BloombergBusinessweek article by Jeremy Hodge published Friday 20 June 2014
A Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) subsidiary said it won a preliminary ruling in a U.K. court against thousands of Nigerians who say their land, rivers and wetlands were spoiled by two oil spills in the Niger River delta in 2008.
Judge Robert Akenhead ruled today that a Nigerian law, the Oil Pipelines Act, is adequate for compensating for spills, limiting the scope of the U.K. litigation to an assessment of actual damages caused, the company said in a statement today.
The lawsuit against Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary was filed by residents of the coastal Bodo community in 2012 after two spills on the Bomu-Bonny Pipeline in 2008, Shell said.
“From the outset, we’ve accepted responsibility for the two deeply regrettable operational spills in Bodo,” Mutiu Sunmonu, managing director of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd., said in the statement. “We want to compensate fairly and quickly those who have been genuinely affected and to clean up all areas where oil has been spilled from our facilities.”
Lawyers representing the 15,000 Nigerians also claimed a victory from the ruling today, saying that Shell could be found liable at trial for theft from its pipelines if it failed to take “reasonable steps to protect its infrastructure,” the law firm Leigh Day & Co. said in an e-mailed statement.
There is evidence 1,000 hectares of mangroves have been destroyed by the spills, the law firm said.
“We hope the community will now direct their U.K. legal representatives to stop wasting even more time pursuing enormously exaggerated claims and consider sensible and fair compensation offers,” Sunmonu said.
A trial is scheduled for May 2015.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy Hodges in London at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at [email protected]; Will Kennedy at [email protected] Lindsay Fortado, Will Kennedy
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
