Bloomberg News: Violence rattles Shell venture: Nigerian field closed down after pipeline damaged: “Royal Dutch Shell's venture in Nigeria has shut 10 percent of the nation's output as violence has swept through the Niger River delta.”: Posted Friday 13 January 2006
By KARL MAIER and STEPHEN VOSS
Royal Dutch Shell's venture in Nigeria has shut 10 percent of the nation's output as violence has swept through the Niger River delta.
Shell lost 106,000 barrels a day in supply after a pipeline was damaged and closed the 120,000 barrel-a-day EA field when four workers were kidnapped, company spokesman Andy Corrigan said.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo last month put troops on alert in the delta after a separate pipeline attack forced Shell to reduce exports.
"While the army is deployed to address the security situation in the delta, there hasn't been a political initiative to deal with the underlying causes of tension and instability in the region," Antony Goldman, a risk analyst at Clearwater Research Services, said Thursday.
Exxon Mobil Corp. said output was normal from its facilities in Nigeria and denied reports that its Yoho platform had been boarded by militants.
"There was no raid," Exxon Mobil spokeswoman Susan Reeves said in Houston. Ireland's Foreign Office said it was investigating an e-mail sent by an Irish national describing an attack on the platform.
Shell's Trans-Ramos pipeline was damaged this week in the Brass Creek region in Bayelsa state. The line normally feeds oil to Nigeria's Forcados export terminal. A prolonged halt may limit the amount of oil available for export from the terminal. Shipments initially can continue from storage tanks.
The four hostages taken Wednesday at the EA field are from the U.S., U.K., Bulgaria and Honduras, Shell said Thursday. They were abducted from a support vessel, the Liberty Service, which had 28 crew members on board at the time and is sailing to Port Harcourt. Shell is based in The Hague.
Communities in the Niger delta, a maze of creeks and rivers feeding into one of the world's biggest remaining areas of mangroves, are among the country's poorest, a Shell-funded report on the area said in 2004. It cited studies showing per-capita income in the region to be below the national average of $260.
Unemployment surpasses 90 percent in some areas.
Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer, was the world's third-riskiest area for attacks on ships in the first half of 2005, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
Shell's main joint venture in Nigeria, known as the Shell Petroleum Development Co., is 30 percent owned by Shell and 55 percent owned by state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. It produces about half of Nigeria's oil. Nigeria pumped 2.45 million barrels a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, making it the sixth-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
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