Aspiring for oil-producing developing countries like Guyana would do well to pay close interest to a British Supreme Court decision last Friday that paves the way for a group of Nigerian farmers to sue the Anglo-Dutch oil company , Royal Dutch Shell PLC, over corruption in a region of Nigeria where the energy giant operates an oil recovery subsidiary.
The judgment in the British courts claims that Shell may have a “duty of care” to more than 40,000 members of the Ogale and Bille Nigeria communities and that the claimants have the legal authority to sue the Royal Dutch subsidiary in British courts .
In 2015 the communities moved to the courts in the UK claiming that extensive water and soil contamination had resulted from decades of oil spills and that these events had a negative impact on the lives of thousands of people in the Niger River Delta, where sub- Shell company has operated. for decades.