The African Meridian Newsroom · Paris, France / Lagos, Nigeria · 1 July 2026
Several environmental non-profits, including Friends of the Earth France, sued oil major TotalEnergies in a French civil court this week, seeking to force the company to disclose environmental documents tied to the sale of its stake in a Nigerian onshore oil asset formerly known as SPDC.
The lawsuit centres on TotalEnergies’ planned sale of its 10% stake in the asset — now renamed Renaissance — to local company Vaaris, a deal announced in January that Nigerian regulators have yet to approve. The asset has a long history of environmental trouble: its roughly 4,000-kilometre network of pipelines and flowlines has suffered hundreds of oil spills linked to theft, sabotage and operational failures, problems severe enough that previous operator Shell exited the asset entirely, and Total’s partner Eni is also seeking to sell its 5% stake.
The NGOs are invoking France’s corporate duty of vigilance law, which requires French companies to mitigate risks tied to their business operations, including environmental harm. They want access to the environmental management plans included in the sale agreement — and if those plans are found insufficient, the groups say they may file a second lawsuit seeking to force TotalEnergies to take remedial action.
TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné has defended the sale, telling shareholders in May that the company had been unable to stop oil theft on the asset. “There is a national sport of sorts involving making holes in these pipes to take the oil and load it onto tankers. It’s like the Wild West,” he said, adding that sabotage had declined since Shell’s earlier exit and that increased production under new, local ownership would give Vaaris “the money to finance cleanup.”
Campaigners are unconvinced. Ken Henshaw, executive director of the Niger Delta-based NGO We the People, which is party to the suit, argued that divestment deals in the region have consistently prioritised production over environmental remediation. “None of the divestments so far has involved a blueprint for environmental remediation,” he said. “The Nigerian government is more interested in how the successor companies will expand the assets and generate more oil for revenues rather than managing environmental issues.”
Nigeria’s oil regulator must still verify that Vaaris has the financial and technical capacity to operate the asset responsibly before the sale can proceed — a requirement NGOs say is especially pressing given that Shell itself had to loan money to the buyer of its own stake, Renaissance Africa Energy Company, just to complete that earlier sale.