By Sam Tobin

LONDON (Reuters) - Shell should take responsibility for environmental damage in Nigeria caused by oil spills, a community leader said on Thursday as a pivotal hearing in lawsuits brought against the British oil major began at London's High Court.

Godwin Bebe Okpabi, leader of the Ogale community in the Niger Delta, told Reuters that he was appealing to Shell's conscience to remediate the damage, which he said had "destroyed our way of life".

Thousands of members of the Ogale and Bille communities are suing Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary SPDC over oil spills in the Niger Delta, a region blighted by pollution, conflict and corruption related to the oil and gas industry.

Decades of oil spills have caused widespread environmental damage, which has destroyed the livelihood of millions in the local communities and impacted their health.

Shell, however, says the vast majority of spills were caused by illegal third-party interference, such as pipeline sabotage and theft, which is rife in the Niger Delta.

A Shell spokesperson said the litigation "does little to address the real problem in the Niger Delta: oil spills due to theft, illegal refining and sabotage, which cause the most environmental damage".

Shell's lawyers said in court filings that SPDC recognises it is obliged to compensate those harmed by oil spills even if SPDC is not at fault, but not where it has already done so or where spills were caused by "the malicious acts of third parties".

But Okpabi said Shell had made billions of dollars in Nigeria – which he called "blood money" – and had a moral responsibility to prevent and remediate oil spills.

"As we speak, people are dying in Ogale, my community," he said. "It is sad that Shell will now want to take us through this very expensive, very troublesome trial, claiming one technicality or the other."

He was speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London ahead of a four-week hearing to determine issues of Nigerian law and whether SPDC can be held liable for oil spills caused by third-party interference, ahead of a further trial in 2026.

The case, parts of which began nearly a decade ago, has already been to the United Kingdom's Supreme Court, which ruled in 2021 that the case should be heard in the English courts.

The lawsuit is the latest example of multinationals being sued in London for the acts of overseas subsidiaries, following a landmark 2019 ruling in a separate case.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin; additional reporting by Marissa Davison and Vitalii Yalahuzian; Editing by Susan Fenton)