part of SNEPCO, had about 40,000 barrels of crude oil discharged into the Atlantic Ocean, and affected at least 350 communities in Delta and Bayelsa states...About 168,000 people were said to have been affected directly by the spill. Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which is a parent company to SNEPCO, is joined as a co-defendant in the case...No date has been fixed yet for the hearing. Shell could not immediately be reached for comment. The oil company in the past denied any wrongdoing, claiming that it responded to the oil spill “with professionalism and acted with the consent of the necessary authorities at all times to prevent environmental impact as a result of the incident,” according to a report published by Reuters. The Nigerian government was said to have filed a similar suit in 2016 against Shell at a federal high court, Abuja, demanding N1.3 trillion as compensation on behalf of the victims and communities affected by the Bonga oil spill.