When the Exxon Valdez ploughed into Bligh Reef in 1989 causing one of the greatest environmental crimes of the last century, I remember someone saying “lawyers not yet born will work on this one”. And so that prediction has nearly come to pass.
Five years after the spill a federal jury in Alaska ordered Exxon to […]

Finally, some fifty years too late. Nigeria has said that oil companies should be obliged to pay compensation for degradation resulting from their exploration and production activities particularly in the oil-rich Niger Delta region.
“The companies have an obligation beyond their exploration and production to restore degraded land to its original state,” junior petroleum minister Odein […]

Thousands of people hit by South Korea’s worst oil spill have staged a protest rally in central Seoul to demand swift compensation.
Some 3000 marine farmers and other residents dramatised their plight by displaying oil-coated oysters, fish, anchovies and seaweed.

In a ruling that could set a precedent for responsibility in maritime pollution, a French court ruled yesterday that the oil company Total was partly liable for the vast spill in 1999 from the tanker Erika, that blackened the Brittany coast with fuel oil even though the company did not own the ship.
The court fined […]

The world’s media may have moved on for the site of another oil spill, and the beaches may be clean on the surface, but a month after South Korea’s worst oil spill, residents are struggling to pick up their shattered lives.
Last week a young fisherman Lee Young-kwon killed himself by drinking pesticide in […]