Image description: A person holding out their hands palms up, covered with a thick coating of black oil after an oil spill in the Niger delta. Image by Jerry Chidi / Climate Visuals.

The UK High Court recently delivered a milestone judgement for environmental justice: Shell (and its former Nigerian subsidiary) can be held legally responsible for decades-old oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

It’s a major victory for the devastated communities of Bille and Ogale in Nigeria, who continue to live with chronic toxic pollution that has left them without clean water, unable to farm and fish and with serious ongoing risk to public health.

This landmark decision means Shell plc can be held accountable for:

(i) Historic oil spills – even those more than five years old – if they have not been properly cleaned up.

(ii) Ongoing harm – every day that oil remains on the land could constitute a new legal breach.

(iii) Pollution linked to oil theft (bunkering) and illegal refining – where Shell failed to secure infrastructure or where staff were complicit.

(iv) Its role as a parent company – Shell plc will now face trial for its involvement in decades of environmental harm in the Niger Delta.

he trial is a significant moment in the legal claim by the 50,000 people living in Bille and Ogale, who have been fighting UK-based Shell plc and oil company Renaissance, formerly Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd, for a clean-up and compensation since 2015. Ogale’s King Bebe Okpabi said: “People in Ogale are dying; Shell needs to bring a remedy.”

The full trial will take place in 2027. However, today’s judgment is reported as an important legal precedent: multinational corporations cannot distance themselves from the responsibility for toxic legacy pollution because time has passed.