LONDON – Newly released emails from oil giant Shell reveal how its senior executives tried to shift blame and avoid responsibility from devastating oil spills that caused widespread environmental damage in Nigeria. Newly released documents raise serious questions about Shell’s legal liability, after its lawyers have spent a decade arguing in court that oil spills and environmental damage caused by operations in Nigeria were the sole responsibility of its subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC). The documents – including email correspondence, internal memos, presentations and reports – show that not only were senior executives of then parent company Royal Dutch Shell aware of the environmental damage, but were directing subsidiary management how to respond. This included knowingly leaving illegal pipeline connections in place to keep production running and mounting a public relations campaign to deflect public scrutiny. The company has faced widespread criticism over its operations in Nigeria, including a 2023 commission describing an “environmental genocide” that has been “devastating for the health, livelihoods, way of life and wellbeing of individuals and local communities”. A large spill in the Billeand Ogale communities of the Niger Delta is currently the subject of a class action filed by lawyers Leigh Day in the English High Courts. The explosive documents were brought to light when a group of campaigners noted their existence during these legal proceedings and requested their release. The not-for-profit organisations who sought the release of the sensitive documents from the company included Nigerian human rights organisation HEDA (Human & Environmental Development Agenda) and Hawkmoth. Executives named in the recent documents include Shell’s then Executive Vice President for Sub-Saharan Africa Ann Pickard, who is now a Director of Australia’s Woodside Energy; Royal Dutch Shell Board Member Malcolm Brinded, Shell International E&P Donald Jacobsen; and, Vice Shell International’s President of Corporate Security, James Hall. Revelations from the documents include: In a 2016 witness statement filed at the start of ongoing legal proceedings, Royal Dutch Shell’s then company secretary Michiel Brandjes stated that: “Royal Dutch Shell is a holding company, not an operating company” and that, “neither [RDS’s] Board nor its Executives ever intended to or acted in a manner which would suggest RDS has “assumed responsibility” for those matters at operating company level. RDS does not exercise operational “control over (Health, Safety, Security & Environment) practices of SPDC’s operations in Nigeria”. Reacting to the document release Olanrewaju Suraju, Chair of HEDA Resource Centre, said: “These documents confirm what our communities have known for decades, that Shell knowingly misled communities and courts while the Niger Delta was left to suffer. “For ten years they hid behind legal fiction and now their own emails and internal documents prove it: they knew environmental damage would occur and they chose to keep polluting. “Every day Shell escapes accountability is another day our people pay with their health, their land, and their lives. Divestment from onshore operations is not an excuse to abdicate liabilities with these revelations.” Hawkmoth and HEDA Resource Centre