A Federal High Court in Yenagoa has dismissed a preliminary objection filed by Aiteo Group in a N122 billion oil spill lawsuit brought by the Opu Nembe Kingdom over environmental damage allegedly caused by the company’s operations.
The ruling was delivered on Tuesday by Justice Emmanuel Ayo at the Federal High Court in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, allowing the suit filed by the community to proceed.
The court threw out the objection after finding that Aiteo’s argument was based on a technical issue concerning the way the company’s name was written in the suit, rather than the substance of the claims before the court.
What they are saying
The Opu Nembe Kingdom filed the suit seeking a declaration that massive oil spills that affected the community were the result of operational failure and negligence by the oil company.
- However, Aiteo Group asked the court to dismiss the suit, arguing that the plaintiffs had misidentified the company in their court documents.
- The company maintained that it was wrongly described as Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company Ltd, instead of its correct name, Aiteo Eastern E & P Company Ltd.
- Justice Ayo dismissed the preliminary objection, stating that the court could not allow technicalities to defeat the substance of the case before it.
The judge also noted that the plaintiffs had already filed a motion seeking to regularise the defendant’s name in the suit.
Following the ruling, the matter was adjourned to April 16 for a decision on the motion to amend the company’s name in the court filings.
Backstory
The oil spill at the centre of the legal dispute dates back nearly five years.
In November 2021, a major spill occurred in the Nembe area of Bayelsa State, where operations are managed by Aiteo Eastern E & P Company Ltd.
At the time, the Nigerian Senate estimated that more than two million barrels of hydrocarbon may have leaked into the environment, raising alarm about the potential scale of environmental damage.
The company, however, rejected the estimate.
- “The talk of two million barrels of oil spilling from the well is spurious. Two million barrels is about two super tankers. The oil would have spread over the entire country,” the company’s Global Group Director and Coordinator, Andrew Oru, said at the time.
Following the incident, the government directed Aiteo Group to suspend operations at the affected facility.
Later, on December 9, Nairametrics reported that the leaking well at Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 in Nembe, Bayelsa State, had been successfully shut.
What you should know
Aiteo Group became the operator of the oil asset at the centre of the dispute after acquiring it from Shell.
In December 2014, Nairametrics reported that Aiteo Group won the bid for Royal Dutch Shell’s Oil Mining License 29 (OML 29) and an associated pipeline in a deal valued at $2.7 billion (about N434 billion at the time).
- Disputes between oil companies and host communities over environmental damage are not uncommon in Nigeria’s oil-producing regions.
- In a similar development, Nairametrics recently reported that Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria Limited adopted its counter-affidavit in a lawsuit filed by 1,216 plaintiffs who alleged that crude oil spills from the company contaminated their communities.
- According to Shell Plc, its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) reported 20 operational oil spill incidents involving more than 100 kilograms of crude oil in 2024.
More broadly, oil spills remain a recurring environmental challenge in Nigeria’s petroleum sector. Data from the Oil Spill Monitor, a satellite tracker operated by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), shows that the country recorded at least 589 oil spill incidents in 2024.
