21 Facts About Shell Nigeria

In 1956, Shell Nigeria discovered the first commercial oil field at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta and started oil exports in 1958.

On 25 March 2014, Shell Nigeria declared a force majeure on crude oil exports from its Forcados crude oil depot which stopped operations due to a leak in its underwater pipeline, a clause freeing the company from contractual obligations as a circumstance beyond its control happened.

SPDC's role in the Shell Nigeria family is typically confined to the physical production and extraction of petroleum.

In December 2003, Shell Nigeria acknowledged that the conflict in the Niger Delta makes it difficult to operate safely and with integrity and that "we sometimes feed conflict by the way we award contracts, gain access to land, and deal with community representatives", and that it intends to improve on its practices.

In 1970, there was an oil spill from a Shell Nigeria pipeline caused primarily by corrosion and operational failure resulting in over 250 barrels of oil spilled.

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In 2006, a team of experts in environmental assessments from Shell Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States were independently organized to conduct a Natural Resource Damage Assessment in the Niger Delta.

In 2011, Shell Nigeria started publishing the reports it has been required to take every time an oil spill occurs.

For example, 252 days passed before Shell Nigeria visited the site of an oil spill that was reported in February 2016.

Under Nigerian law, Shell has no liability when spills are classified as result of sabotage.

In court, the assessment was proven to be extremely under-estimated and Shell Nigeria ended up committing to a compensation of 55 million pounds.

In March 2018, Shell Nigeria has filed a criminal complaint against Peter Robinson, a former vice president for sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2009, Shell Nigeria was the subject of an Amnesty International report into the deterioration of human rights as a consequence of Shell Nigeria's activities in the Niger Delta.

In 1998, on its first public report on community and environmental issues in Nigeria, Shell promised "to end the practice of gas flaring in ten years, while pledging to establish a youth training scheme in Ogoniland".

In particular, Shell stood accused of collaborating in the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Ogoni tribe of southern Nigeria, who were hanged in 1995 by Nigeria's then military rulers.

In 2010, a leaked cable revealed Shell boasting about having inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government and knowing everything that was being done in those ministries.

Court documents released in 2009 have revealed that in the 1990s, Shell routinely worked with Nigeria's military and mobile police to subdue resistance to its oil activities, often concerning Ogoniland activists, in the delta region.

In 2016, the Supreme Court of Shell Nigeria overturned the Court of Appeal's decision to reject the appeal.

Justice Ibrahim Muhammad of the Supreme Court decided that Shell Nigeria was allowed to appeal the initial 2010 judgement and ruled that the Court of Appeals must hear the case.

However, as of January 2019, Shell Nigeria sought to continue the appeals process, and many people expect a continuation of the complex legal proceedings.

SPDC appealed the ruling, and despite the court's order to stop gas flaring activities, it was reported that Shell Nigeria continued to operate the gas flaring station in the Iwherekhan community.

The community argued that Shell was not offering enough compensation, while SPDC argued that the expectation of the community was too high and disproportionate to Nigerian standards.