Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to a $84m settlement with residents of the Bodo community in the Niger Delta for two oil spills.

Lawyers for 15,600 Nigerian fishermen say their clients will receive $3,300 each for losses caused by the spills. The remaining $30m will be left for the community, which law firm Leigh Day says was "devastated by the two massive oil spills in 2008 and 2009". They say they affected thousands of hectares of mangrove in south Nigeria.

However, the company maintains that the extent of environmental pollution in the area is caused by "the scourge of oil theft and illegal refining".

The law firm representing the Nigerian fishermen and their community, Leigh Day, described it as one of the largest payouts to an entire community after devastating environmental damage.

Shell says the deal, which ends a three-year legal battle, is the first of its kind in Nigeria.

The two spills came from the same pipe on the Trans Niger Pipeline, operated by Shell, which takes oil from its fields to the export terminal at Bonny on the coast. It carries about 180,000 barrels of oil per day.

An Amnesty International report into the effects of the oil spills in Bodo, a town in the Ogoniland region, said that the spills had caused headaches and eyesight problems. The price of fish, a local staple food, rose as much as tenfold and many fishermen had to find alternative ways to make a living. A separate UN study said local drinking water sources were also contaminated.

Photo: Villagers stand near a container containing crude oil they collected at the shore of the Atlantic ocean near Orobiri village, days after the off-shore oil spill, in Nigeria’s delta state December, 2011 /Reuters