A Nigerian court asked oil giant Royal Dutch Shell to pay 1.5 billion U.S. dollars to communities as compensation for oil pollution on Friday, but Shell argued immediately against the judgment.

Shell "has appealed the judgment on, among other grounds, the strength of independent expert advice, which demonstrates that there is no evidence to support the claims of the group," said a company statement.

Earlier in the day, a federal high court sitting in the southern Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt gave the judgment in the long-running case between Shell's subsidiary in Nigeria, SPDC, and a group, the "Ijaw Aborigines" of the southern oil-producing state of Bayelsa.

The Ijaw is the largest tribe in the restive Niger Delta, which accounts for most of Nigeria's oil production. Impoverished local people usually accuse the oil firms of degrading their environments and economic activities through oil spillage and pollution.

The Nigerian Senate had in 2004 asked Shell to pay the compensation to the affected Ijaw communities. The petition was originally presented to the House of Representatives in 2003 and reviewed by an independent legal advisory panel set up by the lower house.

But in a statement published in Nigerian newspapers at that time, Shell claimed that the Senate failed to follow "due process" in imposing the fine and said that the spills were a result of sabotage.

And on Friday, "the court entered a judgment in favor of the Ijaw Aborigines, ruling that, since SPDC chose to participate in the National Assembly hearing, it had submitted to their jurisdiction and thus is bound by their resolution," Shell said.

"The management of SPDC remains committed to dialogue with all its stakeholders," it added.

Source: Xinhua